It is a bit of a shock to discover that there are things that a writer can bring to a script that you recognize as a shadow of your own experience. You don’t necessarily actively draw on some specific thing that happened to you—but it’s in the bank, and you want to spend it.

Everything comes from drawing out my ideas.

My ideas about writing changed as soon as I started directing. As a writer, I wanted my scripts to be perfect and fully formed. As a director, I know there are always factors beyond my control. Many things in any film cannot be planned concretely in advance. The best you can do is visualise what you want, and then respond to what’s there once you go on set. Nowadays I start from a fairly loose script and tend to write the dialogue on the day of shooting.

Primarily, they (ideas) come from daydreaming or every day occurrences. I try to get out and about, especially new places to let the environment inspire me. I start an illustration of a building I see and then the elements of different characters will populate in my mind like a set and actors on a stage. If nothing comes up I continue to draw until something unfolds.

Frequently lately it’s reading a script, but that can come with some jeopardy because reading a script predisposes you to a kind of movie you expect to see, and then when it falls short of that expectation you have to realign. Sometimes the best experiences are when I know nothing about this movie, I’ve never met the director and I come and see something and I’m blank because then it’s coming at you in a way it would never come at you if you’d read the script, with an expectation.

When you’re writing a screenplay, it’s like you’re dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it...Nobody in the world cares if it doesn’t exist. You have to either believe in this fiction hard enough for it to become real, or you don’t, and it won’t.

I look for a complete script. I look for characters who are inspiring, and who move our imaginations from one place to another. It just so happens that I’ve been asked to play characters in certain projects that have had somewhat of an edge, a darker side, if you will.

I love coming in with a battle plan, but I also love the freedom to make things up with my actors, and my DP, too. Sometimes we’ll be in a scene and I see new things we can do, so I will throw whatever stuff that has been cooking away in my brain for a long time because I think what I'm coming up with on the set might serve the film better. You know, your instinct will tell you, “This is a better way, try this other way instead,” and that's very important for me, and that is my style of filmmaking, for better or for worse. That's how I like to approach it. And a lot of it comes to me when I'm designing the script, the screenplay. I'm generally very involved in the screenplay, even the ones I'm not on officially as a writer, I'm still extremely involved in how I craft the screen with the writers. I like to get in there and I really craft the world so I can have an idea of how all that will play out before I go on set. Then when I go on set, I like to keep it free, so that I can improvise with my actors.

I use all sorts of sources — but I always go back to the script. And then I just let the thing live in my body a bit. So when I'm on set I'm not thinking in any linear way about what I'm doing: I just do it.

What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I’m watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I’m discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story. Other times, you’re plotting it out with diagrams and taking a very objective view. Writing, for me, is a combination of both. You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional experience for the audience.

I usually begin with the idea of a character and then work on getting to know the character better. I’ve learned from actors that if I try to embody my characters physically, by walking, talking, and even dressing like them, then my characters become more real to me and therefore more believable on the page.

When I read a script for the first time, I have to have something instinctive happen where I feel like that character is there somewhere. I have to hear a person, I have to feel them inside me in a way.

…For acting, I have no other place to begin besides my body, history, memories, and cultural points of reference. In my process, I’m my foundation and then the research, and additional character development gets layered on top. For writing, I admit I’ve got an agenda and I start from what I know—me…

I like to try different things. A good strong character and a good story are the key things for me when I'm considering a script. But I don't want to do the same kinds of things over and over. I like to challenge myself and do projects that dare to push the limits.