So what was your first encounter with film?<\/strong><\/p>\nI was always making shows and my dad brought a hi8 [camcorder], I was like 12 and I just started making stuff. I would re-make commercials that were on TV with my cousin and I were always putting on shows. I was always making another world. I made comic books too. Then I went to art school, I studied painting and sculpting and I was in a band. But it was when I was living in San Francisco that I wrote a short story that a producer read and wanted to turn into a pilot for a TV series. It didn’t come through but it gave me the idea: “I\u2019m going to go to LA to do movies for real!”<\/p>\n
Do you remember any specific films that were particularly important to you growing up?<\/strong><\/p>\nYeah I love movies, I learnt how to be American from watching movies. When I was little I loved Back to the Future<\/em>, and Never Ending Story<\/em> and Richard Donner\u2019s Superman <\/em>1&2.\u00a0I also loved the Michael Jackson “Thriller” video. I watched the making of it and that’s probably the first time I thought: \u201cOh, someone is making this stuff, this is how they make it”. I watched it so many times, so that was an important one. For big adventures I loved Cloak and Dagger <\/em>and\u00a0Jaws<\/em>. Actually\u00a0Jaws<\/em> scared the shit out of me! I went through a horror movie phase, you know in junior high, I would watch a lot of horror movies and then it kind of ended and I stopped watching horror movies. Then I started reading books by Ann Rice \u2013 I loved all of her vampire books along with romance novels. I went from horror movies to binge reading romance novels, which essentially explains my film I think.<\/p>\nYeah it really does! So how was your experience at art\u00a0school?<\/strong><\/p>\nI went to art school at a time when I didn\u2019t really know what to do. I had gone to college and dropped out, then moved to Colardo to be a ski bum and after the winter I was living in the woods. I was a real drop out and my parents were really concerned by what I was going to do. They were encouraging me to do just do anything and art school was the only thing I could think to do. So I moved to San Francisco and I studied painting and sculpture. I also started a band around that time, but I felt like it was missing something. That\u2019s what’s exciting about film \u2013 everything is together, it’s so immediate, it’s so alive, it’s the medium of our time. You have the visual, you have the colour, you have the composition \u2013 \u00a0it’s got everything.<\/p>\n
That’s so true. Were your parents supportive of your transition to film?<\/strong><\/p>\nMy parents have always been incredibly supportive. Typically within Iranian culture second generation families, in other countries, have this strict view of the best way to assimilate in a culture, in a new country, is to be a doctor or a lawyer to be a part of society that is very concrete. So not that my parents didn\u2019t want that but I was always how I am so they knew I wasn\u2019t going to be able to be a doctor. There is no one route, everybody who does this business goes in in a different way, they just had faith in my ability and my determination. I\u2019m the kind of person that, if I decide to do something I just do it, its easy. Now I think they can at least shut up a little bit. If Jim Carrey is in a movie that must be okay now.<\/p>\n
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Yeah I was going to ask about that, Jim Carrey is big!<\/strong><\/p>\nYeah I mean it is on one hand and on the other its just the same, these awesome talented people who want to do cool stuff. They want to do stuff and make stuff, its cool and different.<\/p>\n
You said that everyone goes about the industry in a different way but do you have any advice for any budding creatives?<\/strong><\/p>\nThat is the advice! You have to work really fucking hard and make shit, constantly, Girl Walks Home Alone<\/em> was my twelfth screenplay I\u2019d written, my twelfth! If you\u2019re just making it because you think it needs to go to some festival then you\u2019re not really doing it for the right reasons. So I think unfettered, constant volcanic outpour of creating has to be happening, like a factory.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s so poetic!<\/strong><\/p>\nThe whole thing with the industry is, you could meet an agent, you could meet a director, you could meet an actor, every time someone meets somebody they\u2019re thinking, “how can this be my ticket?” Then you\u2019re just trying to use people and that shows right away. Nobody has the answers, I think being present and being there and when you have a moment to sit down with somebody, be human and talk to people.<\/p>\n
The best way to think of it, honestly, I think of Doc Brown from Back to the Future, <\/em>he is creating the shit that he is creating, in his shed, for himself because he wants it to exist. He\u2019s not working for NASA, no one is taking him to a conference room and financing his career, he\u2019s a mad man lunatic and he\u2019s making lots of things constantly because if you look at Back to the Future,<\/em> the opening shot shows all of his inventions, he\u2019s got lots of things he\u2019s been making, it’s not like he\u2019s just got to the Delorean\u00a0first. Doing it for yourself without an end in mind, you\u2019re an inventor. I think of myself as an inventor more than anything else, I just want to make something because I want it to exist and it doesn\u2019t. One man\u2019s garbage is another man\u2019s time travel.<\/p>\n
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