Tyler Perry's brand is faith family and this whole thing that I've built while my company 34th Street Films is like Disney's Touchstone. We can do anything. People don't know what to expect from me yet.

Doing films in Latin America is like an act of faith. I mean you really have to believe in what you're doing because if not you feel like it's a waste of time because you might as well be doing something that at least pays you the rent.

I think that films about faith made for faith-based communities have a certain tactic.

I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines.

My films seem to be about men's struggle with failure.

I get asked 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.

With a lot of films people are sitting on the outside looking in but I want the audience to get a bit more intimately involved with what's going on so that they maybe can experience it a little bit more intensely.

My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

Films that are entertainments give simple answers but I think that's ultimately more cynical as it denies the viewer room to think. If there are more answers at the end then surely it is a richer experience.

That's one of the benefits of working on big budget films. You work with people who have a lot of experience and you get to learn a lot.

You experience the films through the actors so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin so you try to make the films really tactile.

Some of us are interested in directors but really the vast majority of us are interested in actors. You experience the films through the actors so they're all locked into your imagination in some kind of layer of fantasy or hatred or wherever they settle into your imagination.

If we didn't want to upset anyone we would make films about sewing but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally in a film it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things within a film for the total experience.

It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.

It never occurred to me that I'd be on a television show or in feature films but when those came into play my dreams changed along the way.

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts.

In our increasingly secular society with so many disparate gods and different faiths superhero films present a unique canvas upon which our shared hopes dreams and apocalyptic nightmares can be projected and played out.

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face but the traditional animation was spectacular.

I'm a fan of horrors. I love the ones that make you jump. My girlfriend hates it. I've been dating her for one-and-a-half years and I'm crazy about her but she's terrified of horror films. Not the cute 'Will you hold me?' way but she's weeping. With 'House of Wax ' we'll be sleeping and I'll go to the bathroom and she's sitting up waiting for me.

Comedy was why I got into acting the first place. Peter Sellers was a huge influence on my wanting to act. I grew up with him and found him hysterical. The Pink Panther films were an inspiration from my earliest childhood days when I was watching them with my brother and my dad.

I have a theory that I really want my kids to know - the only coloration that they make between dad being in films and reality is just a lot of people doing a lot of hard work.

My dad had a commercial film company so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.

Working with my dad was such a gas. We approached the work in a similar way. We only made two films together when I was an adult Tucker and Blown Away but it was so much fun to play with your parent like that.