SP:​​ I noticed a lot of the movies that you chose fit into specific fields and there’s always two movies for each of those field. You have two Best Picture winners, two musicals, two romantic movies. Do you think those are the movies you tend to gravitate towards?

EF: ​​I mean, yes. Because movies win best picture for a reason, right? Because they’re good movies. So I suppose yes, that’s true. I guess when I chose those two movies, I chose them knowing they won best picture and in some way both of those movies became more meaningful to me because of that, and I think that’s especially true for “Moonlight.”

I loved it before, and even maybe if “La La Land” had won, I still would have loved “Moonlight” even more for that reason, you know what I mean? In the same way, some of my favorite books are Pulitzer Prize winning books, because these are the the humans who are the best judges of these sorts of things.

Of course they’re going to choose the best. But both of those movies I saw before they won. Still love them.

SP:​​ You mentioned “La La Land” and and “Moonlight” being nominated in the same year, “La La Land” being a straightforward musical and “Moonlight” being kind of like a musical, thematically and artistically speaking, without any of the actual singing. Do you see it that way as well?

EF: ​​I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah, I suppose that could be the case. Of course, if you compare those two movies, I think I’m not a fan of “La La Land;” I don’t like it. I was done. I think it was the escapism that our country was looking for exactly when it was released, and so that’s why it became so popular when it did.

I mean, it’s fun, but it’s meaningless. And I think there are a lot of things that it could have done better, whereas “Moonlight” was so much heavier, and you’re right, it does use music very effectively. So I think that’s really interesting. I never even thought about that before. I like that.

SP: ​​Are there any non-musicals on this list that you’d like to see adapted into musicals like, “Mean Girls” just recently was?

EF: ​​Like Sleepless In Seattle, the musical? I think that would be great. It would be hard, but you could make it work. There’s so many settings, so from a directors standpoint, yeah, that’d be great. “A Beautiful Mind,” I don’t know. It would be a great play. Maybe it has been adapted into one already, but that would be a great plan.

SP:​​ As the director of the musical here, do you tend to enjoy the theatricality of movies, like a lot of the over the top kind of stuff?

EF:​​ Absolutely. I love all of the planning that goes into it. That’s why I love “Shape of Water,” because everything in every scene feels so grand.