Goats is Christopher Neil’s first film as a director, but he has both an unusually deep connection to the material and an amazingly sturdy foundation of cinematic experience from which to draw. An adaptation of Mark Jude Poirier’s rangy novel of the same name, the film tracks the coming-of-age of Ellis (Graham Phillips), a 15-year-old Tucson native who leaves behind his New Age hippie mom (Vera Farmiga) and his best friend — an affable stoner and their live-in gardener, named Goatman (David Duchovny) — to attend an East Coast prep school where his estranged father (Ty Burrell) once matriculated. I recently had a chance to speak to Neil one-on-one, about the movie, marijuana and his connection to the Coppola clan. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.