"Tehlor Kay Mejia weaves a gorgeous narrative where etiquette can be wielded like a weapon and where wit can be just as powerful as a sword."

"It’s quite interesting how a film like this can work so well. The acting style is so uptight, but Kubrick creates such curiosity for the images and the structure and the narrative—I don’t know how he did it. I’ve rewatched it many times. There’s one scene that inspired the monkey imitation scene in The Square. A boy is taking his kid brother into the room where his mom is playing the cembalo. He’s wearing these wooden shoes, violating the strict etiquette of the room, and they start to fight. They actually used handheld cameras for that scene. When you think of Barry Lyndon, you don’t think of handheld cameras!"

"I love Wes Anderson, and I can only compare his movies to other movies he’s made, because you can’t really compare them to other directors’ films. Obviously, Wes lives in a world that’s like his childhood, and he draws from a delicate, nerdy kind of etiquette-obsessed fairy-tale world in many different ways. There’s an elegance about what he does and an absurdity that’s almost otherworldly. His sensibility lies somewhere between the late ’50s and the late ’60s, with modern elements in there, but really it feels like an old storybook. So Fantastic Mr. Fox, I’m sure, is something he was dreaming of and you can really feel that. The casting was awesome—I love George Clooney, and I thought he was perfect for it. The pacing of Wes’s dialogue is perfect for animation—snappy, zippy, cartoonish, cute, but with an adult wink. It was incredibly well shot and the music was incredible. I just had a really good time. It was a very, very enjoyable film for any human being."