One of the reasons why I failed was because I figured out in the research process that I couldn't tell it as just, "This is what Frances Farmer's life was like." There are so many questions as to what her life was like because of the way her story has been seized upon and exploited by different factions.

There are [in Hollywood] some endemic problems and some things that happen over and over again. There's the problem of representation of basically anybody but white men. These are things that we talk about a lot in contemporary culture, and it's interesting to me to go look at film history from the perspective of today.

Now I'm in a situation where I have to plan very far ahead because there are people who are selling ads, so I have to really know what I'm going to do months in advance. If something's taking me a little bit longer to research, that's not okay. I can't take longer. I have to just get it done.

One of the reasons why I failed was because I figured out in the research process that I couldn't tell it as just, "This is what Frances Farmer's life was like." There are so many questions as to what her life was like because of the way her story has been seized upon and exploited by different factions.

I was trying to see if I could produce an episode - completely write it and research it and record it and edit it - all by myself in a week.

In terms of the way the industry operates, the studio system was such its own thing. It's so different now that it's a globalized world.

You read these stories of people who were in Hollywood in the late '60s. After they found out about the murders, everybody was like, "Have you met [Charles] Manson? Have you been to that ranch?" In some way, everybody felt connected, but what was it like for people who really were connected.