Do you think I'm crazy? If I picked either Rob or Steve that would mean I couldn't work with the other person for the rest of my life. They are of course both brilliant.

Most films I’ve made we’ve developed at Revolution. But we don’t really develop many at any given time - probably about three films we’re working on the scripts or ideas for. One in development, one in production, one in post or being released. From my point of view I want to make films not develop them so if I spend two or three years working on an idea or a story I want to make sure it gets made.

I know what you mean. We made In This World a long time ago. Just recently I’ve been working with refugees - this time Syrian refugees still living in Greece. I think people obviously become refugees because they feel they have no choice - they are forced to leave their home. None of them want to leave their home. In the case of In this World we made it with two real Afghan refugees: Enayatullah and Jamal. They were both living in Peshawar, in Pakistan when we met them. The idea was always that they would take part in the film and then go back to their families. In the case of Jamal he later returned as a refugee to England so his real story repeated the fictional story in the film. And it took many years for him to win the right to stay in this country. And for sure his life here has not been easy. But that was the choice he made. For him like for many refugees they come knowing it will be difficult for them but in the hope that later it will be easier for their families, either because they can send money back home or because they can bring their families to join them here. I was filming at a refugee camp on Lebos just a few weeks ago. There are still about 70,000 refugees living in Greece. I think Britain’s reaction to the refugee crisis is shameful and I think it’s outrageous that that we have accepted so few refugees into this country. If you think back to the 1930s it seemed terrible that we did so little then to help people fleeing Germany. Yet our record now is even worse. I think people will look back on this time and wonder how we were able to be so callous.

I'm glad you liked The Killer Inside Me. I'm a big fan of Jim Thompson and when we made the film we tried to make as literal a version of his book as possible. It was sort of the opposite approach to how I'd worked on films like Tristam Shandy or Jude. On set Casey Affleck and I would often have copies of the book, debating whether his or my version was more accurate to Jim's vision. His novel was a kind of bible for our filming. Obviously his novels are dark and in the case of The Killer Inside Me it's a first person narration by a madman about his violence towards people and women in particular. For me the worlds Thompson creates are a highly artificial form of melodrama that explores the darker area of people’s behaviour in the real world.
I was surprised by the reaction to the film. Especially when we first showed it at Sundance, when people seemed to see it as a naturalistic almost documentary version of the world today. It was never intended as that. Maybe somehow we failed to clarify in the film the idea that Casey's character is crazy and that the story is seen through his eyes. However one reaction I strongly disagree with is that because the violence against women in the film was shocking the film was morally wrong. Violence against women should always be shocking. In fact all violence should be shocking, Plenty of films show violence against women and in general as a form of entertainment. I think that is morally wrong.

I think it's always pot luck with trying to find funding for a film. I have a company called Revolution Films and most of the films I've made we've developed and then gone out to try and find the finance. Sometimes the first person you ask says yes and sometimes it's the 100th and sometimes it never happens. The good thing is that you only need one person to say yes. In the case of The Weding Guest I sent the script to Dev Patel who loved it and called me up and said he could raise the finance for the film. Three weeks later he had the money and two weeks after that we started pre-production.

I think if I had to choose a band from 24 Hour Party People which I wanted to be a part of it'd be the Happy Mondays and if I had to pick one it'd be a nightmare to be in it'd be the Happy Mondays.

I don't think anyone is going to ask me to make a James Bond film, fortunately or unfortunately, and to be honest I never go and watch them or any of the other tentpole movies that you mention. It's funny you remember Alan Parker saying I should make fewer films - that was a long time ago and to be honest I think after he said it he never made a film again. You also mention Lean and Malick as examples of the other type of director who makes far fewer films. Interestingly, Malick didn't made a film for decades but recently has been bashing them out like nobody's business. It's sad but true that his repuation was higher when he wasn't making films than it is now. I'm not sure that's necessarily because the films he's making now are worse but people love the idea of somebody taking 10 years to make a film rather than 10 months. For me a lot of my favourite film-makers have been incredibly prolific. And their best films have been made when they've been most prolific. Think about French New Wave directors in the early 60s or Fassbinder or Herzog in the 70s. Or all the mainstream Hollywood directors in the 50s. Or Bergman all through his career. All of them made one or two films a year - in Bergman's case at the same time as running a theatre company and writing the scripts for his films. Film-making like painting or writing or playing music is an activity which you hope you get better at the more you practice. But it's certainly true that marketing loves a rare product rather than one of which there's plenty.

I think when I started I was perhaps aware of deliberately choosing to do films that could be seen having a different genre. But I don't think my films conform to the rules of those genres. So if I'm making a film set during a war or based on a 19th century novel or a film about people in contemporary London it'd be pretty much the same approach. So maybe if you went to see a particular genre you'd be disappointed. More recently, having made four different versions of The Trip I've got stuck in a rut so maybe I need to look for some new genres to work in.

Although I love the Guardian I am not that familiar with its Ranked column but in general I'm not a fan of top 10s or top 5s. I blame Nick Hornby for the popularity of these lists in newspapers since High Fidelity. So I like your idea of putting Wonderland top of the list but I personally hate having lists of favourite whatevers. In the case of my films a) I haven't really watched them since I made them so it would be a case of favourite memories and b) they're all pretty different so it would be like comparing apples and pears or apples and potatoes.