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 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 I was constantly trying to stay in body, so to speak. It feels very surreal, and I go away to a happy place where I'm there but not really there. I was just trying to enjoy the night, I guess is what I'm saying. We had a lovely after-party.

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.

All the more a cheesy musical seems fake, so it requires a level of honesty to be injected or an acknowledgement of that which is fake and fun about musicals, and it isn't necessarily escapist. Like there are great musicals like Once, which feel very almost like a mumblecore musical. I love Once. It's great.

I think now more than ever there's so much available honesty that you can find on the Internet. You can go on to YouTube and find really, really vulnerable, really verité stuff. It's not even verité, it's real! It's people confessing very private things. In a world with "It Gets Better" videos where people are trying to keep themselves alive and speak out to other people and are really brave and courageous.

Any work of art dignifies life.