"Sirk is actually a new filmmaker for me. I’ve been waiting to see one of his movies again in a theater—I sometimes do that when I feel like a filmmaker is going to be really important for me. I saw Imitation of Life for the first time two years ago, and it really blew my mind. Then I saw a print of All That Heaven Allows last year in Berlin. I’m very curious how Sirk’s films played when he was alive and what was talked about when they premiered, because they seem so revolutionary to me in many ways–the social issues, especially. And obviously the colors in his movies are huge. I don’t know enough about Sirk, but I want to."

"Spike Lee’s third film. I had just started doing films in high school and Do the Right Thing came out, and there was just this burst of creativity in a drama, of creative energy, and also just the social commentary, and Spike being in it, and the music, and the color, the production design. Then I read the book on the making of it. I read the book that he wrote for She’s Gotta Have It. I really became, like, a Spike Lee connoisseur, you know? But again, just to kind of open my eyes, it took me from kind of like what we were talking about before, like the shiny effects, you know, that kid of shiny object interest of childhood, to movies that can really make you think, and make you talk, make you think about what is going on, and his social commentary really affected me. It really took me from kind of like a Spielberg/Lucas type of filmmaker toward a more socially conscious filmmaker. I actually did a film that was very inspired by Do the Right Thing called Gabriel’s Dream that never got distributed. But it was about these workers in a particularly hot summer in Maryland, and they were trying to get A/C in their factory, and that was basically the story. Like, workers’ rights. It kind of really took me in a direction that I never thought I would go in. And it never came out, it did some festivals, and we never got distribution for it, this was like early 1990s. But it definitely opened my eyes to the power of cinema as a social statement, as a social tool. And I wrote two or three scripts after that that were very much inspired by Do the Right Thing, kind of touching on social issues. I was really that kind of filmmaker when I was in film school. But then we came up with the idea for Blair Witch and all of a sudden, we became “horror filmmakers.” But still, I love the idea of always having a little bit of the deeper meaning in material. And some films are just for fun and made that way, but there are others where you want to dig a little deeper. If you can get one person coming out of the theater thinking about what happened in the movie, I think it’s great. And Do the Right Thing consumed me. It was such an important film in my upbringing, you know?"