I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.

With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.