"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."

"It’s corny but dark, dark, dark in spots. It was really dark when Jimmy Stewart is having his existential breakdown, wandering the town, having been given a chance to see what the world would be like had he not been there. We all kind of wonder that on some level — if not consciously, it’s probably part of what’s inside us. Something that is interesting about that film, there’s a character actor named H.B. Warner — he’s in all Capra films, playing a wide variety of roles. In this one, he plays the drunken druggist Mr. Gower. There’s a scene early on where Jimmy Stewart’s not even in the film yet. Young George has injured his ear in a sledding accident and Mr. Gower, drunk and depressed, accidentally sends George out with a prescription of poison to give a patient. When he figures it out and goes back, Mr. Gower is incensed, and beats him savagely. He hits him in the ear, and then when Mr. Gower realizes that the kid has saved this woman’s life and come back and he’s made a horrible mistake, he tries to embrace the boy. The boy’s fighting and the druggist is trying to comfort him, and himself at the same time. It’s a scene that if I think too hard about it, I’ll weep. It’s such a beautiful moment between two human beings. The kid was a great kid actor, but H.B. Warner is such a master, and I relate to character actors in a lot of ways. He was this guy who just bounced around from project to project, making everything he does, every story, richer for his presence. I have a lot of respect for that."

"Even before I started acting, this was a very important film to me. Obviously I was really drawn to the performances and characters, but the whole film just kept bringing it back. Gus has changed his style somewhat beginning with Gerry and all this Bela Tarr and Chantal Akerman influence, which I love too. But back then it was really about collage. Idaho actually started as three different projects – three scripts – through Orson Welles‘ Chimes at Midnight, which was a distillation of Shakespeare, and this other story about street kids in Portland, and then something else about a kid finding his parents in Italy. And then this whole narcoleptic thing that was influenced by George Eliot. He’s got all that just in the script, and then there’s the way it’s shot – he had two DPs, plus time-lapse for the cloud sequences and 8mm for the dream sequences. I love all of Gus’ movies. I think Drugstore Cowboy is a hilarious movie. I love how he can take a situation like that and make it funny. I think Matt Dillon gives one of the best comedic performances in that movie. Gus is taking a very personal approach in the film – from the look of Bob Yeoman‘s cinematography to the way Gus captures Portland on screen."