The Sound of Young America's trip to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas was supported by Phillips Cinema,

celebrating short film, online at facebook.com slash Phillips Cinema.

I'm Jesse Thorne, live on tape from My House in Los Angeles. It's the Sound of Young America

from MaximumFun.org and PRI, public radio, international.

It's The Sound of Young America. I'm your host, Jesse Thorne. Welcome to the show.

This week's show was recorded at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

My guest is the filmmaker David Gordon Green. He most recently directed the big budget action

comedy Pineapple Express with Seth Brogan, but before that he had directed a series of small

independent films, including 2000's George Washington. It was his debut feature and it focused

on a young man named George and his friends in an unnamed small southern industrial town.

It's a very poignant, touching, powerful, emotional film, but the same fine rendering of detail

that gives it those qualities also makes it very funny in moments, like in this scene in which

several railroad workers aren't talking during their lunch break.

David Gordon Green, welcome to The Sound of Young America. It's great to have you here.

Good to be here. When you were a student filmmaker, you made your first feature film

straight out of college, but when you were a student filmmaker, what kind of movies did you

imagine yourself making? That's a good question. In terms of movies that I enjoyed seeing,

it's everything. As a kid, I just grew up a fanatic and there was nothing that was too strange

or to bubble gum or popcorn or arti or farti or foreign or whatever. You name it, I was in line

to see everything. I wrote a very touching tribute you wrote to the uvra of Steven Seagal.

Exactly. I'm a big fan of particularly his early stuff, but also in the last few years

grown an appreciation for his directed DVD films as well. My mood is like a roller coaster

...