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.

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.

There's a fantastic, thousand-page book by David Thomson about [David O. Selznick]. Again, it's not the best argument or the best advertisement for his story, because most people aren't going to read a thousand-page book. But I feel like the rise and fall and the work [Mayer] produced - not just the movies, but the memos, the volume of writing - he's just so passionate, and that's really exciting.

Hollywood is really weird to talk about in this monolithic sense because it's this microcosm of anywhere. It's full of a lot of people who have different intentions and different points of view.

For me, the Dennis Wilson story is a quintessential You Must Remember This story because it's one of these stories that people never talk about, don't really think about, and it's forgotten within this major thing that is thought to be this cataclysmic event of the 20th century.

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.

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.