I like being able to just turn the microscope on a small number of people, get to know them, drop into their lives for a period of time.

Before adolescence I had an incredible voice. Like when I was 12, 13, 14 - I was taking acting classes, I was painting, I was making music, I was taking photographs. I was kind of exploding creatively, and then something about adolescence really just ground that out of me.

I try to build relationships with the actors, at least to some degree beforehand, whether it's phone calls because I'm from Seattle or all of us meeting in person at some point, which is ideal if at all possible before we get on set together.

All we really want in life is to connect to other human beings, and when you desperately want to connect physically to one specific human being and you can't? That's something I find compelling.

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

My mom was in education, and I remember reading in one of her books about multiple intelligences - this whole theory about how there are all these different ways you can be intelligent, like eight or 10 of them or something. And one of them is emotional.

There's so much great TV and I always thought it would be such a fun little sideway to make money and then not have to worry about my films making a lot of money.