You and I have talked about this a lot, and I think it was something, at least my impression of you, is that you, like when I made Kicking and Screaming, which is my first movie, which is the same year you made Bottle Rocket, and we didn't know each other then, but I feel like I look back at that movie, and I did a lot of things in that movie because I was told that was the way you do it, because I hadn't been to film school, I didn't do it sort of the same way.

You and I in some ways came to it similarly in totally different areas, but I did things like looping that I wouldn't have done.

I did the way we cut it.

I let the editor cut it first.

It took me even a couple movies to kind of learn you don't have to actually do it this way.

I was really impressed, at least it's my fantasy of you.

You might be able to, I'm sure you have examples where you did things you wish you hadn't, but you knew immediately, no, no, no, I'm not going to do it like that.

I want to do it this way.

Yes.

You mean doing Bottle Rocket?

Doing Bottle Rocket, yeah.

Well, that's the funny thing.

I feel like I was never more confident in my life than when we made that film, and never less confident than when we screened it.

The first time we screened it was part two of my life, because up to that point my attitude was, just wait until they see this.

A lot of people were, does this story hold together?

Are people going to understand why these boys are acting like this?

I was like, I think they're going to understand.

It's pretty funny.

Then we screened it.

You've heard me tell this many times, I suppose.

We screened it in Santa Monica at the AMC 17 or something like that on the 3rd Street Promenade.

For an audience.

For an audience of 400 people.

As the reels unspooled, I watched.

I was sitting in the back row with all the studio executives, everybody, and I began to see people leaving.

They were leaving in groups.

People don't go to the bathroom in groups.

They're not coming back.

They take their coats.

It became really excruciating.

At a certain point I left.

I tried to be very discreet about it because I didn't want to add to the exodus feeling, but I also couldn't take it.

I went up to the projection booth and watched.

They just left all through the film.

It was really a miserable thing.

I remember afterwards we had the audience cards, the reactions.

They just, you know, you get the S-U-C-K-D.

That's the sort of thing you get.

A lot of things were favorite, whatever, none.

One after another.

But I remember that we were going through it.

We were just kind of analyzing it.

Everyone was feeling bad for me, that I won't be able to do this with my life.

Then I got one of these, and it was like an outline of a dissertation.

This girl had sat there a lot longer than everybody else, and she'd written a whole thing, and she'd quoted things, and she'd said this stuff.

I remember in the room, I was like, this is our audience.

There was literally one positive thing.

I was like, she's getting everything.

A few years later, several years, like six years later, I was at some kind of function, and this girl, some kind of film thing or DGA thing or something, and this girl introduced herself to me and says, I was at your screening, and I was like, I know who you are.

I know exactly who you are.

She was uncomfortable, she wasn't sure what I was talking about.

No, no, no, no, I know you.