People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape.
I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.
I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.
I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.
I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.
And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.
There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.
Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.
I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.
I didn't choose BYU, I like to think it chose me.
Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there's Christine in all men as well.
And with Aaron, I'd have to find a reason not to work with him.
Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?
I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt.
But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.
