In a way it was a modern story but it played to all those 1980 slasher movies. We did the same thing with this. Patrick wanted to do a 1970's road movie and if you'll see, this is a modern story but it's got so much 1970's in your face feel to it. So that was the point, to take that stuff that we loved growing up and sort of do it for today. I think we accomplished it. We'll see.

The graphic novel? I love comics and so, yes. I don't think we talked about that. We weren't influenced necessarily by graphic novels but we certainly, once the screenplay was done, we talked about the idea that you could continue, you could tell back story, you could do things in sort of a graphic novel world just because we kind of like that world.

Nic [Cage] is more than just a fantastic actor. He will get your movie made. The first thing that we did is that we went to producers and there were a lot of great producers.

The actors come in and they make characters their own and so Patrick and I have never been the kind to think that our script is the bible. We want to make sure that the story is told, that you stick to the story but if you have to make changes to the character then that's fine. A lot of times there are some funny one-liners, funny things that happen that are out of the ordinary. I like it.

I mean if you look at the Charger and you compare it to other cars, the way the lines work, the tires, in 3-D it's gorgeous. One thing that we found was that the reflective surface was weird. It does funny things in 3-D. So you have to deal with that.

Nic is definitely a car guy because Nic and [William] Fichtner and Billy, these guys go on and on about the cars. So we had no choice but to do our research and get everything right because they were going to nail us if we didn't.

We write for actors and even down to the smallest character in the film, they all have their moment. You take that and you put it in a story that's in your face and there's tons of hardcore R action, nudity and you name it, but at the same time there really is a story there. It's got heart and at the end of the movie people will feel it. So I hope they'll their friends and want to see more.