BB: When it comes to acting and directing, who are your key influences for both?

• JC: Jackie Chan, notoriously. Bill Hader, recently. [He’s] another Southern kid who's writing, directing, and acting, humiliating himself in kind of endearing, funny violence. I don't know. I mean, I grew up watching [John] Cassavetes movies. And, you know, I feel like there's just something that you get from watching a writer/actor/director that is a relationship between the filmmaker and the audience that you don't get from just a director. Where it's like, you're watching Buster Keaton or W.C. Fields and it's like, “Oh, this person is getting their ass beaten in the street and they wrote that and rehearsed it.” You know, it's a much more elaborate joke when it's all coming from the same biological person. I think it's a deeper relationship that you have with Lena Dunham than you would with anybody else. There is something really beautiful and more cohesive that you have in watching something like Thunder Road, where you're like, “Oh, this is a document of this person's humanity in 2018.” And I don't really feel that way about Damien Chazelle's work, you know?

BB: Which of those roles are you more comfortable in?

• JC: I mean, writing has very little stakes because you get to write something ridiculous and then somebody gets to go off and do it. So, that's really comfortable. You can do it in your pajamas. But then with directing, I feel like it's probably the thing that I'm best at because you can sculpt the audience's roller coaster. That's really what that job is, like, saying how long this pause should be as an awkward moment before going onto the next line and really nailing it. Kind of like editing the film, almost in performance and the way the camera moves. Then acting is just kind of self-directing to me. I've never taken an acting class, but I know what good acting kind of looks like or at least I've seen good acting before, so I think I know what the scene needs. So I think probably I'm most comfortable doing all three because they work together, they work hand in hand for me. We write all of our scripts out loud, so we're kind of already directing them and acting them. I really love doing all three. It's such a rush and such a fantastic feeling being on set, but I think probably writing is most comfortable if I had to pick between the three.

BB: When you’re directing your own performance, does that make you more critical of it?

• JC: Yeah, constantly. There were times when I was doing my earlier movies and it would suck, or one line would come across as flat, and I'd go “No, I can do better” or “This ain't it.” Like, “They're gonna make fun of me on the internet. They're gonna say I'm not a good actor.” *laughs* That became, you know, this neurotic thing, but I was already doing it. My neuroticism for making it feel authentic, or at least interesting performance-wise, didn't stop me from making stuff as it does for so many other people who are, you know, aspiring writers, actors, and directors. I was already going to do it, and that feet to the flame of "you're gonna record it, and it's got to be really good; otherwise, you're gonna get made fun of," was a really big impetus to me trying to make sure that something was perfect before going out the door. I think it was helpful rather than harmful. It's too soon to tell.

BB: You had the honour of directing Robert Forster’s final role. What was that like?

• JC: He was great. He was like everybody's grandfather on set. He’s definitely the most famous actor in the movie. He had no business being in our werewolf movie, but he liked the story because his character was dying from a disease that he couldn't tell anybody about and how it was affecting his family and his relationship with his son. And little did we know that’s exactly what was happening to him. He reached out to his manager and was, like, “I want to do this movie, it can be really good.” And his manager was like, “Bob, it's a werewolf picture. Are you joking?” [Bob] was like, “Eh, I don’t really care about the monster stuff. It's the stuff in between that I really like.” He was so savvy when it came to making movies. He had written, directed and starred in a movie that he made in the early 90s where he plays a detective in Hollywood, and he was, like, “I'll never do that again. That was crazy. I don't know how you do it.” So he came to us with just unrelenting respect and was just really, really wonderful. Everybody was trying to hang out with him at lunch, and anytime you got to talk to him about movies and what it was like to be making movies in the 70s and with fucking [Quentin] Tarantino as well, it was just a really great hang constantly. He never wanted to stop working. He was such a proactive, ambitious, will-driven guy, and he was marvelous. I think he shines in the movie. All of his scenes are so endearing and wonderful. I'm glad he said yes.