It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.

People make films about all kinds of relationships, but they won't do these extremely intense platonic love affairs that happen between young girls. In a way they are more intense than anything else you ever have, and that's what I wanted to make a film about, though it was in the context of a horror film.

I remember being really interested in the sad parts of Los Angeles, of which there are many, and knowing we weren't up in the citadel on the hill, but we also weren't on the bottom. I was very interested in the poetry of failure as a child.

The really important people in TV are not the directors; they're the writers.

I just don't think I'm an ideological filmmaker in any way. I don't know how anyone could see anything I've done and see that.

When people see the conventions, they think they're going to get the straightforward genre - I don't give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don't understand the conventions because I'm not a good filmmaker.

There was a lot of anger among critics that I had not made a sexy movie.