Here's my unsolicited advice to any aspiring screenwriters who might be reading this: Don’t ever agonize about the hordes of other writers who are ostensibly your competition. No one else is capable of doing what you do.

I wrote a screenplay for a 'Sweet Valley High' adaptation, and it's really amazing to me how many women who are my age have responded to the idea and are excited about the movie.

I grew up in the Midwest; you don't know any screenwriters. It didn't seem like a realistic career possibility.

Hollywood is a perpetual summerland, a temperate, godless yaw where the very word 'season' has been co-opted by television executives. There are few harbingers of winter here.

Los Angeles is often described as the nadir of vapidity, a smog-choked space cradle.

For me, stripping was an unusual kind of escape. I had nothing to escape but privilege, but I claimed asylum anyway. At twenty-four, it was my last chance to reject something and become nothing. I wanted to terrify myself. Mission accomplished.

My boyfriend is Italian and from New Jersey, so naturally he was thrilled to meet Joe Pesci.