Meryl [Stripe]spoke out about the low percentage of female critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Why are there 760 male critics and just 168 women? You are immediately [biased] on what kind of films you are being told to go see. What are you told are good films? Male films.

We read about secret lives that people have on the Internet, or alternate lives of a serial killer where the whole family didn't know that their dad or their brother or their child was that. There are all the things in our heart that no one really knows, and I thought that that was interesting territory to explore.

When I talk to film students, I always say, "Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes," because that's such a great learning tool.

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.

I thought, "If I can make you feel what it's like for that first super-passionate love, other people might like that too," and, of course, they did.

Usually, we have some of those nostalgic moments like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we survived that day," because filmmaking is such a wild roller coaster ride.

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.