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.

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 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.

Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.

Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak.

I got a degree in math, from not a good school in Texas, and then I went to work as a software engineer. Just not glamorous at all.