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."

I did the movie [Valley of Violence] from two perspectives. You're with Ethan [Hawke] the whole movie, but for the first half, you're really with Ethan. For the second half, you're with him, but also you're with the bad guys because he kind of becomes the bad guy. No one's really good in the movie.

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 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.

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.

Movies aren't "slow burn," and aren't serious, aren't interesting, because everything from the movie to the promotional materials is telling you that you have to see it between Friday and Sunday, and then you can forget about it. It's not an important movie, it's just a lowest-common-denominator thrill-ride for three days when you've got nothing to do. That does a major disservice to the quality of the films

I think you make the movie in your head that you have to make, and you have to get it out of you. You have all these pretentious reasons why you want to do it, and you set out to accomplish them. And you think "This is important for what I'm trying to accomplish for the story," and I think those reasons will come through to an audience, and they will find it. That's the best you can do.