By actually taking Sleepy Hollow and the Rip Van Winkle story, and finding the spirit of what was great about both of them and putting them together. So it felt, actually, like one of those ideas that clicked for us, right away, on instinct.

By actually taking Sleepy Hollow and the Rip Van Winkle story, and finding the spirit of what was great about both of them and putting them together. So it felt, actually, like one of those ideas that clicked for us, right away, on instinct.

An emotional story is an emotional story no matter how big or small it is.

I do believe that people go to the movies - for one reason or another - they go to the movies to have an experience.

I think what people watch television for is the emotional continuity, from episode to episode, and feeling that the experience that they had, four episodes ago, has actually been building to an episode that comes later, and knowing that the characters are growing, as a result of that, and making mistakes, is really, really important to the way people connect to television.

We were such fans of Sleepy Hollow, in all of its iterations - growing up with the Disney show, and then Tim Burton's and, obviously, the most important being Washington Irving's short story. It evokes and invokes a very specific feeling and tone.

I asked a director once what the secret of it all was, and he said you have to be so prepared that you are willing to throw all your preparation away in the moment when you see something better. That's a phenomenal piece of advice. It's been my compass through the process of making films. But you can really only do that if you're prepared. You can't wing it.