What I think is great about Pippin, specifically, and I wouldn't make this generalization about all musicals, is that it is about how we tell stories and the way stories are very subjective. How we tell some things and leave other things out in the way The Princess Bride is or The Wizard of Oz is, which both have a framing device.

I cannot control what you bring into the theater when you see the film. I can't control what my parents bring in. I can't control what some random person on Twitter brings in to the theater. All I can control is the hour and 50 minutes that the movie lasts, and try to give it absolutely everything I can.

But you certainly don't have perspective. And there's so much pressure going into that opening night because you know there's journalists, tons of acquisitions people, and the fate of your film in some ways, if not decided, is really affected by how it screens that night.

I've heard a lot of variation of similar questions, but it's interesting to see the variations of audiences and how different people respond, so I think it's all valid. I don't take it personally at this point, which I probably would have at Sundance. But it's really thrilling.

Making movies is really hard, and it can be humbling. And once you put them out into the world, you can't control how people will respond to it.

By the time you arrive at Sundance as a filmmaker, you've been living with your film intimiately, and scrutinized every frame, and probably aren't happy with - or at least I'm never happy with it - and you've seen it in the roughest of states, and you lose perspective, really.

And that first screening was overwhelming. You were there. People applauded when the title card comes in; there's a big "gasp moment" partway through the film. It couldn't have gone better, and it was very surreal.