There's something in the Zeitgeist now. A lot of [film] scripts I get have these very dark themes, a cornucopia of dysfunction. You know, Jane is a 13-year-old anorexic who lives with her parents and has been raped by her father. And this is a comedy.

I came to New York, and it was a really cool time. People like Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee were making their first movies, and they were making movies that were personal narratives.

I always say, what really makes a movie commercial is that it makes its money back.

My first job, honestly, was as a proofreader. I say that a little disparagingly, but it actually was this sort of incredible thing, where I got this job proofreading for a cable television magazine.

I think that when you're doing an under-four-million-dollar movie, you just can't throw money at the problems.

When a crisis occurs, I feel that one of my greatest responsibilities is to set a tone of calm no matter what the problems. Sometimes I have to fake confidence a lot. I also have to fake calm.

There were Hollywood movies and then there were those aggressively anti-narrative films that they showed at the Collective for Living Cinema.