I think this happens to a lot of people, men and women, where you reach a point in your life and all of a sudden realize that things have changed. You suddenly realize that people are coming up behind you, that maybe somebody might want to replace you for less money.

We have a lot of women on the staff, obviously. It's a predominantly female writing staff and we hire the best people. It's not like we go we need more women or we need four women directing.

You can't do a movie without villains. You have to have something for the heroines or anti-heroines to be up against, and I wasn't going to contrive some monstrous female, but even if this were the most men-bashing movie ever made-let all us women get guns and kill men-it wouldn't even begin to make up for the 99% of all movies where the women are there to be caricatured as bimbos or to be skinned and decapitated. If men feel uncomfortable in the audience it is because they are identifying with the wrong character.

I think this happens to a lot of people, men and women, where you reach a point in your life and all of a sudden realize that things have changed. You suddenly realize that people are coming up behind you, that maybe somebody might want to replace you for less money.

The world will provide you with every imaginable obstacle, but the one most difficult to overcome will be the lack of faith in yourself. Leave it to others to have doubts about you.

For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.

Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.