[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, January 22 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City]

First of all, thanks for referring to me as an artist. It made me feel good. With Safety Not Guaranteed, Derek Connolly and I had the goals you might associate with art—to make something soulful, something that breaks rules, engages the heart. But beneath it all was a sincere want to entertain in a way that only movies can. There’s an element of showmanship in cinema that most other mediums don’t share. Yes, the characters in our film are honest and the emotions are true—good entertainment doesn’t have to be cynical or manufactured. But what I love about film is that it allows you to make an audience feel better on the way out than they felt walking in, it gives you that uplift. To that end, I’m probably more of a circus showman than an artist. “If you come into this tent, we’ll show you a man jump through fire on a tightrope. Then his whole family will do it. And if that’s not enough, look over there, it’s a lion!” Of course that isn’t always the case, and it shouldn’t be. I’ve left plenty of movie theaters feeling awful inside, and I loved those films. Which I guess makes this medium even better than the circus. If you leave the circus feeling awful, they really blew it.