I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there's a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it's an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.

I'd love to do a PG-13 animated adventure. It would be great.

I'd like to think that if you find your audience there are still opportunities there to go and tell an original story.

I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they're much more liberating because you don't really have to apply a very strict logic.

For me, some of the happiest moments on a live-action film are the awkward moments. One actor says something to another actor. They didn't expect that performance from that actor; that affects their return performance.