Please explain what just happened.

You just walked in. A Question Robot with an attitude. Hello.

What is your earliest memory?

Not my earliest, but when I was five, I pushed a tin can deep into a huge barrel of duck feed, specifically as an act to remember forever.

Please explain what just happened.

The AC just stopped working in my house. Dire circumstances in Texas in July.

What is your earliest memory?

Playing with some toy trucks in a sandbox outside a red brick building. I think I was two. This memory might have been significantly bolstered by photographs of the same event. If so, then my other first memory is my grandmother’s face.

Please explain what just happened.

I read this email from you in bed, took a shower, ate breakfast, then sat at my desk to answer these questions.

What is your earliest memory?

Seeing Revenge of the Nerds in a movie theater with my dad and uncle.  Based on the release date of the movie, I must have been almost 3, or maybe they saw it second run and I was 3. Anyway, I don’t remember much of the movie, but I do remember my dad’s hands covering my eyes and ears several times throughout. So I would be looking at this giant image and hearing these loud sounds, then I would see and hear nothing, then images and sounds again.  I’m sure this has something to do with my love of cinema and the quality of mystery and excitement that it still holds for me.

At some point in Hello I Must Be Going, Amy (Melanie Lynskey) trips on a beach and asks, splayed flat on the rocky shore, “where the motherfucking fuck is motherfucking bottom!”  In the aftermath of a surprise divorce, she’s moved back into her parent’s house, and in the way of their home renovations and retirement plans, when she begins a fling with a younger man (played by Girls’ Christopher Abbott).  And it’s Amy’s seemingly bottomless, endless sense of stasis that director Todd Louiso and screenwriter Sarah Koskoff navigate with such care … and a little humor.  I recently spoke with Louiso and Koskoff via phone about Hello I Must Be Going, the cast, the Marx Brothers, and defying the status quo (and the weather) to create a candid, female-centric film.

News came late Sunday that British-born director Tony Scott has died after jumping from a bridge in Los Angeles County. Authorities discovered notes with contact information in his car parked nearby and a suicide letter in his office.

From The Wrap:

Please explain what just happened.

The psycho-killer crack-head downstairs just finished screaming and slamming his apartment door repeatedly.

What is your earliest memory?

Me and my cousin Brian not being able to finish a puzzle in kindergarten before it was time to go home. So we just piled all the pieces on the board and returned it to where the puzzles were supposed to go. But we got caught and had to stay and finish it.

If you weren’t a writer, director, producer, and composer, what other profession would you choose?

Husbandry— 1) the management and conservation of resources; 2) the care and cultivation of crops (including trees). I think I’m ready. I like a well tended forest.

Please explain what just happened.

The more I know, the more I realize I have no idea. What happened? Who cares really. Where am I now, and where can I get a good cup of coffee.

What is your earliest memory?

I remember being a monk who made beer in an abbey in France. I’m pretty sure I flogged the shit out of myself for no good reason. And the personal attaché for a power hungry cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. Or was the earliest memory waking into consciousness as a protozoa in a murky tide pool. I’m sorry, I’m still sleepy. I think my earliest memory—in this life anyway—is holding on to the tall boot of my father as he walked across a snowy driveway, dragging me along, watching the dry snow spray up, feeling the cold flakes melt on my hot cheeks, listening to him whistle some Randy Newman song.

Please explain what just happened.

There was a Big Bang, Elvis died, and then Obama tripled the deficit.

What is your earliest memory?

My ears scraping across a birth canal.

If you weren’t an actor/writer/director/producer, what other profession would you choose?

One that pays.

Please explain what just happened.

I just went on a road trip to go see Foreigner.

What is your earliest memory?

Wanting to get out of my crib because I had stuff to do.  Seriously.

Who knew that Bigelow’s win for best director last night was the first such win for a woman? This seems insane to me. And I suppose we shouldn’t make anything of the fact that she won for a film that, despite some murmurings early on about how she lent a “feminine touch” to the raw dealings of war was, let’s face it, a “boy movie.”