When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

I'm too big a fan of rhythm and editing. I'd much rather my editing be brave than my shooting.

Too many people believe in that [Alfred] Hitchcock thing that he only shot exactly the shots he needed for the dialogue he needed and I think that's bullshit, even if that was true for that singular filmmaker.

'Election' is a movie I'd give a leg to cross the director's name out and put mine in.

Being pregnant changes you as a human being and it gives you a whole lot of mixed feelings.

Everyone wants to be loved; everyone wants to know where they're going in life; everyone wants to have a sense of direction and feel the next day is going to be better than today. We just all deal with it in a different way.

I have a strange fascination with the Midwest. I'm waiting to find out that my parents are actually from the Midwest. I grew up in Beverly Hills, up the street, and I just feel comfortable there. I've shot in Minneapolis, in Detroit, in St. Louis, in Omaha - they would say they're the Plains, not the Midwest - and I love it.