My dad taught me that you had to have a laugh point every three lines. I never adhered to that. I learned about how three-camera shows are shot, and Milton Berle showed me later on the Three-Headed Moviola how they cut from a wide shot to a close-up and so on. Lucille Ball had flaming red hair, a deep voice, and smelled like nail polish and Chesterfield cigarettes – to an 11-year-old she was terrifying.

I’ve read that your work was heavily influenced by early Fellini and Truffaut films. What is it about their movies that you responded to?
Well, I don’t know. You see, when I grew up in LA…I liked the European sensibility, especially after I saw a Truffaut movie or I saw [The] Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse or White Mane. It seemed like European films at that time had more of a really neat style and lifestyle and aesthetic and I didn’t find that on the freeways of Los Angeles. So I really just loved all that culture and I wanted to imitate it. Once I went to see The 400 Blows I think when I was 16. It was playing at the Fine Arts Theater on Wilshire and I was so stunned….No, no, it was La Dolce Vita by Fellini, and I was so stunned I went through a red light going home and was stopped by a policeman and he said, “What are you doing?” and I said, “Well, I just saw a Fellini movie” and he let me off.