If something can be explored or illuminated that would have been difficult to verbalize, that to me is what a film should be. It's like trying to explain what a piece of music is like. You can't do it.

I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything.

Cinematography was incredibly foreign to me, so I read as much as I could about it. Once I figured out that it was just photography with a set shutter speed, I got some slide film and I just went about storyboarding the script and taking snapshots. I took a ton of time doing it just to make sure I knew exactly what I was doing. By the end of it I knew what the film was going to look like - my exposure and the composition and everything. I wasn't scared of cinematography anymore.

Pierrot le Fou is something I keep coming back to. Its so surreal but still really engaging - it proves narratives within narratives are a landscape that can be pursued well.

I feel like math and writing are the same thing. You're putting together a lot of complex things to satisfy different requirements. It's got to be aesthetically pleasing; it's got to have subtext; it's got to convey information.

I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again.

I never got into 'MacGyver,' but 'All the President's Men' and 'The Conversation' were big for me.