I spent a long time trying to make it in the commercial world hoping that commercials would then lead to movies. That was a less-travelled path at the time, although it's very well-travelled now.

I was very excited to hone in on John Goodman. Casting John first really set the tone. He's very good at being terrifying and being hilarious, and I loved the idea of that character not being merely 'moustache-twirly'. I enjoyed being scared by him.

A lot of the commercials that I was doing were very slice-of-life, emotional, documentary-style, not big and cinematic and ultimately like the kind of movie I wanted to make.

One of the first cassette tapes I ever purchased was the Rambo III score. I was not allowed to see Rambo, but my mom would allow me to buy the music, so I would listen to that score over and over and imagine the movie. But those limitations and not being able to access those things made me so much more excited about them.

I've definitely seen things that have made me laugh. And there's some things that are really smart and like, Oh man, we should have done that, that's really cool! And there's some things that are like, Oh, do they know something? I don't know! So there's the whole variety of things that are in those theories. But they're cool.