"Growing up, I had a poster of the mid-nineties Tony Todd remake of Night of the Living Dead hanging on my bedroom wall that I had gotten it from the local video store when they were planning on tossing it. I love the remake, but it was the original George Romero black-and-white film that made me want to be a storyteller. It made me want to be a horror movie makeup artist. Making movies looked like fun! And looking back, aside from all that, the film has a racial and social component that I think elevated it beyond the typical horror film. And it was cool to see a Latino last name in the credits, quite frankly."

"Ray Harryhausen is another inspiration to me. He did it all himself, too, you know, in the days when it was difficult to do that. In his characters — even the things that had no character — you could feel an artist at work there. You could feel his hand in it, and that’s rare, in any kind of film. His acting was better than the acting of the humans. It really tapped in to what I like about movies, I mean, the fantasy but also that handmade element, when you can see the movement of the characters — it’s like Frankenstein or Pinocchio, taking an inanimate object and having it come to life. That’s why I still like to do stop-motion projects."

"It’s part of New York Stories, with Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette. Nolte plays Lional Dobie, this Jackson Pollack-like artist. I love the subject matter of Life Lessons, it’s just great. Scorsese completely captures the obsession with women, visually and in the storyline. And Nick Nolte is never better — his performance is just f**king unbelievable. He’s on top of his game stylistically, Scorsese, melding heavy style with story without it ever feeling like you’re just watching a director, you know, show off. I never felt that. I’d be curious to see what he thinks of that movie, or how much time he spent doing it, but to me it just felt like kind of an effortless exercise in his talent."