I'm drawn again and again to relationships between people who really, really want to connect and just can't get out of their own way to do it.

We're all flawed, and we all make mistakes, and we all have weaknesses. And those are the kind of people I want to see onscreen, the ones that feel like real flesh-and-blood human beings and not the weird, whitewashed, Hollywood stand-ins for people with the rough edges sanded off that I can't connect to because they just don't resonate with me.

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.

In the collaborative process, you create a real intimacy; everybody ends up sharing personal stories and personal observations and their philosophies, their psychological side. By the time you get to set, it just creates such a sense of trust and intimacy between the director and the actors. It's really, really great.

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.

The first time I ever intersected with the quote unquote industry or Hollywood or being given a paid job as a director all came because of the reputation I got coming out of Sundance as a veteran Sundance filmmaker.

I hope to keep working with television. I wouldn't mind doing more.