Well, firstly, Fincher, I’m a huge fan of Fincher. We’re the same age, basically. So, there’s all these inspirational influences and texts, movies, that we’re bonded by. But there’s certain films that you see when you’re coming of age as an artist—the music you listen to, the movies you watch, the photography, whatever it is—and those become the urtext. Those are the gigantic things that follow you for the rest of your life. So for me, it was Lynch, but it was also [Steven] Spielberg and so many movies. The films that find this intersection between ordinary life and theatricality is the thing that I’m most interested in in my own work, and I think it’s reflected in the movies and the art, [Edward] Hopper and [Diane] Arbus and [John] Cheever, all those people that I feel connected to.
Do you ever toy around with the idea of making a feature-length film yourself?
We are somewhat in the process of it. And I mean, the challenging thing if it ever comes to life will be how to bring everything I learned as a still photographer into that arena. But there’s this, I’m highly aware also that my still photographs occupy this very interesting or unusual intersection between still pictures and movie making. I define that kind of little terrain a little bit, so it would be a challenge. But challenges are good.
