[Valley of Violence] was written for James Ransone. PJ's a friend of mine, I've known him for a long time, he's always like, "Dude, when are we going to make a movie together?" I finally called him.

It is a very classic Western [Valley of Violence], and if you like Westerns, you'll like this movie, but there's a tone to it that's all its own that I think is unique and memorable.

I don't think you want to preach to people. I don't think In A Valley Of Violence, and the same with The Sacrament, there's a social commentary and a political element to both the films, but it's not like, "Think this because I think this."

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.

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.

I found Jumpy on YouTube. I wrote a movie about a guy with a dog and was like, "What have I done? This is going to be a nightmare. We're a small movie and we're never going to be able to do this."

I mean PJ - James Ransone - he was a friend of mine, he probably heard all this stuff, but for the rest of the cast [Valley of Violence], we mostly just talked about their characters and things like that. That was the business at hand.