What was your track like to getting it produced? What wound up being your budget and schedule?

You know, this was kind of a fast process.

I mean, I believe that we had a script by February that we were.

So December we flew and met with Russell for five days, had the holidays.

Over the holidays, I really, you know, we just dove into the book.

And then January we wrote the script.

So by February we had a script that everybody had signed off on.

What could you tell us about directing your actors? What's important for you when you're on set and you're ready to do a scene? Do you start with a walkthrough? Do you give it a rehearsal or do you just pop off a take to see what happens and then recalibrate?

What was your track like to getting it produced? What wound up being your budget and schedule?

You know, this was kind of a fast process.

I mean, I believe that we had a script by February that we were.

So December we flew and met with Russell for five days, had the holidays.

Over the holidays, I really, you know, we just dove into the book.

And then January we wrote the script.

So by February we had a script that everybody had signed off on.

What could you tell us about directing your actors? What's important for you when you're on set and you're ready to do a scene? Do you start with a walkthrough? Do you give it a rehearsal or do you just pop off a take to see what happens and then recalibrate?

Derek, for you as a filmmaker, and I think selfishly for me as a writer, what has been the most important part as far as completing the actual screenplay? Has there been an unlock over the years for you? And how have you matured into that? Or again, is it an overthinking? You just do the work and let it speak for itself?

Well, so I wrote my first film, The Joneses, I wrote as a film that I knew that if I was going to break into filmmaking, I had to have a script that everybody wanted.

And so I decided to start writing out of necessity.

And I wrote literally probably 10 scripts that nobody wanted at all.

And then I wrote a script that a lot of people wanted with The Joneses, and I held on to it to direct.

And I think that the process of really just deciding that I'm going to...

To be a writer, to write, it's a lot of times I see people, and I'm veering off totally all over the place, but I see people that write one script and it's, this is my script.

No one's going to top that ending to Angel Heart, I don't think.