Making his feature film debut with Pride and Prejudice in 2005 and following it up with Atonement in 2007, Joe Wright has pretty much established himself as a director who doesn't mess around with mediocrity. Between the two films, the British director has already garnered more awards and nominations than many directors with a body of work ten times the size. When Atonement was selected as the opening film at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, Wright became the youngest director to ever receive the honor. But ask him how he feels about release date changes pretty much pushing his third feature length film The Soloist outside of awards radar, and at the end of the day, that's really not what he cares about.

While Hollywood may be all about breaking the box-office and campaigning for awards season, says Wright, "It's not what interests me and I find it quite unhealthy; and it's one of the reasons why I don't live in Los Angeles. People say that everyone in L.A. talks about film all the time; to me, they don't talk about film, they talk about business. And actually you're far more likely to have a proper conversation about film and what it means in a cafè somewhere in London or San Francisco or Paris." And with the opening of Wright's The Soloist just weeks away (and a little help from a San Francisco publicist), I, along with several other area journalists, got to do just that.

"I've ready many scripts from Hollywood and this is the first one that moved me to consider making my first film in America," said Wright of the script for The Soloist which is based on the real life story of Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, the homeless musician with schizophrenia he befriends.

Our question for him: Since this project is based on a true story, as a director, what is your process in terms of figuring out what pieces to put in the film and what pieces to keep out?

"I don't really know; I don't know how to articulate that," said Wright. "It's a kind of organic process that goes on throughout the whole process of making the film. I guess it's a matter of taste and what interests me and what themes I'm wanting to investigate. And it's about making connections between things, like a game; you kind of make connections of color or music or whatever. It's about connections."

What about some of those themes that speak to you, in this movie or any projects that draw your attention?

"I like outsiders and I like people who have to struggle," said Wright. "I like very specific and extreme perspectives on reality. I'm interested in reality and what it is and what it means. And I like love and different ways of loving."

Said Wright of The Soloist, "What interested me is that Steve and Nathaniel have kind of cut themselves off from society and also from their emotional lives. Steve is, in a way, as much of a 'soloist' as Nathaniel. And yet, they each learn something about love by trying to become friends."

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