There are people - I think this is why there are so many commercial directors doing well in big studio movies, for whom it's not a personal choice - it's "What's the coolest, most effective way to make them laugh, make them scream?" It's a very calculated approach. And that's different. It's not better or worse. It's just a very different approach to filmmaking. That's always been the case.

Jumpy is the most incredible animal of all time. The movie [Valley of Violence] is the tamest example of what that dog is capable of.

Typically, in Westerns, people who are in a Western feel like they're in a Western. It's almost like they know they do all these Western things.

To me, making a horror movie is about how you can present similar genre familiarities, but present them a little bit differently. Part of what interests me is the nonchalant realism of it, because you don't get that in the big studio horror movies. I like seeing someone walk around a house and sift through the drawers, and things like that, because that reminds me of what I would do, and of weird personal choices that people would make. That, in contrast to seeing someone get chased with a knife, makes it all the more interesting.

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.

It's one of those things, when you look back on it, you'd go, "Oh, I could've done without that. If I could go back in time, I would do it different." That's the thing with violence in general.

Of course, we talked about Westerns we like with [James Ransone in Valley of Violence] , but it was always thematically in relation to the movie and what the themes of the movie were.