In a movie, a book, or a play, a character doesn't live in a vacuum. She is subject to pressures from the world outside of her, just like we are in life. These pressures and circumstances shape character. Who your parents are determines your genetic make up: your skin color, your sex, your height, weight. Where you are raised does affect your worldview either positively or negatively, your accent. Your economic class affects where you go to school, what you eat, where you sleep.

It's hard when you're doing a film based on a true story to really figure out what all those relationships were.

For some reason, when I was in junior high school, my friends and I had, like, a cologne-stealing ring.

I don't consider weed to be any worse than having a beer.

This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad, and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.

My style is casual-chic? Casual-messy?

Generally you don't initiate the projects - they're designed and you're inserted. Your material is edited by somebody. You feel a lack of power over your work.