If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

When I was just five years old, I loved the scary layer and the symbolical power of the red cloak. I made my mom make me that red cloak, and I had to wear it on Halloween, two years in a row.

The truth is, most of those female stories that are contending for Oscars are directed by men. Let's be honest. I looked at the 44 Oscar contenders in Variety that someone wrote up - there was not one directed by a woman. All the ones that were getting an Oscar pitch with the money and everything behind them were by men.

I like doing commentary. As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things. I often like the technical commentaries myself.

I just wrote a really cool script. It's called "One Track Mind." It's an origin story about the most successful and the most foul-mouthed, outrageous songwriter in history.

I really wanted our male characters to be a lot stronger. We gave them careers, lives.

As a director, you try to do things that are going to touch the human experience somehow, and emotions that mean something to people. You search for those projects and you hope to realize the potential in a project.