BOLLEN: So you’re a director who relies on his instincts.

LYNCH: Instinct is getting hungry and eating. It’s intuitive. It’s an intuitively good feeling.

BOLLEN: But design, say for sets, must be relatively finished in advance. Can designing a set make for a happy accident?

LYNCH: A set is very magical. When I was working on Eraserhead, I had a job delivering The Wall Street Journal. Somewhere along the line, I realized that a set only has to look solid. And many places in my sets were paper-thin because I’d use wallpaper paste, flour, water, and The Wall Street Journal to make walls.

BOLLEN: Were those the papers you were supposed to be delivering?

LYNCH: No, I had extras. I didn’t steal them. I had 12 or 13 different papers each night. Those things add up.

Read the full interview here.