In film producing, there is an inherent tension between the director, the money and the producer, and that's what keeps it flowing and honest and accountable.
When a crisis occurs, I feel that one of my greatest responsibilities is to set a tone of calm no matter what the problems. Sometimes I have to fake confidence a lot. I also have to fake calm.
I keep trying to train myself to stop saying 'filmmaker' and start saying 'storyteller.' We're telling stories.
It's humiliating to have to explain your value.
Ultimately when I throw myself behind a movie, I have to really believe in that directors vision.
The only way to sustain a career is to be as prolific as you can be, and open to opportunities.
I always say, what really makes a movie commercial is that it makes its money back.
My first job, honestly, was as a proofreader. I say that a little disparagingly, but it actually was this sort of incredible thing, where I got this job proofreading for a cable television magazine.
I came to New York, and it was a really cool time. People like Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee were making their first movies, and they were making movies that were personal narratives.
I think that when you're doing an under-four-million-dollar movie, you just can't throw money at the problems.
Being on a set where the director has lost control is just sickening. No one goes the extra mile, theres a lot of eye-rolling... it just breeds inertia. If a director is in control, the crew follow their leader. But the second anyone senses the directors are not sure, people just swoop in.
There were Hollywood movies and then there were those aggressively anti-narrative films that they showed at the Collective for Living Cinema.
There's something in the Zeitgeist now. A lot of [film] scripts I get have these very dark themes, a cornucopia of dysfunction. You know, Jane is a 13-year-old anorexic who lives with her parents and has been raped by her father. And this is a comedy.
