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

I can't wait to do a fully improvised script again, to find people who are really comfortable and into it. It's about the capabilities of the people you're working with, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the most brilliant actors need the spine of the text to work off of, and there's no shame in that; they're actors, not writers.

I'm not one of those directors who can just kind of walk away from the edit room and come back and check in.

I'd love for there to be a situation - a world in which that's just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers - different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors - and our work can be taken on its own terms. I'm really looking forward to that day.

So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.

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.