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.

Cinema can transform pain and trauma into something beautiful.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Men's requirements of women are impossible and ridiculous and so destructive.