It’s hard to believe the same guy who made stoner comedies like Pineapple Express (2008) and Your Highness (2011) is also responsible for the cerebrally earthy and intimate likes of George Washington (2000) and All the Real Girls (2003). But it actually makes perfect sense if you know that guy.

David Gordon Green needs to keep mixing it up. His signature move, as he puts it, is to not have a signature move. He innovates and he adapts. He goes where his passions take him. Sometimes he goes for a payday. Regardless, he stays on the move, bouncing between small, personal films, broad comedy, TV series, and commercials. He’s a hustler, in the best sense of the word.

When he needs a location, he asks himself a question: “Where do I know that’s great?” When he needs a cast, he asks himself another question: “Who do I know that’s great?” He’s a very pragmatic guy who happens to have an abiding love of movies, a large imagination, and a furious work ethic.

It all just comes together backwards for me, because I think very practically. I always assume no one’s going to give me money, unless they’re going to absolutely make money. I design things that work within an incredibly economical financial kind of deal. I always try to make things that cost 75 percent of their value.

And he does a great deal of it with his old classmates from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, in Winston Salem. Among the old school friends he still works with: actor-writer Danny McBride; cinematographer Tim Orr; production designer Richard A. Wright; soundman Will Files; and many others.

Green’s college years didn’t just teach him how to write and direct; they also taught him the art of collaboration, of banding together with the men and women in your orbit and putting on a show, and then another one.

He was never an insider, and he easily gravitated toward fellow outsiders.

In school we just quickly bonded over being not from Hollywood real estate. We didn’t know anybody that worked in the movie business. We didn’t come from money, and we couldn’t network. You meet folks that you trust, and you want to try new things, and you’re not afraid of putting your ego aside. That was kind of a cool group of people to just look to and think, “We got to get resourceful and inventive.”

Green is a big believer in favors, granted and received. When he was starting out, he knew he would have to take random jobs to finance George Washington, which ended up with a budget of $42,000. He worked as a janitor at a mental institution. He worked for a cleaning service. He donated sperm. But he also came to a valuable realization: “Everything that you want, someone can give you for free.”

In other words, you learn to barter.

If you want something, you got to figure out who has control of that, and then try to understand what about you could be supported by them. If I want a camera or a location or an actor, someone has access to everything. Rather than asking, “What does this cost?” Say, “Who owns this, and what do they need?” Do they need me to sweep their floors and do the dishes? They need to understand where I’m coming from, because money is not something I have. But enthusiasm, passion, and an incredible work ethic I have all day.

In his own typically Green way, David sort of fell into his first Hollywood gig. And the opportunity came directly from one of those old classmates.

The Danny McBride comedy The Foot First Way made some fans in the film industry, including Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen. McBride took a meeting with them; Rogen mentioned that he and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, were working on a violent stoner comedy called Pineapple Express. McBride expressed interest in co-starring, and he mentioned he had a buddy who would be perfect to direct.

Apatow, who produced Pineapple, had barely heard of Green, and he had no idea Green was looking to pivot away from modest indie dramas. But he met with Green, Rogen, and McBride. McBride told Apatow that Green works a lot like Apatow—a lot of improv, a basic two-camera style. They barely discussed the script, but they all got along.

Soon Green found himself on the phone with then-Sony chief Amy Pascal. She asked which of his films she should watch. He recommended All the Real Girls. She called him back the next day and told him Pineapple Express was his.

“I still haven’t pitched the movie,” he says.

Green still can’t stop working. He shot two episodes of the new Amazon comedy series Red Oaks. His dramatic adaptation of the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis was released in 2015.

No signature move. But a seemingly endless supply of energy and hunger, and an instinct to keep adapting.

Asked directly what advice he’d offer young film students, Green hesitates for a moment. At 40 he’s still pretty young for a guy with eleven features under his belt. The role of cagey veteran doesn’t come naturally. He still has an endearing, starry-eyed quality about being able to do what he does for a living. “Getting old and pretending you’re not is what it is for me,” he says.

Then, when it’s time to work, always think in practical terms.

If it’s raining, don’t not shoot; shoot in the rain. Unless it’s not going to match the rest of your footage; then find a way that you can shoot in the rain and make that a production value. Roll with the punches and the curveballs and the unexpected and the discoveries—and improvise.

“Those are the best assets a filmmaker can have,” he concludes.

CHRIS VOGNAR is a Culture Critic at the Dallas Morning News, where he writes about film, books, television, and pop music. He co-hosts the Big Screen podcast on KERA (90.1-FM), and he hosts Chris Vognar’s Screening Room, a screening series presented with the Dallas Film Society. He was a Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellow at Harvard University, and he has taught journalism, arts journalism, and history at Harvard Summer School, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Texas at Arlington.

Chris Vognar