OTHER TECH

Have you used high-def video yet in making your movies? No.

Would you do so? I would. I looked at a digital camera called the Viper [which Michael Mann shot Collateral with, as well as his upcoming film Miami Vice]. The problem is that the lenses give too much depth of field. And you don't have the same tools to model what an audience is seeing that you do with the sensitivity of 35mm film at the moment. They're getting there, but there's also an enormous amount of cabling attached. This camera that I did see was amazing - better than any other system I've seen. I think there's only three or four of them in existence.

You have great pop soundtracks on Breakfast on Pluto and on other of your films; are you a big music buff? And what do you listen to your music on? What do I listen on? The bloody iPod. But I've got vinyl and DVDs. I don't distinguish what I listen to my music on. Like everybody else, I keep it on the computer now. I tend to become obsessed with music when I'm doing the soundtrack for whatever specific film I'm working on. With Breakfast on Pluto it was bubblegum stuff from the 1970s. I had hardly ever listened to it at the time, but when I began to go through all the old stuff that I barely remember, some of it was quite interesting, quite compelling.

Would you do a music biopic like Jim Sheridan did of 50 Cent (Get Rich or Die Tryin')? I'd love to do a musical. I play music. Throughout my life I've played various instruments - the saxophone, a lot of guitars, stuff like that. So, I would like to do a musical, but I'm not sure I would like to do a biopic. It's a tough form. They all seem to follow the same form nowadays: drug-addled genius meets up with someone who sets him right.

The Good Thief - a casino heist movie - seemed like a bit of a departure for you. Did you just like Bob le Flambeur, the original Jean-Pierre Melville version, or does the story have a personal appeal for you? That was a film that I was asked to adapt and I was of two minds about it, and as I began to write the screenplay, the whole idea became more compelling to me. It's not a story I would normally have done, but it became for me more of a story about forgeries and fakes and originals.

Like Breakfast on Pluto? Breakfast on Pluto is about a character who has to construct a persona to enable him to survive in the world. I kind of conceived it as a film about goodness. About someone who was finding a way to be good. In all sorts of weird ways.

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