You grow up skinny in Canada; in working-class Montreal, you're definitely the underdog.

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.

What I love about [TV] is this: It's a specific thing to be able to tell a satisfying, rewarding story in less than 25 minutes. Not everyone can pull that off. There's something really cool about giving lit people a bunch of little mini movies.

If it were up to me, every job would be somewhere in Canada.

No one has a resume that they are 100% comfortable with, nor does anyone have a life that they are 100% comfortable with.

If you know what you want and you hire people that can do it, there's no reason it should be arduous and torturous. I wanted everyone to enjoy themselves on my set and want to be there, to take ownership of it and pitch ideas to me and know that this is their flick.

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.