Hi Mr. Anderson, thanks for doing this. I have a few questions. Maybe pick the least frustrating.

1) This may be too personal, but it's something I've always wondered about gifted people. You are—modesty notwithstanding—considered among the most talented directors living today. This is all but undeniable. Obviously this was at one time not the case. In your day-to-day life, does it feel this way to you? Do you feel talented? What does it feel like to have the closest thing to proof that you are genuinely great at something?

2) Your movies attract attention and large audiences. So when you have a project, presumably people (financiers, DP's, actors, and so on) are at least interested to take a look. Most of the rest of us, pestering you with questions and vaguely hoping you spontaneously offer to read our spec scripts, have to beg even our own family to look at anything we make. In that circumstance, sans audience, how would you decide if something is "working" or not?

3) Your movies are all technically accomplished and near the top of whichever game they're playing. But the earlier ones (say, Sydney through Punch Drunk Love) are formally much more... freewheeling? Zany? Melodramatic? Detractors might say cocky? From There Will Be Blood on, things have felt more emotionally distant, though still resonant (this sounds like a dig; it isn't). What was this shift like for you? Was it intentional? Do you ever want to just say "screw it" and have another Aimee Mann musical number?

4) In your opinion, what is the funniest joke you've ever written?