"There’s something about formalism that’s a little bit like music, and you can lose yourself in the joy of it when you make movies because it’s so much fun. This is one of those very rare subzero love stories, but it works because it’s like modernist poetry. It’s like when you have really hot food and you put it in the freezer and then you taste a little bit and you can sense that it was really hot but it’s been chilled down. Formalism doesn’t get any better than this, and every time I think about associative logic, this film is what I am thinking of."

"I really like Fargo a lot. It has everything. I love the Coen brothers. I love Frances McDormand, I think she’s just an extraordinary actress. She’s so funny in that movie, as Marge. I’m from the Midwest, I’m from Iowa; so obviously that accent’s really heightened, but it’s something that I hear every time I go home. It’s something that feels like very much where I grew up; that backdrop is exactly where I grew up. It’s definitely exaggerated but yeah, there’s definitely that, “Oh, oh my gosh” where I come from. And when I go home and after I have a couple of beers you’d probably hear it come out: “You betcha!” [laughs]"

"One of my favorite films is Avatar. I love the connection to the land; it’s like Aboriginal culture. I love the idea that everything is connected, and if you cut down a tree in one area, it’s actually going to have a flow-on effect to other beings, and I love there was this one significant tree in the whole movie that was the key in connection to a group of people culturally. It protected them, it gave them shelter, it gave them protection from within. So that’s what I love about Avatar. I also love that they won; they fought off the human race, which was coming for greed purposes."

"It’s a newer one, but John Wick or John Wick 2. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed. I grew up doing martial arts, and I know that Keanu did all of his own fight scenes in it, and then I was working on Predator when I watched John Wick 2, and… I have a gun in Predator, and they were teaching me how to do certain things, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh! Keanu did this really cool thing. Teach me how to do it!” I love… Like, back in the day in kung fu movies, they filmed the fight scenes in wide angles so you get to see everybody doing it, but nowadays, everything’s like cut, cut, edit, edit, close-up of this, close-up of that. But we actually got to see Keanu in these wide shots because he’s doing his own stunts, and he’s kicking ass, and he’s amazing in it. I just love that, and I feel like we don’t get enough of that in American cinema anymore, or actually ever. You have to go back to, like, old kung fu movies and stuff. I just love watching that movie and the action of that. It’s a good one."