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 remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.

When you look around right now, Nashville is kind of going through another changing of guard; you're watching the Martina McBrides and the Faith Hills and all of them that have been the big stars for the last however many years, and the next generation is coming in: Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, those girls.

I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.

Always, in all circumstances, wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you may have to run for your life.

You can point to a lot of women showrunners that have had long and successful careers. In terms of the kinds of movies that women can get made, as long as the business operates under this model of the first-weekend [box office] focus, with huge movies aimed at super-young audiences, it will be really tough for women to do something that really changes the landscape. Because honestly, until they figure out how to get grown women into the theaters on the first weekend, it won't change.

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.