On Fantastic Mr. Fox, I Got Used

People Seem To Think That My Movies Are So Carefully Coordinated And Arranged - And In A Lot Of Ways, They Are - But Every Single Time I Make A Movie, I Feel That Every Director Makes These Choices. You Make Choices About Your Script, You Make Choices About Your Actors, And How You're Going To Stage It, And How You're Going To Shoot It, And What The Costumes Are Going To Be Like, And In Every Single Detail, You Make That Decision. And For Me, What Ends Up Happening Is, I Wind Up Surprised At The Combination Of All These Ingredients. It Never Is Anything Like What I Expected.

I Have A Way Of Filming Things And Staging Them And Designing Sets. There Were Times When I Thought I Should Change My Approach, But In Fact, This Is What I Like To Do. It's Sort Of Like My Handwriting As A Movie Director. And Somewhere Along The Way, I Think I've Made The Decision: I'm Going To Write In My Own Handwriting.

When Something Is Discovered By People In Movie Theaters, It's Discovered By People Who Are All Together, And There's A Sort Of Feeling Of An Event About It. And When It's On Video, It's Like Something Is Being Discovered In The Library Or Something. It's Like Having A Second Life In Public Libraries. It's Just Like Individuals, And It's Less Of A... We Can't Participate In It The Same Way.

The One Thing I've Observed Over The Years Is The Best Way To Get An Actor To Not Want To Play A Certain Role Is To Offer It To Them. That Makes Them Say, "well, Maybe It's Not That Good. These Guys Don't Want Me To Do This..."

I Chose Philosophy Because It Sounded Like Something I Ought To Be Interested In. I Didn't Know Anything About It, I Didn't Even Know What It Was Talking About. What I Really Spent My Time Doing In Those Years Was Writing Short Stories. There Were All Sorts Of Interesting Courses, But What I Really Wanted To Do Was Make Stories One Way Or Another.