Typically, whenever you're envisioning how you're going to shoot something, you have a location or a set that you're going to build, and it's going to be built to specifications.
I went to film school to direct.
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.
'Fight Club' is great in its spirit of anti-establishment.
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.
When I first created the world of 'Mr. Robot,' I thought it would be a niche television series with a small, cult following.
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.
Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!
I'm Egyptian, and my parents stupidly decided to move us down to South Carolina when I was five, which was pretty brutal.
I used to hold Stanley Kubrick film festivals at my house in high school. These are not cool things.
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.
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.
I have a brilliant sound design team who's been working with me since 'Mr. Robot,' and one of the things we always think about - and it's also something we think about with cinematography - is how we get inside the characters' heads and how do we place the audience where we want them to be or how we want them to feel at any given moment.
I don't think it's political to dislike Trump. I don't think it's controversial to say he's a bad president. He's clearly a bad president. He's clearly not equipped to do the job.
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 use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.
I've always been fascinated by this idea of who we are versus who we want to be.
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 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 love voiceover. I never understood this idea that it was lazy. Well, yes, there are those movies or TV shows that use it as just a way to get out exposition. But you know what? That's just bad writing.
