The story of 'Mr. Robot' is really about this guy who's lonely - who's alone and feels so disconnected from the world.
Reality, in general, in my opinion, has gotten blurred.
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.
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.
When I started thinking about 'Mr. Robot,' I thought about it as a movie, and I thought about the complete arc, and that is the one story I'm going to tell.
'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.
I did have friends who have suffered from schizophrenia and mild dissociative identity disorder, as well as more extreme cases of social anxiety disorder.
I've always said that the first season was the first act of my feature, so this is what I meant. I wanted the story of 'Mr. Robot' to be Elliot actually accomplishing his goal, setting the world into chaos. What would happen to society if something like this occurred where, basically, if the consumer-debt industry were to be erased?
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.
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.
Tone is very important to me.
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.
I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.
In a weird way, I never wanted - I don't consider myself a very good writer. I consider myself okay; I don't consider myself great. There's Woody Allen and Aaron Sorkin. There's Quentin Tarantino. I'm not ever gonna be on that level. But I do consider myself a good filmmaker.
'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.
You don't even know if the person you're communicating with online is actually that person. And your persona on your social media - your Facebook or Twitter - may not be the person you are in real life. So then, who is the real person? Is it somewhere in between?
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 don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or a conservative, the election of Trump is a national tragedy for multiple reasons. It will go down as one of the worst tragedies in American history. But he's not a dictator. This happened because we either allowed it or voted for it.
I was anti-conformist.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
