You spend most of your time as a director trying to move forward with the movie. It happens on a daily basis, if not more than once a day, that you are struggling with budgetary constraints. Whereas when you're writing, the limitation that you have is your imagination. So it's decidedly non-pragmatic.

As a kid, I had a background in theater.

I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.

I choose to write characters from the inside because I feel like that's the way I'm gonna get the most honest version of them.

As a writer, or as a filmmaker, you have to present yourself, and part of what yourself is is what you're interested in, or what you think is funny, or what you think is sad, or what you think is horrible.

I just try to be honest, because I think that's part of my job description as a writer.

From my vantage point in writing a story, I can't and don't and have no interest in thinking about the level of sophistication of the audience. I can only think about what interests me, and maybe what I would want to see if I were watching the movie. To me, that's the key to writing something that's not pandering.