"There's a kind of tension created there that I was sort of after. It made some people very uncomfortable. 
The people who don't like the film, often that's what it's connected to. We're used to fantasies of unrelieved violence. We're used to that. I know I am. But we're seldom exposed to the unrelieved tension of compassion and kindness without sentimentality. And I think that creates a tension in a viewer. You're like, Okay, when is he going to cut the doll up and throw it in the lake? When is somebody going to murder somebody?"'
-- Nancy Oliver, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Lars and the Real Girl in conversation with Elvis Mitchell on KCRW's The Treatment (2.20.08)
