In the best-case scenario, the audience sees themselves in your shoes. The only way you can do that is if you try to play it as if it was happening to you.

My mom said to me when I was a little kid, "You don't have to hate your job. Just because you see all these unhappy grown-ups doesn't mean you have to be one of them." She said, "Find something that you would do for free and find a way to get paid to do it." That's been my guiding principle.

I think sports makes for good drama because it has all the same ingredients as anything worth reading or listening to or watching. Conflict, desire, heartbreak - it's all there.

It's something I want to do going forward - make a movie that is commercial and universal and will play in any movie theater or living room in the States or the UK, but is definitively Canadian. I don't think there's such a thing as prohibitively Canadian.

The hockey I was raised on, the hockey I understand, the hockey that my dad taught me about when I was a boy was intrinsically connected with fighting. I grew up in a house where we revered tough guys.

Regardless of how insane it might be, when you dig somebody you just met and you send that first text, goddamn, it's an eternity before you get the reply back.

Montreal is a great town. There's equal parts blue-collar town.