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.

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.

It's funny, because I don't think of my films as "slow-burn." I don't even know if I was familiar with the phrase until people started labeling me with it.

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.

The first half [of Valley of Violence] was to endear you to all these people and give you all these archetypes that you're familiar with, and then the second half, just to see all those archetypes unravel like real people.

There's nothing stopping you from making movies. You can always make and try different things.

It's unreal. I mean, the dog backflips. It's amazing. Google Jumpy on YouTube - I had seen the dog first and I was like, "Y'all don't even know."