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

I found Jumpy on YouTube. I wrote a movie about a guy with a dog and was like, "What have I done? This is going to be a nightmare. We're a small movie and we're never going to be able to do this."

Sometimes I look at it [Valley of Violence] and go, "How did we do that?" But it's a credit to Ethan [Hawke], he had done White Fang, so Ethan is like, "Oh God, that's right."

I'd been all hyped about it, I was like, "Please come," and to have that and know Tommy Nohilly is probably going like, "This is cool," it makes me feel good.

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.

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.

It's very important to me to find ways to relate the audience to the characters. This is the first thing to go in most mainstream horror films.