I feel like this is the way I was meant to interact with acting. Which is as a director, and helping, working with actors to find their way. Facilitating their performances is so satisfying for me.

Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.

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.

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'd always wanted to work in television once I found out that they started to hire independent filmmakers to direct.

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.

I just really feel so grateful to Sundance because I've always been an artist and I've never been able to make a living at being an artist until Sundance.