I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

You have to really know what you're saying.

I think everybody's contemplating TV now, because mid-level and high-budget independent films are not being made now.

Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.

I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

The great movies that I want to do now are being made for $2.5-million budgets.

Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.