I guess I probably see myself as a director. If I had to choose, I think that that's the aspect of the process that I'm most excited by.

I'm interested in taking things from my relationship that I don't see on screen - or that I feel like that could be useful or helpful if it were out in the open - and trying to put that in the movies as much as possible.

The more that I work with people that I don't know, the more I invite somebody in who's potentially going to really hate being there.

I always loved the work. As soon as I finished a movie, the most exciting thing to do was to try to jump into the next one. How I feel about it is that I learned a lot, so I'm grateful that I learned so much, at such a young age, rather than in my more adult professional career.

We're looking for a certain kind of realism or naturalism, and we go about it in different ways, but I think we're all striving for the same end result, which is to capture the patterns of conversations and how people interact in a very realistic way.

The really cool thing is all about being able to take your movie around and show it. It puts you in direct contact with people who are like-minded and interested in similar things. I think the film festival circuit has certainly helped to foster the community.

There's a lot of cultural pressure around specialness and seeing your family. I feel like everything gets jacked up a little bit because of all of these expectations of love and family bonding.