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Q 6. In any work that you've done, what's been your biggest Ah-ha moment, where you overcome an obstacle, and you were like 'Got it!'?

I think I never had that, but I have little ones. I think I probably have a tendency to shut myself off from a lot of things. I stop watching movies and television, 'cause I became so self-conscious that I would see through the artifice of it, and then I would be too self-conscious to act in a movie. So, I stop watching things, I stop, frankly, reading things that are maybe similar to mine. And I think by sheltering myself so much, I have lost perspective of where I fit into the world. I know it's not good for me to do that. So, I have occasionally a little Ah-ha moment when I open my window for a little bit, and I see that, I think I'm like OK here, I think I fit in. Not that I'm better or worse, but I'm like of the… The pieces that my friend write or successful authors, and I think 'Alright, my pieces can stand up to that'. Or I don't watch myself in the movies, 'cause I'm too worried that I'm not gonna think that I did a good job, or it's gonna make me nervous or something. And then occasionally I'll see a movie preview, I feel like that's Ok. I never feel that great, but I have, in terms of the Ah-ha moment, I feel like 'OK, I'm OK, I can fit into the world a little bit'. And I hope as I do more, I'll become a little more comfortable engaging in stuff that I've done. 

Q 7. I wanted to ask you about your own writing process. When you're writing, for example, you're writing a play or this collection of short stories or a short story, do you write from beginning to end and then you edit later, or do you suffer from anxiety in the middle of writing it, and then just feel there is something wrong with this and then just rewrite it until you're satisfied? 

I usually begin with the based-level anxiety that then carries through the process, occasionally peaking. No, with the plays and with that character that Hallie just read, I let those characters kind of take over, which is I guess a pretentious way of saying you hope your unconscious mind take over. You set out to write something, and when you set out to do something, you're thinking with your analytical brain. It would be interesting to see a nine-year-old boy and his mom go to restaurants. And then you hope that analytical brain kind of reseize a bit, and the unconscious part of your brain takes over, which is the artful part, which says 'Oh, actually it would be interesting if they really love each other, but they just can't see eye to eye. And those characters seem to take on a life of their own. Certainly, when I write my plays, I never know how they're gonna end. When I have done it the other way in reverse engineer to lead towards the end, and it feels false, because I'm not presenting people accurately. People are irrational and emotional beings that are driven by id and the forces that they probably would not be able to articulate. So, if you're gonna accurately represent characters, they probably should not be written, at least in my case, with that kind of very analytical part of the mind. Similarly, when acting, I think of acting as a very visceral experience. I try to get away from feeling as though I can think about my character in a calculative way, and that I can figure out the equation. No, you try to bring a kind of emotional experience to it, and hopefully that will take over until youanswer all the analytical questions that you had. 

Q 8. Was it more natural for you to write plays before finishing an entire book? What you may have liked more… Is part of the process where you may have liked more than, the plays or writing a book? Or is it just the creative process in general that you kind of enjoy it?

I mean I love writing from characters I feel like I excel. When writing from the first person, I can't describe sunset well, for example. I mean I know it's orange, but I can't think of any other adjectives besides that. So, I'm not good at the kind of like third-person descriptive stuff. I just can't do well. But what I could do well is describe the kind of inner life and self analysis that happens with inner monolog. So, because I could do that well, I could do plays where I'm writing dialogues, where people are expressing themselves and not talking about sunset ever. And if they are talking about the sunset, they're gonna say something like, 'I can't stand the sunset. It makes my head itch, and my head itches reminds me of my father, where they can make it personal, 'cause otherwise I'm at a loss. So, a lot of the stories here are in dialogue form or in monolog form, where I feel like I can accurately capture a voice. And often times, because it's a book of humour, it's under the umbrella of a funny concept. So, you have a funny concept, and then imbue it with characters, fill with characters that seem real, not just that are funny juxtapositions for that concept, but that feel like they kind of have the life of their own. 

Q 9. You've been on New Observer a couple of time, first in the underrated The Squid and the Whale. None of people talking about that here. I just looked up on my phone, and for The Social Network you've been nominated for proximately 30 awards by my account, winning a couple. (Jesse: 31) In the old days, I would imagine that you probably would just be nominated for an Oscar you go to the ceremony, but like the award season must be really exhausting and floated. Would you prefer if there were not so many awards out there that you would’ve had to gone to that year? 

Well I was very uncomfortable with the whole thing, because if you're at all a little cynical, you think this is a silly parade where people are kind of using political tactics to describe the quantification of art, which seems inherently absurd, and it is. But, every single industry has parts of it that are used to self perpetuate. Politicians have to go to…how many lunches does Obama has to go to that he thinks he can be doing a million other things that are more interesting and better for the countries than sitting at the lunch. So, what I'm saying is, you do it because you're part of an industry that has given you so much. I feel so blessed to be part of the industry that has given me a lot of opportunities, so you feel like this is the kind of thing that perpetuates the industry. In a way, the award shows…advertise the industry and everything. I feel very lucky. You can't kind of like reverse engineer trying to get an award or something. It doesn't seem to work that way. But if you're in something that people like, that's when they really try to push it. 

Q 10. For me at least, I feel that writing is great for my mental health, and it helps me stay stable. As for other arts where it's more not really you by yourself, and you have to put on a performance and stand in front of other people, and kind of become something that you are not. It can really put a string on you. So, do you write to hold that balance in yourself, like to kind of keep your life stable? 

Yeah yeah, exactly. You can kind of express yourself through writing. You can express very personal things through fictional characters, and usually the reader can't exactly figure out what the exorcism is, really. I find that to be gratifying. Although to be fair, I find acting to do the same thing, 'cause I think of it as a character. I really like playing roles where I can throw myself into, and the character doesn't have to necessarily just be the kind of surrogate for the audience, where a lot of characters in movies are drawn to be the place order for the audience. Like if I was that guy, I would do the things he's doing, and I hope he succeed, 'cause that's what I would do. But, I really like to play characters that don't do that, because it's freeing, 'cause you can throw yourself into that character, and not worry that a kind of large consensus is going to agree with all your behaviour. In the movie I just did, the Batman movie, to play a character like that, it's more cathartic than playing a character who is good, or benevolent. Because you can throw yourself into it, you're in the context of a movie that makes the character look bad. But I, as an actor, you have believe in what you're doing.