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As delicate as 'Guy and Madeline' was, it was important that 'Whiplash' come off as more of a fever dream.

I remember when I first met Jason Reitman with the 'Whiplash' script; he quickly became a mentor figure who guided me through the process and also protected me and made sure that when it came time to actually make 'Whiplash,' I was able to make exactly the movie I wanted to make.

I have the oldest whiplash in the business.

The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before 'Whiplash' are now feeling more realistic.

It was very, very challenging being on this thing called the gimbal. It would throw you around, give you whiplash, and they'd tie you down.

'Whiplash' was always the song I hated the most because it's a song designed to screw with drummers.

'Whiplash' scared me. I feel you should only do projects that scare you to some degree. I get motivated by those sorts of feelings.

Once I started selling scripts for a great deal of money - action scripts, no less, which people tend to pooh-pooh anyway - then I started to get some backlash. Which I didn't mind.

I've written plenty of scripts that sucked.

I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.