There's a discipline. When you take someone's portrait, you don't have to take 50 photographs, just find that one so that when you release the shutter, that's the image that you took.

in 2011 he completed Jesus Was a Commie an avant garde-dialectical conversation about the world and the prominent issues of modern society. The film was awarded a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Modine co-directed the short film with Terence Ziegler the editor of I Think I Thought.

His film roles include Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket the title character in Alan Parker's Birdy high school wrestler Louden Swain in Vision Quest and oversexed Sullivan Groff in Weeds.