It drove me as a kid. I couldn't bear the idea that I wasn't the smartest. Then I got put in a B stream for four years at my school. And that was the making of me in a weird way.
I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.
I'm looking for an intensity of focus. It's a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten, and nothing really changes until you hit that tension, and suddenly it's there: you've got a note.
If you're in Hollywood, with no track record, it's pretty odds-on that you can get swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all; particularly with the intense commercial push that you feel there.
I love the cinema, but I'm not a fascist about it. I've had some of my best experiences watching things on TV. But if I were Stalin, I would force everyone to be in the theater.
Ireland is a good place to start out as a filmmaker. If what you do is good, even at a very small scale, it will get recognized.
