Saturday afternoon, I spent about an hour and fifteen minutes talking to writer-director David Gordon Green for a panel at the Austin convention center as part of SXSW’s “A Conversation With…” series. Around 130 people showed up to hear Green talk about his films (”All the Real Girls,” “Snow Angels,” “Pineapple Express”), background and challenges in the business, and ask him questions.

A straightforward storyteller with a hunger to explore different genres, Green discussed everything from the fruitful time he spent making short films in film school to working on his latest comedy, “Your Highness,” with longtime friend Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zoeey Deschanel. The full audio/video will be available on the SXSW website in a week or so.

Asked about his recent work in TV on the HBO series “Eastbound and Down,” starring McBride, Green said that he mostly used friends from North Carolina for his crew and shot it mostly like a “three-hour epic” movie. They’re gearing up to shoot a second season, this time with eight episodes, and having just read the first script he’s eager to take the story in a whole new direction: “We leave the country and most of the characters behind,” he said with a cryptic smile. “It gets dark.”

McBride also stars in Green’s next film, “Your Highness,” which now sounds like a 1980s medieval action fantasy film inspired by — wait for it — movies like “Krull” and “Beastmaster.” My interest level in this film just went through the beamed cathedral ceiling. Green amusingly described the reactions of the theater-trained British actors he hired to surround McBride and Franco, who were constantly trying to throw them off with absurdisms and unexpected behavior.

Off on a funny tangent, Green also described how the fight scene with Seth Rogen, Franco and McBride in “Express” led to injuries for all: Rogen broke a finger, McBride took a bong to the back of the head and Franco knocked a screw sticking out of a tree into his forehead, which led to stitches and the character then wearing a headband.

Green also talked about the development of a “Six Pack” remake for Fox. A guilty pleasure of mine (and Green’s), the 1982 family film “Six Pack” starred Kenny Rogers as a loner racing star who gets involved with a parentless sextet of kids (including Diane Lane and Anthony Michael Hall) who happen to be magic with cars and become his pit crew.

Apparently, Green sparked to the idea of writing an original script when he was living in an economically depressed neighborhood in New Orleans years ago and discovered that most of the African American kids there were obsessed with NASCAR. After sending the script he wrote with Barlow Jacobs around, he got a call from Fox asking him if he would rewrite it to be more of a specific remake of “Six Pack.” And there we have the kind of Hollywood story that makes writers scratch their heads (or shove knitting needles into them). But Green is excited about the project and hopes it moves forward.

Green also described the film “The Sitter,” that he plans to direct for Fox, as “Jonah Hill babysitting three kids and taking them on a coke run.”