Hiro Murai

“I'm an immigrant, and I think being an outsider in your home is something that I really relate to.”

“If I were FX, I wouldn't have hired me.”

“FX is a network; that's their whole model, letting creators make the thing they want to make and then marketing it really well.”

“I'll listen to a song so much that ideas start to form out of daydreaming. It's as if I'm reverse-scoring the track and building visuals around a specific beat or riff that's grabbed me.”

“I think to truly not know what to expect out of the story - to create a world where nothing is guaranteed - is sort of the backbone of 'Atlanta.'”

“I think music videos in particular and film in general - it's really good at communicating tone and feeling.”

“Pilots are tricky because there are so many things you have to accomplish.”

“In the case of, like, Childish Gambino, he is someone who is a writer by trade, so he is very meticulous about how he writes his ideas. I don't do this with a lot of artist, but he would give me a treatment that he wants to do, and I'll go off that; then I'll give him feedback and pitch him my ideas.”

“For me, I don't have a grand vision planned or an end goal. I'm just exploring what's given to me at any given moment.”

“Regularly in music videos, I'll write the pitch and convince the artists that this is a good idea, and then I'm having to make concessions to meet in the middle.”

“Part of the fun is finding out how elastic that box is and, you know, test the limits of what TV shows can do or what a music video can do.”

“A lot of my personality and my affinity for certain pieces of pop culture and art all stem from a sort of Japanese aesthetic and way of thinking.”

“Most of the time, I can't listen to the song after the video's done. Sometimes I'll hear a song that I've worked on at a restaurant or on the radio, and I'll have this visceral physical reaction.”

“Once you go outside of Atlanta, there are still a lot of Klan rallies and whatnot. There are a lot of conflicting elements that are trying to solve itself in that city.”

“When we were making 'Teddy Perkins,' we were playing with a lot of horror tropes and things you might've seen in movies before, but we get the ability to subvert expectations or get a comedic element out of a horror moment.”

“Whether it's a TV show or a music video, the seed of the idea is what's driving my decisions, not the format or the outcome.”

“TV is generally an unfriendly environment for directors because you're expected to come in and tell a story in the voice of the show that already exists and just fill in the blanks and then submit it back.”

“As an Asian guy, I would love to see a big blockbuster with Asian lead characters.”

“A lot of weird things happen in life that are not always pertaining to your main objective.”

“'Guava Island' is the end result of four incredible weeks spent in Cuba with some of the most inspiring creative talents I've ever met.”