Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

Metal is still the biggest music now in America.

The thing is there have been American movies that are similar to Solaris like Alien had a lot of things that are similar although it's also got the horror element.

In America we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world the sub-continental world but it's not a conversation it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories no one will tell them' is my mantra.

In movies there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet difficult undertaking requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class age gender culture.

What I liked about American movies when I was a kid was that they're sort of larger than life and I think I'm still suffering from that reaction.

I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative a contemporary American vernacular.