I don't really get that nervous about whether people like it. You can't do anything about that. It's more technical. You spend two years of your life obsessing, picturing sound details, and you work so hard to make a movie a certain way, that you get there, and you're like - is it loud enough or whatever, so that this experience with everybody in this room is the fairest chance I can get. And then if you like it, cool, and if you don't, whatever.

From a performance standpoint, it just gives [actors] so much - I had such a great cast [ in Valley of Violence] - and it gives them the ability to go wild with it and to have performances that are memorable.

You're limited to one image, but you can have 50 audio tracks. It's something you'd be foolish not to experiment with. So I'm also very interested in sound that happens offscreen. I think that's a way to expand the scope of the movie. And it's all very planned out from the script stage. For me, sound design is a major part of the narrative. I think that's what makes working with certain people on the producer level difficult.

There are people - I think this is why there are so many commercial directors doing well in big studio movies, for whom it's not a personal choice - it's "What's the coolest, most effective way to make them laugh, make them scream?" It's a very calculated approach. And that's different. It's not better or worse. It's just a very different approach to filmmaking. That's always been the case.

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.

Jumpy is the most incredible animal of all time. The movie [Valley of Violence] is the tamest example of what that dog is capable of.

All those awkward moments - that's on the cast for doing such an amazing job. I think it was funny on the page, but when they did it, you definitely went, "Oh!" Watching it with a crowd that, like you said, was not expecting it to be funny, but then genuinely finding it funny, is totally a credit to their performances.