The movie is in my head and that's the movie. But I'd be crazy to not be flexible. I think because I have the movie in my head, I can be flexible. I know what's going to work and not work and I know, generally, what I can change and bend and have the movie still work.

I thought of the scene while writing scenes with Rebecca [Hall] and wrote it like an opening montage of showing where someone works. If you see a film about a car mechanic, you'd show the place they work and what they do. So, that's what I set out to do with Rebecca's character. I thought it probably wouldn't even make it into film but I ended up liking it.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

Catherine Keener really gets me. She and I have such a shorthand together.

I know I repeat myself in all my movies, but I just let it go, let it happen. Clearly, I'm not finished with that issue. But they seem to me like completely different movies. They're definitely coming from me.

What's the trick to writing a great female character? Make her human.

Marriages are so complicated that no one person is the culprit. But, I am really interested in class without really realizing that I am. It's more the manifestations of different classes that interest me.