I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie.

I've played a lot of really smarmy people in film, and it can be real fun, don't get me wrong. But it can be characters I'm not as excited to explore.

I didn't know that there was such a thing as butter carving. But then, I poked around a little bit. A quick Google search will show you 55,000 images of butter carvings, and they're extraordinary.

I had no real direction at all in my 20's and so I did what a lot of people without direction do: I took an acting class. In one of those first days of the class, I did this weird, silly improv, and it got laughs. It was such a blissful moment. I've never gotten over that love of hearing laughter. As a people pleaser, it's the drug of choice for me.

Comedy can be fun no matter what you're playing small or big comedy part. It always has the potential to be a blast.

My wife handles all of our technology. So if something goes wrong with the computer, I throw up my arms and step aside while the IT gal figures it out.

I've done animated TV stuff, but I'd never done animated film work, which is much more involved and much more labor intensive. The animators are much more meticulous and detailed. It's just been really fun and really satisfyingly creative.