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

It feels to me like everyone is going to do their best work when they feel emotionally safe.

If I don't have to think about the commercial aspect of it, then I feel like I'm going to make better films.

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.

Hmm, can I be obvious and say there is probably a double standard for male vs. female directors? Sadly, I think that's actually the case. And it probably stems from the fact that there are proportionately so many fewer women directors than men ones that each project is perhaps more closely scrutinized for its content.

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.