In the indie dramedy Fat Kid Rules the World, from first-time feature director Matthew Lillard, tells the story of 17-year-old Troy Billings (Jacob Wysocki).  Overweight and suicidal, Troy meets Marcus (Matt O’Leary), a charming but troubled high school dropout and street musician, just as he’s about to jump in front of a bus and the two begin an uneasy friendship when Marcus enlists him to become the drummer in a new punk rock band.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Matthew Lillard talked about his journey to becoming a director, the 10 years it’s taken him to get this film to the big screen, what it was about this specific story that he most connected to, what he had learned about directing from all of his work as an actor and what he learned from the process itself, how he knew Jacob Wysocki was the film’s star, how Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready came to do the musical score, that directing has made him re-evaluate the place acting holds in his life, and that he’s already thinking about what he’d like to do for his next film.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.