Cinema can transform pain and trauma into something beautiful.
What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?
Every time I get criticism from people, I learn from it and what to do the next time so there are fewer misconceptions. I'm continuing to be socialized as a woman, but also as a filmmaker.
When men create movies about femme fatales, it really is always about how that female can destroy that male. It's not really about what's happening on the interior of that female.
What I like about the '60s movies was that they were about women. They were telling women's stories. I think a lot of movies don't tell women's stories anymore.
I feel like that's how women feel in a way. You can get paranoid because everyone actually is a conspiracy to diminish your power.
The more that I see the sexism and misogyny that's coming at me from every direction, the less I think my films have anything to do with sexploitation.
I think glamour is a female thing. I don't think that's a male fantasy. I think glamour's a female fantasy.
I think a lot of women who are celebrities and who are very beautiful have terrible problems with their men being very controlling. Women allow themselves to be dominated and controlled by men in all sorts of other ways that are very complicated, you know? I don't really see a lot of women engaging in discussions about the struggles and power relations with men and their lives, like their bosses, boyfriends, husbands, coworkers. I don't see that happening very often, whereas I see a lot of misogyny on the internet. I see a lot of hatred towards women and a lot of fear of women.
Men's requirements of women are impossible and ridiculous and so destructive.
We women have gained so many more things, but we lost that kind of sexual power, the glamour power. We still love women who can still do that in culture.
No matter what I do, all people talk about is production design, whether it's not good enough or it is good enough. And I'm thinking: This is because my content makes people uncomfortable. It's a way for people to not talk about the content.
Heterosexual women who've had long-term relationships see their man fall apart. They go, "I'm giving him my whole life - I'm giving him my love, I'm cooking for him, he's got this great sex, he's got everything. Why is he so miserable all of a sudden? Why does he want to get away with his buddies and look at other girls? What is his problem?" It seems like something that happens to men, they feel like their manliness has been chipped away and destroyed by being with just one woman. They feel resentful and they're passive-aggressive.
Plenty of women say, "I'm just going to make myself into a sex object." But they often can't stay afloat doing that. They can't maintain their sanity. Some women can, but many cannot. They think they can, but self-objectification is really dangerous.
I base everything on my own life experiences as a female. I start from there, and then I look for characters and settings that I think are cinematic, where I can use symbols and imagery to tell a story.
Women sometimes really love to look at other beautiful women on the screen. But they don't look at a woman the way a man looks at a woman. They want to be that woman. They like if a woman is beautiful or sexy, especially if she's powerful. They like to see her catch a man, or to be powerful in the world. I think this is why a lot of women love noir films and classic films because they can really identify with these really strong, beautiful women. That's the kind of power that women have lost culturally.
I've always loved movies dealing with the terror of a woman who doesn't really know her husband and finds out that he's a monster. It's one of my favorite plots.
I see being a woman in the world as a social problem. That's very urgently problematic in terms of it still being a man's world, and women's identities still being shaped by the way men look at them, and the way men can control what kinds of opportunities they can get based on how desirable the men find them, or how compliant. I don't think that's really changed a lot.
Anything anybody's used, a comb, a lock of hair, a drop of sweat, anything that comes from somebody's body has incredible magical power.
I think women love glamour. I mean, not all women, but I think this is something that women share.
Men in long-term relationships, we all know how they lose their mojo, they just completely fall apart. They feel like they're not even a man anymore, and they get kind of feminized and weird and they have this longing for this animal, brutal part of themselves to come back. Love does something to men.
