It's Ethan Hawke and John Travolta [in Valley of Violence]. It's awesome. They're awesome.

I always feel like the less you say when you're making a movie, as a director, is the best. That means everything's going great.

With my horror movies or with this movie [Valley of Violence], same thing. The subtext of this movie is what to take away from it. Plot is never something that's been my driving force as a filmmaker.

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.

We can't make a giant sprawling movie. We're going to make a small movie. And what we got is what I could get, performance-wise.

The hardest animal was the vulture. But the horses were great, the dog was great [in Valley of Violence]. It was really easy.

Ethan [Hawke] just - they got along great. He got to act with a dog, for real, and it felt like Jumpy was acting with him. It was a surreal thing to watch. When you watch the movie [Valley of Violence], you just kind of accept it. But if you do think about how we show - there's a dog and a movie star interacting - and you buy it. That's crazy.