One of my favorite Tarantino films is 'Jackie Brown,' and 'Jackie Brown' does it so well, where I'm watching the back half of that movie, and I don't know which side Jackie Brown is playing. I think it's really ingenious for Tarantino to keep us in the dark on that.
The one thing that I know from the personal experiences that I've had with hackers and from people in tech who are brilliant at this thing, is there's a lot of angst.
I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.
I'm not a fan of these very cutty, handheld-y kind of films or TV shows, where a cut is just every half second or every two seconds, where you're desensitized to it. To me, a cut should say something and be impactful.
I always suspend logic for emotion. If it feels real, or it feels like what I'm going for, we should abandon reality a little bit and go for that. I'm not a documentarian. We're not trying to shoot things for naturalism.
It's strange not to allow the actor some input and breathing room into what was written on the page - it is their job to make it come alive.
I know when it comes to TV, the writer is king, but to me, the filmmaker is king.
We frame things in an off-kilter way because it's unsettling. In the 'Mr. Robot' world, that's the norm, and it's the norm for the point of view that we're looking for, which is Elliot's. With our compositions and our visual language and camera movements, it's important to always evoke that unsettling feeling underneath every scene.
I used to want to be a critic. I think it's an awesome job. You get to watch all this stuff and then write about it and analyze it and give insight into it. That's an amazing job. I was terrible at it, though.
There are some critics that will just write provocative stuff to get attention, but I would say most of the time that's not the case.
This is the great thing about TV is that when you discover certain strengths in an actor, you can then begin to exploit them in really fun ways.
Before we started shooting 'Homecoming,' we were in the writer's room for 'Mr. Robot.' I was also editing Season 3 of 'Mr. Robot' while I was prepping for the 'Homecoming' shoot. So yeah, it's a lot of hats.
When I first created the world of 'Mr. Robot,' I thought it would be a niche television series with a small, cult following.
I don't mind Twitter. I think it's a lot of nonsense, but at least, to me, Twitter is just more of a public forum to have conversation.
When you don't have a main character that's flawed, I don't know how you relate to that person.
Aren't all people flawed?
I could watch 'There Will Be Blood' all day long, and Daniel Plainview is a terrible person - but he's still compelling to watch. That's what makes me want to engage and see what happens next.
I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.
I'm not a huge fan of very plotty shows. I'm much more of a fan of character-driven stories.
Any time I approach a scene, it's not just what's on the page - it's how the camera's going to show or not show what's on the page. It's which character are we going to align with and what music is going to be playing.
I've always been fascinated by this idea of who we are versus who we want to be.
Looking back at 'Taxi Driver' or, really, any of the Martin Scorsese films, he really filmed New York City in a way that I saw New York City.
'Taxi Driver' is one of those films that is groundbreaking in how much you're inside this character's head. It uses voice-over in a revolutionary way where the audience is invited as a co-conspirator to the whole story line.
'Pi' was one of my favorite films growing up because I thought it employed paranoia and voice-over, and also because it used this unreliable narrator in a very fascinating way.
I think technology gives the illusion that you are connecting with people, social media particularly.
If your loved ones are far away, and they're uploading pictures, you feel like that's enough: these loose strands through email, through social media, are going to supply this connection you have with that person. And I think that's keeping us isolated and lonely in a way that's very dangerous because we're unaware of it.
I've lived a very isolated life.
I have tremendous social anxiety.
I did not love going out to parties or even get-togethers, really - I went to the movies, which, if you think about it, is an isolating experience anyway - and this was because I had anxiety about interacting with people.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
'Mr. Robot' is more directly about technology, and 'Homecoming' deals more with the pharmaceutical industry, but I think they're all part and parcel of this growing sense that things are happening behind the scenes at our expense, and we're not aware of it.
For shows that are hyper-serialized, it just seems to make more sense to follow a feature film model than follow a television model, which was set up more for a procedural type of show.
I'm not here to say that I want to change the TV industry.
I don't cover my scenes. We approach it visually. Sometimes we go out of our way to do awkward blocking so that we can tell whatever the emotional heartbeat is of that scene in the most interesting way possible.
I rip off of every movie and TV show I've ever seen in my life.
I'm a film nerd.
Movies and television show build on top of each other, succeed one another. In a large way, in terms of filmmaking aesthetics, they evolve because they can't help but be a consequence of all the movies and TV shows that came before it.
I'm not in the business of adapting things that are popular for the sake of just getting it on the screen. I think there has to be a vital reason.
I remember growing up in suburban New Jersey, and all the computer stores were like, 'Motherboard Mayhem' and all these cheesy names.
People thought I looked weird, that I talked weird.
I don't want to watch a show or a movie about the guy who doesn't have any problems, who is sort of a goodie two shoes and just does everything morally right, because that's not the person I relate to. That's not who I am. That's not what anyone is.
I'm controlling over anything I create. I'm very precious about it.
The experience you're going to take the audience on is as important as the story you're trying to tell. And that experience needs to excite me so much that I am desperate to share it.
You have to have that core creative team around you who's going to support your vision, and challenge and evolve it.
I love reading about other people's world view.
Growing up, my parents were very much about the Egyptian culture. They never really wanted to assimilate in American culture.
I had a funny last name, and I didn't look like everybody else, and I got faced with a lot of racism.
The world is so heavily influenced by technology, and it has started to feel like it's not on solid ground. The world has become unreliable, unknowable. Facts are vulnerable, and things you have come to rely on are no longer there.
I've seen shows that start to go down the path of fan service, and it really diminishes the quality.