I was a jock in college and high school, but I didn't hang out with the jocks. I was sort of a nerd who didn't look like a nerd. I never really fit into any social set.

I don't see a lot of movies that portray the East Village as well as I think they can. I really wanted to show this juxtaposition of a very bucolic Midwestern landscape with the noisy, volume-filled East Village that I know. There are so many Midwesterners who've transplanted here, who are trying to escape something or reinvent themselves. I know a lot of Midwestern outcasts, and I'm certainly one of them.