It's kind of hard to work with Tom Cruise and not be aware that you're working with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

Flying small airplanes is not like being on airlines.

VR is so immersive, and when it works, it draws you into the story in a way that is truly unique and powerful.

If you look at my movies, they're pretty densely packed, such that they not only hold up to a second viewing, they're oftentimes better the second time you watch them. So I've always thought about crafting stories that could hold up to multiple viewings, and so VR obviously fits right into that.

I'm very interested in politics, and I feel TV is a more political medium than film.

One thing about pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is that you're going to make mistakes, and you're going to fall flat on your face sometimes.

For me, the scale of the budget is part of the creative process. 'Swingers' is the movie it is because we made it for exactly the right budget. Had it been made for a higher number, it would not have been as imaginative as we had to make it, given the budget constraints we had.

More of 'The Bourne Identity's script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum's novel.

The one thing about reality is sometimes it gives you material that is wilder than some of your wildest imagination could come up with.

There's no reason my films can't work as hard as VR does to hook an audience and never let them go, so I think that that it turns the volume up a little bit on storytelling. The same way when I was doing commercials and then I went and shot 'Go,' and 'Go' has a level of pace that is unlike any of my other movies.

When I read the script of 'The Wall,' I saw how much different the war looks from the point of view of a soldier fighting it.

From a production point of view, I still have one foot firmly planted in the independent film world, and much of the shooting on 'Jumper' was done 'Swingers'-style because that was the only way we could afford to do it.

All of my fellow directors, I think, would agree that in whatever medium you are working, the challenges and obstacles push them to be more creative. That's the case with VR.

With VR, you are directing in a 360-degree environment. The biggest challenge is that the viewer can look anywhere. They might look at the the weakest moments, the very things you edit for TV. You don't control where they look.

To be honest, when I started watching VR content, I was mostly disappointed and thought people could do better - not that different from when I set out to make 'Swingers' and thought, 'There's a better way to make an independent film.' Which is why 'Swingers' ended up being so much less expensive than anything like it.

When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

The more real I got on 'The Bourne Identity,' the more interesting it got. So 'Fair Game' was the chance to go a few more steps in that direction. In fact, I discovered this whole other world that I had ignored in the 'Bourne' franchise, which is the domestic life of a spy, and how you make the two halves of your life coexist.

Almost anything can be justified as a style of filmmaking if it works.

The thing about TV is it's a meritocracy. I love that aspect of it - and I've had shows that have gone on the air and been canceled. I've seen the good and the bad of it.

If you go to a restaurant with Tom Cruise, it's like walking in with Santa Claus. Everybody is in a better mood because he's there.

Trust me: you make a movie about time travel, and you know for a fact humans will never travel through time. The paradoxes that come up just from trying to tell a story with time travel really illuminates the fact that it's impossible. It will never happen. We can barely get through a movie that involves time travel.

I'm very sensitive about the fact that there's not a lot of good work for women in cinema that also deals with strong characters. But 'strong character' doesn't mean 'masculine character' - but something that finds the strength in femininity and the beauty in femininity. And something that says you can find femininity in men in some way.

I would be trying to play hockey with my friends, but most of the time, the coach put me on the bench. Because I was too dreamy - I was dreaming all of the time. I was super bad on the ice because I was just thinking about something else.

When you do casting in Hollywood, it's always the same question: 'Who is available?'