"Star Wars reminds me of my mother, who didn’t let me see color movies until I was 12. I was raised on Alexander Nevsky and Chaplin and all of these insane movies that would just put a 10-year-old to sleep quicker than a shack of sheep. But Star Wars was my first departure from that rule, and it just blew my mind. It was the first color film I saw, and it just knocked me out. I don’t think I ever forgave my mother after I saw that film. But also just the kind of iconoclastic myth retelling that combined with science fiction, which has always been huge to me."

"As the son of an Episcopal priest, I have a semi-complex relationship with religion. I’ve remained fairly agnostic throughout most of my life, but I admire the seed of the Christian myth—that there can exist in the world a love that gives and asks nothing in return. No movie crystallizes this idea better than Bresson’s Au hasard Balthazar, which rips my heart out every time I watch it. The Christian ideal exists in humanity fleetingly, but by casting a donkey as his Christ surrogate, Bresson evokes the saintly disposition to which we should all aspire as effectively as (if not more so than) Roberto Rossellini does in The Flowers of St. Francis."