Did you have a third eye on you when you were shooting the scenes you were also acting in?
My DP. Also Laura Linney ended up directing that final climax scene between my character and Delicious Dean. She was there that day, and I said, “Can you give me a hand? I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” When we began shooting I had a monitor playback and I had to trade 12 extras and a smoke machine to get it. I used it one day and it was such a nightmare and it took 18 minutes just to watch the scene enough to be able to direct myself. I said, “get rid of it, I want my extras back, I want my smoke machine back and you guys can take that monitor and throw it out onto the road.” And then after that I was doing three takes like everybody else. With only 23 days to shoot using 18 minutes for play back was literally like losing a chunk of gold. That time, once it’s gone, you can never get back. And when I gave up the monitor the self-consciousness disappeared because I couldn’t worry about it anymore.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film was when Dean’s character calls you out as not acting selflessly. I thought another great scene was between Juliette Lewis’ character and Delicious Dean where she goes after him. Was that all written on the page or did you allow actors to explore off the page?
That scene between Christopher Thornton’s character and me is word for word but there’s a lot of scenes that are completely off the page, for different reasons… The page wasn’t working or an actor had a better idea. When you have only 23 days to shoot a movie, you don’t have time to create the magic. You gotta grab the magic where it’s happening.