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.

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.

Between the action sequences, the pleasure lies in observing impeccably dressed Brits exchanging barbed witticisms - making it, basically, Downton Abbey with cyber crime and shower sex.

I just think the David O. Selznick story is one of the great, epic stories of Hollywood history that nobody knows. Maybe one of the reasons why nobody knows it is because he wasn't a movie star.

The only Sundance [2011] film about cults that could actually have life as a cult film, THE WOODS has the greatest comic insight into why our current culture might inspire a search for meaning in the first place.

I think, because it's one of my favorite moments in [Charles Manson's Hollywood]. That series got a lot of attention and people talk about it a lot, but they tend to focus on the episodes that have more to do with the murder, Charles Manson doing something particularly weird, or Sharon Tate.

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.