I think having funny characters is just one way of having three-dimensional characters.

They're both [Ethan Hawke and John Travolta] so good. It's hard to explain. But they're consummate professionals and you see the little choices they make - you see it in their eye. You see these little details they do where you go, "That's why they're them."

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.

Older actresses apparently have no sense of humor about being older actresses.

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.

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.

It's not the plot [of Valley of Violence] - the plot is the reason to get all these things to happen, all these character moments to happen. It was always meant to have these two perspectives.