Making a documentary is like having a dream. You can’t really anticipate what it will be. You have to constantly yield to whatever is manifested before you, to have the courage for whatever is revealed to you. Whatever truth confesses itself, even if it’s not what you anticipated. To just be a mirror. To invite in whatever arrives. To reflect it as loyally.

It's a different animal. The action movie requires much more physical dedication and focus, you have to be careful because of potential injuries and so it's very hard and you have to be cautious, while the drama taxes the emotions, and so if you're using some past experienced trauma and try to use it for a scene it might move you beyond expectations.

Fiction film is really different from documentary in this aspect. It is less objective, because the director expresses a subjective point of view with the movie. I would like the movie to look like a documentary, look real.

In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.

With a reality series, unlike with a drama, you have to develop a story from what's happening in front of you. There's no script. You also have to package what you have in such a way that it's a faithful representation of what's happening, and something that the viewers can enjoy

Acting is about trusting your instincts, not censoring yourself and not looking back. Directing is the opposite in a lot of ways. It's measured. Number one, as a director, I get the script way before the actors do, so I have moments to graph out how the episode should be, understand the plot points and convey that to the actors. It's a much more structured approach, which is a bit more of my personality. I like to be more calm and in control. From there, you hope the actors bring other creative variables to the table. It's collaborative, but I'm still steering the ship.

Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.

With a comedy, you can easily take away the humor. So it’s very important to keep the pacing of it going, and to keep the lighthearted nature of it going. I think in many ways, a comedy is more difficult than drama

I don’t like making didactic, pedagogical documentaries based on standard formulas of narration: I'm only interested in the ambitious French tradition of the documentaire de création where the film, if successful, is not about something but that something itself. The goal is to incorporate areas of risk and paradox that we associate with cinematic art.

Become a documentarian of what you do.

Comedy is quite different to anything else – the most important thing is getting a laugh, and it’s a technical skill. You can easily kill a laugh by coming in too soon or with a different expression, so in a way it’s much harder work than drama, because with drama you just get into the script and that’s it! And the more you’re into the script, the more convincing you’ll be.

It is my current belief that the function of the writer is to give the audience some shred of meaning to the otherwise meaningless pattern of their lives. Our lives are filled with endless moments of stimulus and depression. We relate to each other in an incredibly complicated manner. Every fiber of relationship is worth a dramatic study. There is far more exciting drama in the reasons why a man gets married than in why he murders someone. The man who is unhappy in his job, the wife who thinks of a lover, the girl who wants to get into television, your father, mother, sister, brothers, cousins, friends - all these are better subjects for drama than Iago. What makes a man ambitious? Why does one girl always try to steal her kid sister's boy friends? Why does your uncle attend his annual class reunion faithfully every year? Why do you always find it depressing to visit your father? These are the substances of good television drama; and the deeper you probe into and examine the twisted semiformed complexes of emotional entanglements, the more exciting your writing becomes.

I have done all kinds of scripts, but I prefer working on dramas. They give me room to really act. Comedies are fun to work on, but I don’t get much satisfaction from them.

I probably am a playwright first, and a director second. But, since I do a lot of directing sometimes, it's an almost equal thing. Writing is very exciting to me because I'm able to control the world that I want to create. And, as a director, you go into another world, and you kind of help flesh out a world that other people have created...