My Greatest Hope Is That We Transcend

Remarkably, There's No Green Screen In 'leaves Of Grass' Movie. There Is Motion Control. Technically, There Were All Sorts Of Challenges, But Really The Soul Of It Is Edward Norton Talent. You Write These Characters When You Write A Movie, And All You Can Hope For Or Depend On Is That Your Actors Will Elevate The Material.

Just Because You've Made A Couple Movies, You've Done Some Good Movies, You've Been Nominated For Some Academy Awards, Whatever, Nobody's Entitled. It's A Business. If They Don't See It, I Can Think They're Wrong, But I'm Not Entitled To A $15 Million Budget To Make A Film.

I'm A New Yorker, You Know.

Even My Wife And Two Of My Children Are In "leaves Of Grass". Because I Love The Source Material So Much, It Was Really Easy To Write And An Utter Delight To Get To Direct Because I Had People Like Edward [norton] Elevating The Material And Surprising Me In Their Interpretations Of All Of This Stuff That's So Close To Me.

I've Always Thought Of Acting As More Of An Exercise In Empathy, Which Is Not To Be Confused With Sympathy. You're Trying To Get Inside A Certain Emotional Reality Or Motivational Reality And Try To Figure Out What That's About So You Can Represent It.