… and be full of contradictions. Which can make life complicated, but it’s good for writing material.

Because the more I write and make films, the more I crave specificity of character and fully-elaborated themes. I think the way you get there is through good story structure, which has become my obsession. (Click like and subscribe and sign up for my class?)

But that’s not to say I don’t revel in surface-level considerations of story: premise, tone, style, genre, and the industry favorite, “voice,” which I have plenty of. I joke that my film ideas all start at the T-shirt level. And it’s true! I see my life as K-mart realism. I grew up in Mooresville, North Carolina in a sprawling, occasionally poor, mostly intolerant and pretty religious family. To survive that ordeal is to learn an early lesson in forgiveness — and one in irony. My biggest aspiration as a storyteller is to invoke in my audience that same kind of complicated love.

So I make films about the American family because when you prod those terms — ‘American’ and ‘family’ — they’re just pillars of Jell-O. My purpose is to reclaim history, narratives, and genres through a queer lens and to place my characters — who are realer to me than cousins — at a crossroads of the deliciously absurd and radically sincere. You got all that?