ComingSoon.net: It's been said that this is a departure for you, so why do you feel it's a departure besides the fact you're doing it all on your own?
Paul Soter: It's not like I felt like I had to show a different side of me, that I felt like the movie needed to be different than Broken Lizard movies. As a first time director, I thought to myself, "If I'm going to get money to direct my own movie, it should probably be really low budget." It ended up lending itself to writing a very small dialogue-driven movie. Even "Super Troopers" was very cheap, but we were out in the middle of New York State, and we could do a lot more things. I knew that it was just going to have to be a very small production, so I wrote a movie that was unlike Broken Lizard movies just in that there wasn't that same sort of room to do a lot of broad stuff and more physical stuff. I wanted to make a movie that had more of a feel like something like "Rushmore." It's one of my favorite movies, but I don't go and laugh my ass off when I watch it, but I have a big sh*t eating grin on my face the whole time. The subject matter of the movie lent itself to something more like that. I have this fear that people are going to show up expecting a Broken Lizard movie, and are going to be shocked by something that's a little quiet and a little dare-I-say wittier.

CS: Would you consider this a romantic comedy or is that me being a journalist and trying to compartmentalize everything into genres?
Soter: You know, I'm not going to be able to avoid it being considered that way. To me, my whole thing behind writing it was that I wanted it to be the antithesis of what the current modern romantic comedy is. I see trailers and I see posters for romantic comedies, and just inevitably I'm just "There's no f*cking way I'm going to see that movie." Everything's incredibly by the numbers, everything's incredibly predictable, and it seems to be geared towards a younger and dumber audience, so I just though I'd love to make a movie where you'd have people in their mid-20s to 30s and up say that it's interesting and there's obviously a romantic element to it, but it's also not that same kind of story where every moment is a foregone conclusion. I guess it is a romantic comedy, but I think of it sort of as an offbeat indie comedy first with a romantic element to it. I know it's all a matter of semantics probably and I'm trying to find a way to justify having made a "romantic comedy."

CS: You shot the movie in New York, but it's not actually set in New York, right?
Soter: No, my first choice was going to be Austin, Texas. You have a movie about a guy who watches movies, who discusses movies in this academic environment, but has never gone out and done a lot on his own, so a movie like that just didn't make sense to me in Manhattan, because every day, you experience so much. By it's very nature, it's a city filled with people who are in my opinion, living life, so to me, it really needed an academic environment, whether that was Austin or some kind of college town or some sort of academic enclave of another town. It just thematically didn't work for me to be in New York City, so that was really the challenge, to find the places around New York City that could make it pass for an Anytown USA or Anytown in the Northeast.

CS: That's good to hear because we see so many indie romantic comedies where they go for that Woody Allen thing where they need to showoff the cool New York locations.
Soter: Yeah, I mean I understand why it's very tempting to do that, because sh*t yeah, I lived in Manhattan for fifteen years, and it is in my opinion, probably second to Paris as the most romantic city in the world, so it makes sense that you'd want to do that. I'm a sucker for all those Woody Allen movies, but it was kind of a cool challenge to say, "Can you find that good looking esthetic and some kind of a romantic esthetic that's not that Manhattan esthetic." I hope I did my job, and I guess people will let me know.

CS: Whenever I think of video store clerks, I always imagine them to look exactly like Cillian Murphy [that's sarcasm], so can you talk about casting him against type like that?
Soter: At first, I had a slight hesitation, because I think of him not only being a gorgeous guy, but anything that I've seen him, he was incredibly self-possessed. There's something about the character that's just slightly goofy, and can be awkward at times. I didn't want him to be a caricature of the movie store dork, but just sort of the guy who spent a little more time at home watching movies than out getting around. When I met him, he was out in L.A. doing something and he was so much more like the way I envisioned the Neil character, just in his own personality, the way he carries himself. He's an incredibly regular guy and having seen him on screen, it was a really fascinating thing to see, because he's very soft-spoken, got a great sly sense of humor that's kind of quiet and clever. Just the way he carries himself, I thought he looked like I always visualized this character, and it just turns out that he's a lot like the character, very regular, sweet and very goofy fellow. I think there can have been a temptation to make him more awkward, but I didn't want him to be a caricature of a film nerd. I know plenty of guys in my life who are long-time grad school guys or seriously into movies and music, but they play basketball, they go out on dates, they play in bands. I've always known a lot of guys like that and that to me, Neil was supposed to be like that. Instead of him being a classic dork, the hook was more that this guy has always fantasized about living his life like a movie but nobody has ever said to him, "Alright, well do it." So what Lucy Liu represents then is the character who feels like she has essentially walked down off of a screen and offers him this wish fulfillment of "Alright, if you want to live your life like movies, let's see if you can stand up to it." And it really is so much wilder and more dangerous than he expected. It's one of those things. You think maybe this would be a nice way to live your life, but the more it becomes real, you're like, "Nobody can live that way. This is just insane. You can't run around, getting in trouble, getting chased by cops. You can't do that." It was just trying to find somebody that embodied that idea.

CS: Is the movie's title supposed to be a reference to the Elvis Costello song or do they actually watch detectives in the movie?
Soter: It is. It's funny. It ended up being sort of as I was toying with the scenes for the movie and the general story, I heard it in my car, and then all the missing parts of this kind of theme for me really locked into place there in terms of Elvis Costello has this incredibly hip, cool, reggae beat take on the dynamics of a film noir movie. I then visualized a lot of the elements that I would apply to the film from that song. The idea of the dame who's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake, and the guy taking a beating. There's all these great archetypes of film noir and I thought that you could try to convey that into a modern life story if it's people who are obsessed with film noir and then try to find a hip way of having an offbeat take on that sort of guy-girl dynamics in film noir movies. So, yes, it was basically… and then it's sort of a double entendre I suppose in that a lot of the movie is about watching, about voyeurism, and there's literally a scene where they're looking from a distance with binoculars, watching this policeman, so there's a literal "watching the detective" and then a figurative one.

CS: Cillian isn't really known for his comedy, and he doesn't really come across as someone with a rollicking sense of humor, so is he more there to play-off Lucy?
Soter: The comedy that Cillian does in the movie, his character, is more reactive. It's basically that it's a guy responding to a lot of weird sh*t happening to him, so I certainly wanted him to have comedy elements, but in terms of being the generator and being the driving force of the comedy, that was Lucy's part. It's a guy who thinks he's kind of funny, and he's funny, but not quite as funny as he thinks he is, and it's watching a guy like that react to a lot of crazy sh*t. I wasn't asking him to, I wouldn't say do a lot of heavy-lifting comedy-wise… but he's an incredibly funny guy. I think he would be capable of doing that in another movie. He's very smart. He has a great sense of humor and he's very expressive. I think what I was asking him to do was just on the lighter side in terms of being a guy who's likeable and be believable and someone whose fun to watch them put through the ringer. That was his job and I think he did it marvelously.

CS: I read the director's statement in the notes, and I know that it was a joke, but was there some truth to that, being able to do stuff on your own. Did you find it very freeing?
Soter: It was. We have a blast making Broken Lizard. It's really a great environment, it's very relaxed, but at the same time, it was born out of two things, one of which is Jay ultimately is the arbiter in a lot of situations and our decisions by committee always end up working out fine, but to me, there was always a feeling that it would be cool from the beginning to the end of the day, everybody goes to one person, and I would love to be that person who could just answer every question. We don't necessarily have fights amongst ourselves on set, but often you realize once you get onto the set that this guy visualizes it that way, this guy visualizes it this way, that guy visualizes it a third way. We always find a way to solve it, but at the time when it's happening, I'm always thinking to myself, "God, it would be nice if we didn't always have to have these discussions. If somebody would come to me and just say "How's it supposed to be? What's that supposed to look like?" and just tell people what's on my mind. So that's why I wanted to direct, but also when you're acting on movie sets, there's so much standing around. It was making me fall out of love a little bit with the process of making movies, 'cause it is so boring being on a movie set. When you look at Jay, that guy is never standing still for a second. I think it would make me feel really excited about the process again if my days were spent putting out fires and making decision and having to come up with creative solutions. That's what I loved the most about ending up directing a movie. You're not sitting around for a second. When they first told me that they didn't have enough money in the budget for me to have my own trailer, I was a little bummed out, but now, having gone through it, I don't know when I would have gone to my trailer. There just wasn't time to go retire anywhere when you're directing a movie, other than lunch when you just sit down and eat with everybody. Looking at it now, there was no reason for me to have a trailer, because there's never any downtime, and that ended up being great. Your day goes by in a flash, because you're just jamming all day.

CS: Did you miss having the guys to bounce ideas off of or did you do that more with Cillian and Lucy?
Soter: Because of the scheduling and because of some visa issues with Cillian, we didn't have as much rehearsal time as I had hoped for, so I really tried to spend a lot of times on the phone with each of those guys. You can't really rehearse until you end up going through the scenes and talking about them and you bounce ideas off each other. I think I was able to have that give and take with them, and as actors, they enjoyed that. They don't just want to be told, "Okay, here's your dialogue. Go stand over here." I think it ended up being collaborative. I really lucked out with the both of them, because they're both really cool. I knew they were going to be funny and right for the part, but you know, with Broken Lizard movies, other than the occasional Bill Paxton or Brian Cox, I'm working with my guys and you know everybody is going to be cool, nobody's going to throw a tantrum or refuse to come out of their trailer, nobody's going to disrupt the set. I was like, "I'm going to have two people I don't know who really are big stars, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they're cool." I couldn't have been luckier because these were tough conditions. We were shooting a movie in 22 days, we're trying to do six pages, sometimes seven pages a day, it's New York summer, it's hot as sh*t, we're doing stuff in closed little rooms that are sweaty and disgusting, and there just wasn't a single moment where they weren't happy to be there, happy to help, do whatever they can to help. I didn't get a complaint out of either of them. They were nice to every single person on set. What ended up being cool is that we were so frantic about shooting everything that they didn't have time to go back to their trailers, sit around for 45 minutes and get bored. They stayed on the set, so they got very wrapped up in the energy of the shoot. It was just a pleasure top to bottom. I can honestly say if you interviewed anybody who was involved in the making of that movie, they'd be like, "We had a really good time and everybody was cool."

CS: Do you think you'll keep doing your own movies in between the Broken Lizard movies?
Soter: Yeah, I think we're figuring out a way where everyone can balance group work with the stuff they do individually or sometimes, guys work in pairs. We're not so busy as Broken Lizard now that guys can't spend time on separate projects, even when it comes down to something being shot, then there has to be some kind of juggling, but there's nothing on the horizon that's scheduled in right now that would prevent any of us from pursuing individual jobs.

Paul Soter's Watching the Detectives premieres on Tuesday May 1 at the 6th Annual Tribeca Film Festival.