What was it like shooting the hotel room sequences and then in Times Square — which must have been like guerilla filmmaking?

I did want to shoot it like two completely different movies. The first half is really like an isolation chamber [where] you take out all the extra information. It's like a floor plan for a building where all the extra details are eliminated and you just see the simplicity of the plan. You see this girl in this holding chamber before she has to do this act. And then she's sort of like thrown out into Times Square and at that point [where] the colors, the sound, everything expands, like the image and the sound goes crazy and engulfs her. We wanted it to feel and look not just like Times Square but Times Square filtered this girl who's never been to Times Square.

When you look at the movie in hindsight, does it resonate with you in a different way, especially given recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings? Does the meaning of the movie shift and change for you at all?

I've seen it once since I finished it for the Cannes [2006] premiere and I haven't watched it since. Obviously I know what it's about. But Virginia Tech, no, it doesn't change at all because I think it's a very, very different kind of thing. I think there's a world of difference between school shooters and suicide bombers. But I think the context of ongoing suicide bombings was there when we started writing, it was there when we were shooting, it was there during the editing. And continues now. I don't know if it's changed any. Obviously it informs it in a different way: he first London tube bombings happened while we were editing. It's part of the world we live in.