It's the most unrealistic thing you can do to shoot a close-up, and it's the most unrealistic place you can be as a performer. And yet actors grouse about having to do visual effect shots, but they love doing close-ups.
We have this sort of tacit censorship, which is the ratings system, and it's directly tied to box office, so it is censorship. Like, if you make an R-rated movie, you know that only a certain amount of people are going to go see it under any circumstance.
I'm in a constant conflict about having to make a movie for the big and the small screen at the same time, stylistically. So I just basically make it for the large screen.
I grew up on Chicago's South Side in a working-poor family, so I watched everything on television. It was like my window on the world. But we also went to the movies pretty regularly - mostly on Tuesdays, because that was Ladies Night, and my mom could get in for free.
I think that technological tools that filmmakers use to tell stories, in a perfect world, need to become invisible. When it's brand new and it's never been seen before and you're birthing this stuff, it's very much on people's minds.
USC Film School always had a real sense of drama and lineage.
