“I wasn’t initially sold on the notion of doing two movies at once. To a degree, it made sense — we had a pretty big team eager to join us after our success with ‘Screening Process,’ a lot of whom had overlapping skill sets. But other than giving ourselves (and by that I mean me) more work, I couldn’t see the creative reason for doing it. And then, at a ‘Bystander’ cast and crew brunch, someone proposed making the two movies actually overlap — having a character or interaction travel from one film to the other — and that was what convinced me. Something about creating movies in the same ‘universe’ (à la Kevin Smith’s ‘View Askewniverse’) struck me as intriguing. With that hook, I was in. In retrospect, given the work involved in assembling and coordinating two teams, I don’t know that I’d do it again… though I might be inclined to bring back a character or two for a return engagement. This was the first weekend-competition film for which we actually developed a full-fledged script; I wasn’t sure how Stuart (who is largely improv-trained) or Tim (who’s more of a comic presence than an experienced actor) would take to it, but they both made it seem effortless.”