"Octavia Butler is one of my top favorite authors, and my favorite sci-fi writer of all time. Her writing is always at the intersection of race, class — and in this instance, vampires. I love fantastical things, and because this focuses on vampires and not humans it adds another element of imagination. In the book, she’s having a conversation about racism, but through vampires, and you just never know where that’s going to go. You’re reading it, reading it, reading it, and then it takes a hard left, and you’re like Oh shit, I didn’t realize we were going to go into these deep political topics. Even though she always does that in her books. I’ve read pretty much all of them, but this was my favorite. She died pretty soon after she wrote it, so it has a lot of sentimental value for me."

"I guess I’m a sucker for black and white. This 1970 independent classic is from writer/director Leonard Kastle, who took over after Martin Scorsese was let go. Shirley Stoler is funny and heartbreaking as the homicidal, jealous companion of scam artist Tony Lo Bianco. Based on a true story, it held particular interest for me because the killers at one point decide to retire to suburban Valley Stream, Long Island, the town where I primarily grew up and directed my first film, Trees Lounge. I once worked with Tony on an episode of the TV series Homicide and excitedly told him he had one of my favorite lines in one of my favorite movies. After sizing me up for a few seconds, he replied, “Well, that would have to be the Honeymoon Killers, and the line of course is, ‘Valley Stream. Valley Stream. What a joke!’”"

"This is the third film that I photographed for writer-director Paul Schrader. It is the film he was born to make, even though it is in a language that neither he nor I understood. It is the film of which I am most proud. I had never expected that I would photograph a film that I felt could take a place in the cinematic canon. It opened to some indifferent, even hostile reviews, by critics who had little patience to plumb its depths. This film and Two-Lane Blacktop (a film that was my first assignment as a camera assistant and that was also subject to poor initial reviews) represent two poles of the directorial aesthetic that has informed my own work as cinematographer. Paul Schrader and Monte Hellman, as different as their styles are, represent for me the integrity that American filmmaking can aspire to."