The movie [ The Innkeepers] is in no way a comedy, but I would put some of the funny scenes up against some of the funnier comedies this year. I think it's genuinely really funny, but it's out of the gallows.

Toby [Huss] gets shot, or that part when [John] Travolta says this, or the part where Ethan [Hawke] says that cool thing - those details are the things that are interesting to me. So just acknowledging we don't have a lot of money [for Valley of Violence], so we're going to make a Western that's kind of contained, but we're going to make it super charismatic and we're going to make it memorable for what it is as opposed to what we couldn't afford.

It definitely could have been a horror story [Valley of Violence], oh my God, if the dog was impossible. So could the horses.

The movie [ The Innkeepers] is in no way a comedy, but I would put some of the funny scenes up against some of the funnier comedies this year. I think it's genuinely really funny, but it's out of the gallows.

If people don't like [my film], the ship's sailed. There's nothing I can do about that.

I'm not sure I understand the compulsion to label things.

I do think, even though I've made these genre movies, there's what happens in the movie and then there's what the movie's about. And for me, what the movie's about is so much more interesting.