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.

Everything Jumpy could do [in Valley of Violence] was too much. If I put it in the movie you would all check out. When he wraps himself up in the blanket, that's as far as I could go, and that's not even close. The dog's amazing.

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."

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."

If you ever see the director pulling people aside, that means something's not working. Because you're trying to figure out why it's not working. But we would show up, we would talk about it.

The second half [of Valley of Violence], you're with the guys that you should hate, but when you start seeing what their real lives are, you're like, "I do hate you, but at the same time, all right - maybe take it down a notch." The complications of all that are what's so interesting to me, those esoteric details - that's what people will hopefully take away from the movie.

You want to be able to say [to Ethan Hawke's character], "Dude, it's okay," but maybe it's not. Maybe he's not a good person. I don't know. That's the thing about people. There is no real good guy or bad guy [in A Valley Of Violence]. It's all context.