There's a lot of cultural pressure around specialness and seeing your family. I feel like everything gets jacked up a little bit because of all of these expectations of love and family bonding.

There's something really nice about missing the person you're with. To have someone be apart enough to force independence and to also look forward to seeing that person.

I want to communicate with people, and I want to make something that works, and that people like. I'm never purposefully trying to be antagonistic or shocking or anything that would push an audience away. I'm always hoping to reach as many people as I can.

I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.

I guess I probably see myself as a director. If I had to choose, I think that that's the aspect of the process that I'm most excited by.

For a lot of people, you get cramped making decisions together and living together and every other thing that starts to happen. I just think you have to be vigilant in the relationship to carve out space for yourself. And a lot of that requires knowing what you need and communicating that to your partner, which is hard.

I don't have an agent. I don't take meetings or anything like that, so I don't really know what's out there. I'm not closed off to anything, but I'd just have to ask myself at every step if it's worth it.