I always cast people with a sense of humor because people that are super serious don't understand when I ask them to eat a booger it's not necessarily about that. It's about something more. It's about inviting a little bit of absurdity into the process and humanity into the process. Making sure that no matter who we are and what sort of pedestal or glamorous lighting we're under, we're all eating boogers man.

I'm not really worried about people's perception of what I do, or people's analysis of why I make the decisions I make. I wake up every day with a new interest and a desire for an education.

A lot of people inspire me. I'm a huge movie buff. From studying and watching movies, over and over again, directly influential are Terrence Malik and his naturalism, Robert Altman and his exploration of improvisation, and Judd Apatow, in terms of his comedic process.

It's been an obsession of various genres, disciplines, and aspects and elements of movie-making. It's always been something that I've really aspired to, so doing something new and different, reinventing myself and working with new people is just the passport to the amazing world that is the movies.

Sundance [festival] is all your Hollywood buds and buddies and rolling out and high-fiving and "Hell, yeah. Here comes the movie," and in Venice, it's very elegant, and respectful...It's decadence. It's such a fun way to formalize a movie that is for us a down-and-dirty, gritty movie. And to see it with the red carpet, and rolling up in a Maserati.

Fortunately, working with Universal was just a real opportunity of a supportive entity, who not only financially backed and distributed the movie, but creatively collaborated with us, and gave us ideas and creative ways to make a movie that was budgetarily responsible.

I really strongly feel that when you approach a drama, you have to approach it with energy, honesty, sincerity, and absolute commitment, or don't do it.