I never cared so much about making perfect sense. I wanted to make perfect nonsense.

For certain things, certain audiences, people will laugh. And in other places, there's dead silence. And I enjoy them both. You try to make films where it's never one way - like life.

I've always been pulled toward people who can't seem to make anything fit. It's like a cinema of isolation, of loneliness. They go outside the system and create their own society to develop their obsession to an insane degree.

A lot of times you can write a scene with a specific song in mind, and then you lay it over the image, and it kills it. I can never figure out why certain music works. Some music you listen to and say, "Man, that would be great for a movie." But when you try it, it's horrible, because the music itself is cinematic. The weight of it kills the image.

Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead.

Spaceman 3 was one of my favorite bands growing up, and Jason Spaceman is someone I got along well with. I always felt his music was like narcotic gospel - there's something very moody and ethereal about it. Sun City Girls is the same, but different. To me, they're like the premier American avant music act. They're like the Marx brothers of music. I don't mean they're funny like that, but they turn everything on its head.

I just wanted it to be American.