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.

As a performer, I could be like, "I don't want to leave that in there." But as a producer, I have to leave it in there.

The stuff that I've been doing lately is political. It's not always about people who are super famous movie stars. The fact that people are still taking a chance and listening to the blacklist episodes is really exciting.

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.

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.

If you look at pictures of David O. Selznick , he wasn't even attractive. There's no way to portray him in a way that is glamorous, but that's one of the things that's fascinating to me about him.

I don't know if it's entirely fair to blame [Dennis Wilson] early death and complete self-destruction on his involvement with Charles Manson, but it was certainly a factor. It affected him psychologically and emotionally.