You have to. But I generally try - I'll creep in the back. I'll be outside. I'll pace around. I don't really get that nervous about whether people like [my films].

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

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.

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.

With my horror movies or with this movie [Valley of Violence], same thing. The subtext of this movie is what to take away from it. Plot is never something that's been my driving force as a filmmaker.

I always talk about movies a lot beforehand, and then we would get there, and I'd say, "Let's play around and see how it goes." And they would do it, and I'd go, "Well, that was awesome." It was really - I don't know, it was really special to watch them.

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.