I'd always thought that, in all the great sci-fi constructs, there's always the guy who seems like he's the commander, but then you reveal that there's an even bigger puppet master up above and beyond him.
They always say, doing what I do for a living, write what you know and then people will respond to it. I luckily had a very charming, lovable mom who I think everybody could see bits and pieces of their mom in. All I had to do was write a character that was like my mom, and it made my life easier.
Nobody is out to sabotage an entire script and do an improvisational experiment of a movie, but when they're feeling something in the moment, let them make it their own. That's what makes them great actors.
Some of my favorite movies have explored the father-son dynamic, in a very loving way. It can be complicated, but at the end, it's that moment where you're crying because of that core relationship.
My first jobs were at Pixar and John Lasseter just doing animation would always allow actors to do that, and then animate to that. It was an early lesson for me that, if you're lucky enough, as I've been in my career thus far, to get really incredible iconic people to do your stuff, you want them to tell your story and you want them to be on page in the important moments, and they usually are.
I told my mom I was going to do a movie about a son who hears a story about his mom and takes her on a cross-country road trip, and I wanted to actually take the trip with my mom to see what it would be like to drive cross-country with your mom.
I was trying to get the slightly more cinematic version of my relationship with my mom, which I think was a really common relationship. I adored my mom. I thought she was the best. I loved her very much.
If something good was happening in my life, I'd call my mom to let her know. If something bad was happening, she'd be somebody whose advice I would seek out. We had a very good relationship, but she drove me crazy, all the time. But, she drove me crazy in a loving way.
I couldn't understand her [my mother's] wiring, all the time. I couldn't understand how she denied herself pleasure and enjoyment in life. As my career got successful and I wanted to do things for her, she wasn't able to allow them because she just didn't work that way. It was always that. It wasn't necessarily ugly, just complicated.
A lot of times, when mother-son or mother-daughter relationships have been put on screen, they tend to trickle towards ugly, and I don't find that totally realistic for the wide swath of us and it's also not that fun to watch.
