I don't have any ambitions as an actor. I felt very uncomfortable doing it. The first take every day I'd open my mouth and no words would come out. I'd do a couple of takes and eventually I could run the lines.

But I always see myself as the filmmaker. I wonder if everybody else sees me more as an actor.

I'm from Wisconsin; well, that's where I went to school from, like, sixth grade till I graduated high school.

I was writing short films and I was going through this really, really, really terrible end of a relationship that I didn't want to be going through. It was too much for me to process and all of a sudden I had this idea for my first feature film and I knew right away I had to start writing it.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

If the movies that I'm going to make anyway go mainstream, that would be the coolest thing ever. But I have set up a plan that I've been working on for a long time.

I developed a group of friends around me that were all as crazy as I was about wanting to make films.