Garden State Lantern

"I try to picture it. Like when I tried to write that song, or other ones that were inspired by true events, I tried to visually time travel to paint a picture that makes the lyrics interesting."

"I think it’s more thrilling to look at a piece of art, ask, Where did something go wrong?...In the book, I frame the early sixties as Elaine May’s 'flop era', but what is a flop era? Who has a flop era, who consistently has one versus who consistently has failures but doesn’t “flop”? It was interesting to apply this sort of modern, slangy reference, this way of thinking about failure, to the sixties to try and contextualize something that happened a super long time ago in today’s terms, only to realize the past was not radically different than today."

"You have to engage with the art that is local to you. That is the only thing that is going to be good for the art. So you have to go to your local festival. You have to cover them. You have to take them seriously. As an indie filmmaker, reviews from anyone—if they’re not being a jerk—mean so much. That movie on Netflix that you love or trash or whatever, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything to them, but it means something to me and it means something to my peers."