Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that`s not reality, it`s just another aesthetic form of fiction.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years, everything will.

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that`s the most fun.

Well, it`s 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you`re having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring.

The key is, if you`re not monkeying around with the script, then everything usually goes pretty well.

I guess I didn`t feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

I don`t consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.

I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don`t. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing what I do. But I find it pleasurable.

Making a film that`s supposed to be fun to watch is really hard - that`s the weird irony of it.

I think I`m good at amplifying an actor`s strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When you`re sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can`t.

Well, I think a part of you has to be scared, it keeps you alert; otherwise you become complacent. So absolutely, I`m purposefully going after things and doing things that I`m not sure if it`s going to come off or not. Certainly Full Frontal was one of those. That was pure experimentation, that`s the kind of film that you make going in where you know that a lot of people are not going to like it because it`s an exploration of the contract that exists between the film-maker and the audience and what happens when you violate that contract.

...there`ve been a lot of questions about commercial films and non-commercial films, and I`ve never really made that separation in my mind. There`s no question that when you read a piece of material, you have ideas about how it should be realised ... certainly when I read the script for Ocean`s Eleven, I thought if this was realised the way it should, then it would appeal to a lot of people. Then you get involved in a film like Solaris and if you realise it the way it should be realised, then it won`t appeal to a lot of people. But what are you going to do? You have to go at it...

To me the director`s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don`t.

I guess why the Ocean`s films are hard for me is because on the one hand you have to make sure the performances are there, but on the other hand it`s a film that demands, to my mind, a very layered and complex visual scheme. That takes a lot of time to figure out.

I know why we can`t have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you`re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you`ve either got to change what you`re doing or find something else to do.

I`m in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.

I`m sure some people will say, `Why do this?` And my response is, `Why wouldn`t you?` The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.

It`s pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn`t.

In Full Frontal and K Street, I learned to take advantage of the mobility that digital provides.

I had more fun making Traffic than either of the Ocean`s films.

A movie that costs only $1.6 million doesn`t have to be a cultural event to turn a profit.

Maybe I`ll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

But my sense in talking to people when I travel is that the film business is not that dissimilar from a lot of other businesses.

Another thing that really excites me: I`d like to do multiple versions of the same film.

When a film like Chris Nolan`s Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It`s dead.

I like to make all kinds of movies. I`d do `Ocean`s Thirteen` with the right script.

When things go right it`s hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it`s really easy.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

I`m very comfortable with failure. I`m very comfortable being the guy who disappoints people.

I love caper films.

there`ve been a lot of questions about commercial films and non-commercial films, and I`ve never really made that separation in my mind. There`s no question that when you read a piece of material, you have ideas about how it should be realised ... certainly when I read the script for Ocean`s Eleven, I thought if this was realised the way it should, then it would appeal to a lot of people. Then you get involved in a film like Solaris and if you realise it the way it should be realised, then it won`t appeal to a lot of people. But what are you going to do? You have to go at it...

There are certain directors - Spielberg, David Fincher, John McTiernan - who sort of see things in three dimensions, and I was watching their films and sort of breaking them down to see how they laid sequences out, and how they paid attention to things like lens length, where the eyelines were, when the camera moved, how they cut, how they led your eye from one part of the frame to another.

This is a good moment to comment on the cottage industry that has sprung up around "How To" ... Screenwriting manuals. I think of this because Towne`s script (Chinatown) is often cited as a great template (which it is) but, invariably, with no understanding or acknowledgment of the role film editing has in shaping a finished work. So any discussion that omits this issue shows a palpable lack of experience in the actual making of films on the part of the scriptwriting teacher/author.

I find it hilarious that most of the stuff being written about movies is how conventional they are, and then you have people ... they are upset that something`s not conventional.

I`m process-driven, I`m not result-driven.

I`m not a world-class cinematographer, but the momentum and the closeness to the actors ... I`m so close to them that I can just whisper to them while we`re in the middle of a take.

If you`re sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you`ll just become paralysed.

On his decision to direct Out of Sight (1998): "It was a very conscious decision on my part to try and climb my way out of the arthouse ghetto, which can be as much of a trap as making blockbuster films. And I was very aware that at that point in my career, half the business was off limits to me."

I learned from Richard Lester that as your career goes on, you learn more about how things can go wrong, but you never learn how things can go right. And it`s really disorienting.

On DVD audio commentaries: "Would I, growing up, like to have had access to stuff on DVDs like this? Oh God, yeah! It`s better than any film school, I think."