I grew up watching monster movies and horror movies, which I felt were like fairy tales and I think this always spoke to me. Something about that is symbolism - the beauty and the magic which helps me work with film and start making modern fairy tales.

One of the things I loved about the musical was that you listened to the soundtrack and it told you the story.

Voodoo Girl Her skin is white cloth, and she's all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart. She has many different zombies who are deeply in her trance. She even has a zombie who was originally from France. But she knows she has a curse on her, a curse she cannot win. For if someone gets too close to her, the pins stick farther in.

Staring Girl I once knew a girl who would just stand there and stare. At anyone or anything, she seemed not to care She'd stare at the ground, She'd stare at the sky. She'd stare at you for hours, and you'd never know why. But after winning the local staring contest, she finally gave her eyes a well-deserved rest.

That's what I always loved about [Federico] Fellini's films: You see the weird joy of the weird filmmaking family and the abstract craziness that goes along with it, and there's something about it that's quite beautiful.

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

I don't know what it was, maybe the movie theaters in my immediate surrounding neighbourhood in Burbank, but I never saw what would be considered A movies.