I don't think in terms of what's going to be successful. I have plenty of friends who make very small movies and friends who make giant, $150 million blockbusters, and the thing that I really admire is, the ones who do it well do it very sincerely.

And that first screening was overwhelming. You were there. People applauded when the title card comes in; there's a big "gasp moment" partway through the film. It couldn't have gone better, and it was very surreal.

This needs to work on that level, but it has the additional strain of it's going to be profoundly scrutinized by political junkies from the right and the left who will pick apart every little thing. We are inherently dramatizing Hillary Rodham, or Hillary Clinton, who's a very famous figure. There's a lot of biographies about her, but there's also elements that are private moments, that are dramatized with an arc, and we have to take creative license. Everything is sort of a cost-benefit.

I've heard a lot of variation of similar questions, but it's interesting to see the variations of audiences and how different people respond, so I think it's all valid. I don't take it personally at this point, which I probably would have at Sundance. But it's really thrilling.

By the time you arrive at Sundance as a filmmaker, you've been living with your film intimiately, and scrutinized every frame, and probably aren't happy with - or at least I'm never happy with it - and you've seen it in the roughest of states, and you lose perspective, really.

Whether a project is large or small, it doesn't matter much to me as long as I feel I can serve the story as best as possible.

I don't think in terms of what's going to be successful. I have plenty of friends who make very small movies and friends who make giant, $150 million blockbusters, and the thing that I really admire is, the ones who do it well do it very sincerely.