I was born the queer son of a Waffle House cook and his third-shift waitress in Hokes Bluff, Alabama. My parents distinguished the play button on the VCR with a piece of yellow tape, and at age three that was it for me. The first movie I truly fell for was the music video for Reba McEntire’s Fancy. When I was done with that, I studied poetry at The University of Arizona with Richard Siken and Jane Miller. While I still very much consider myself a poet, in Tucson I was always frustrated that my poems couldn’t ever fly off the page. One day I showed Jane Lady Gaga’s Telephone video and she suggested I apply to film school. That’s how I ended up at NYU. And that’s how I ended up in Alabama renovating my grandmother’s house into a home-base/work-space.