We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

I'm more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.

But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis. One example would be the letter writing, or the reading of the letters. If you remember from the book, they find the letters and then in the most undramatic way they take them downstairs, they get approval, they sit at a table during the day with their own author, across from each other.