"I like Hannah and Her Sisters. I’m a really big Woody Allen fan. I love all his stuff except for the crap. Ironically, I always wanted to be in a Woody Allen movie, and I was, but it was a movie he just acted in, Picking up the Pieces. It was the worst movie I was ever in. Everybody in it was a big star, was some name, Alfonso Arau was the director, Vittorio Storaro was the DP. It was like all the world’s best ingredients mixed in a cup full of vomit. I couldn’t even watch me, that’s how bad it was. But Hannah and Her Sisters. I just love the multiple storylines going on, and then Woody Allen gets soft at the end, and it becomes sentimental. But the thing I really liked was the piano score, the acoustic piano score that runs throughout. It’s really the thing that ties it together, emotionally. I thought"

"#2 is Showgirls. Again, a movie I’ve seen at least a dozen times, and I know that everybody gets it now, but I was a true believer right from the beginning. It is, really, the accidentally funniest movie I’ve ever seen. It never gets any less funny. There’s just something about watching Elizabeth Berkeley in that role, when she’s like flopping in the water like a fish, or when she’s in that club, and Cristal Connors pays her $500 to give Zack a lapdance, and she’s all flapping around on his lap. It’s so cringeworthy, but it’s so funny at the same time. And I’m normally not really a fan of cringey humor — shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm — I can’t even watch those shows because I end up running behind the couch, I’m cringing so bad. The thing about Showgirls, and how earnest everybody was, and how over-the-top it was — I just love that movie. I practically have it memorized."

"We’re often talking about ParaNorman as being John Hughes meets John Carpenter, and that was intentional. It was to try and tell a spooky story that was almost… you know, we talked about it like being directed by Sam Raimi as well. It was to try and combine all those elements: All the angst of a movie set in high school, where your issues are more about, you know, being bullied by the kid who lives down the lane, but to couple that with a movie about the more fictional horrors of monsters. I like that play. They’re actually a really good marriage. I’ve talked about ParaNorman being the characters from The Breakfast Club dropped into the plot of The Fog — and The Fog, I would say, would be one of the other influential ones. Right from day one of writing, I think. I love that movie, as bad as it is…"