I'm drawn again and again to relationships between people who really, really want to connect and just can't get out of their own way to do it.
All we really want in life is to connect to other human beings, and when you desperately want to connect physically to one specific human being and you can't? That's something I find compelling.
My mom was in education, and I remember reading in one of her books about multiple intelligences - this whole theory about how there are all these different ways you can be intelligent, like eight or 10 of them or something. And one of them is emotional.
In the collaborative process, you create a real intimacy; everybody ends up sharing personal stories and personal observations and their philosophies, their psychological side. By the time you get to set, it just creates such a sense of trust and intimacy between the director and the actors. It's really, really great.
For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity.
We're all flawed, and we all make mistakes, and we all have weaknesses. And those are the kind of people I want to see onscreen, the ones that feel like real flesh-and-blood human beings and not the weird, whitewashed, Hollywood stand-ins for people with the rough edges sanded off that I can't connect to because they just don't resonate with me.
I'd love for there to be a situation - a world in which that's just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers - different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors - and our work can be taken on its own terms. I'm really looking forward to that day.
It feels to me like everyone is going to do their best work when they feel emotionally safe.
I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.
I feel like this is the way I was meant to interact with acting. Which is as a director, and helping, working with actors to find their way. Facilitating their performances is so satisfying for me.
Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.
There's so much great TV and I always thought it would be such a fun little sideway to make money and then not have to worry about my films making a lot of money.
I can't wait to do a fully improvised script again, to find people who are really comfortable and into it. It's about the capabilities of the people you're working with, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the most brilliant actors need the spine of the text to work off of, and there's no shame in that; they're actors, not writers.
Hmm, can I be obvious and say there is probably a double standard for male vs. female directors? Sadly, I think that's actually the case. And it probably stems from the fact that there are proportionately so many fewer women directors than men ones that each project is perhaps more closely scrutinized for its content.
Before adolescence I had an incredible voice. Like when I was 12, 13, 14 - I was taking acting classes, I was painting, I was making music, I was taking photographs. I was kind of exploding creatively, and then something about adolescence really just ground that out of me.
