"My personal favorite comedy growing up, and something that really influenced me, was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, directed by Tim Burton. I love this movie because Paul Reubens is just brilliant; [he] plays this character Pee-wee Herman, and the creativity that’s put into this movie, it was like, what else can you add to make this movie [funnier]? Just the opening shot of him waking up, and there’s like a Rube Goldberg contraption of how he makes toast and breakfast in the morning; he drops a ping-pong ball, it hits a candle that turns on and burns a rope that breaks and swings a hammer… It was so creative. I remember being a kid, I watched that movie probably 300 times. I memorized it. I used to do the voice; I had to stop doing it. It’s a movie, to me, about how far can you dream. Someone steals his bike, and he tries to get his bike back, and through this adventure he ends up pitching his story to a movie studio, which makes his adventure into a feature film at the end. It’s just great that he thought this movie up and wrote it, with Phil Hartman, who was one of my favorites from Saturday Night Live. It’s for kids, but it’s for adults. He’s just such a good actor in this movie – Paul Reubens should have gotten an Oscar for this."

"I do like movies from other time periods, by the way. There is something, it’s sort of a sweet spot for me — societally, culturally, artistically, whatever sort of groove they hit right there — that appeals to my sensibilities. Nashville is endlessly inspiring to me, everything that I do is aiming for that sort of mixture of casualness and kind of amazing f— it sort of attitude, but combined with these incredible performances and story and structure. It’s probably been the single biggest influence, since the first time I saw it, over how I approach movies. That movie fills me with a tremendous sense of freedom when I come into a new project, that I can do whatever I want. There aren’t rules for how to make movies and I also love that Altman was like 50 when he made that movie. That’s inspiring to me as well, that we sort of live in a culture that values, like, people’s first films or first books or first record, fully formed right out of the gate, or whatever. Most of my favorite filmmakers didn’t have careers that looked like that. They sort of kept challenging themselves and trying new things. And for me, Nashville is this amazing thing, whenever I feel pressure that my career should maybe look different than it looks right now. I’m 32 years old right now. Altman made Nashville when he was 50. I have time to keep getting better and pushing towards this stuff. The best is yet to come. So that’s great. Beyond that, I love the music, I love the way it looks, it’s just a great movie."