My boyfriend and I just got a projector, so we've been screening movies on the roof and projecting them against the wall next door. The last one we did, the theme was, 'The Russians are coming.' So we screened 'Red Dawn' and 'Top Gun.'

To be honest, I wasn't a sci-fi geek at all. But I do love a good sci-fi film, especially one that can really take you away. And I read some reality-bending novels growing up, like stuff by Vonngeut, so I already had one part my brain open to the unnatural and unusual, and it's generally fun to venture into that world and film in it.

There's very little you're not exposed to in New York City, in terms of ideas and physical things - sights, sounds, smells, different kinds of people. But one good thing about growing up fast is you get over it fast, too.

I don't think I'm the world's most die-hard sci-fi fan, but I definitely grew up watching 'Star Trek' religiously - all of them: the original, 'Next Generation,' 'Deep Space Nine,' 'Voyager.' I think sci-fi has an important place in the cinema world. Fantasy is a big part of why films actually exist.

Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician's accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist's accomplishments.

Every step on my way to becoming an artist seemed preordained. The right people were always in the right places at the right times to boost me to the next level. I was fortunate to be selected for a summer drawing class offered to teens at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County.

A writer appears in everything that he does. That said, I felt like writing characters with my own name, in fact, provided me with something of a smoke screen.

In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the nineteenth century seems pretty glacial. Painting, music, the novel, architecture were all evolving, but at a pretty observable pace.