Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.

It's cool to be a nerd. There's a general understanding that smartphones didn't come from jocks. The digital age was foreseen by a group of short-sleeved, buttoned-down, white-shirted guys and their female equivalents designing the very stuff that's now ubiquitous.

As a kid, 'Star Wars' was much more my thing than 'Star Trek' was.

I quickly said that, because of my loyalty to 'Star Trek' and also just being a fan, I wouldn’t even want to be involved in the next version of those things. I declined any involvement very early on. I’d rather be in the audience not knowing what was coming, rather than being involved in the minutiae of making them.

There's something about looking at Super 8 films that is so evocative. You could argue it's the resolution of the film somehow because they aren't crystal clear and perfect,so there is a kind of gauzy layer between you and what you see. You could argue it's the silence of them. You could say it's the sound of the projector that creates a moodiness. But there's something about looking at analog movies that's infinitely more powerful than digital.

I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.

Don't sell your story, just tell your story.