Emily The Criminal is a must-see movie. Period. But more than myself or the Attack The Culture crew co-signing the dark thriller starring Aubrey Plaza, how about filmmaker and director John Patton Ford revealing nitty gritty details about the film hours before the entire worlds get a chance to see it on the big screen?

JPF comes through for a super deep and fun exclusive conversation to talk about the fact Emily’s fictional $70,000 student debt is nowhere close to wha this real-life amount was, how Aubrey Plaza approached taking on the breathtaking performance and everything in-between.

Check out some interview highlights and keep scrolling to see the entire chop up session.

First and foremost, your directorial debut - have you been able to exhale yet or are you just overwhelmed with anxiety and excitement?

John Patton Ford: [laughs] I’m pretty overwhelmed. It’s been wild. It’s a lot going on. It’s weird. It’s positive anxiety.

You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m still waiting for people to throw the handcuffs on me and take me away. [laughs] Like, ‘Ah, this guy’s horrible.’ [laughs]

John, let me ask you this - the focus is going to be on Aubrey. We’re so used to seeing her as a comedian and Parks & Recreation and to see her in this role? She took it to another level. I want to make sure we get a moment to squeeze in your background because I know a lot of her story relates to what you went through in real life. But focusing on her for a second. How did she get into that mode? Did you have a one on one conversation with her? Did she flip a switch? How did she turn into Emily?

John Patton Ford: Dude, I don’t know. All the credit goes to her. It’s wild. I met her a while ago. We met like four years ago. And then we just started talking and I have a lot of references for this movie, other movies that I sort of used for inspiration so I gave her DVDs and sent her away like, ‘Go watch these.’

She came back and started to kind of get it. She was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do it like this.’ By the time we started filming, she was, I barely had to say anything to her. When we were shooting, she was full-on this character.

It was like the craziest thing. She’s the best.

How dark did you envision this film and did you reach it? I think what people are going to realize is, ‘Oh my God. Student debt is 100 percent the enemy fueling this craziness and all of Emily’s decisions,’ and seduction into this criminal world she gets put into.

John Patton Ford: That’s one of the irony of the movie. If I had made Emily have as much debt as I had, it would have seemed unbelievable so I had to make it less. You’re the first person to point that out. I thought about making it my debt but then audiences would be like, ‘Who would ever have that?’ Student debt is insane.

You realize we have the G.I. bill a few years ago. It wasn’t even that long ago that we were basically paying people to go to school and now we’re putting an incredible amount of debt onto people who are like 18. There are people whose job is to go to a high school and convince 18-year-olds to go $100,000 in debt. Do you realize the depths of people that is?

An 18-year-old can’t even take out a loan to start a small business but can get a student debt loan that they can’t even get rid of. That’s what we signed on for.

Kick back and check out the entire chop up session with John Patton Ford dishing on the extremes of student debt, preparing for the world to finally see his movie and more!