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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I always wanted the actors to feel really free to leave the words behind if they weren't working, reword lines, if they felt like there was impulse they wanted to follow, if it was taking the scene out of order or adding something, that you should always feel free to do that.

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.