I think producing is first about understanding and finding people who understand it in the same way throughout the crew and everybody who's going to be working on it. And a piece of that is also personality, because there's a lot of psychology into being a good producer.

Somebody asked me, "When was the last time it was harder for you as a woman"? And I was like, "What time is it? Do you mean today?" I hate to say that, because it sounds so depressing, but it absolutely happens in many many ways all the time, large and small ways. But it's not like it creates new pain for me on a daily basis, it's just a pain that I accepted long ago. It's definitely harder.

You want to put people together who will work well, and each movie kind of has its own personality in terms of how people are working or the temperature on set, and we want people who will fit in with that mix. It's one of the really important parts of it.

I think Memento movie was hard because people didn't get it, they just didn't understand it. Not from the stage when we read the script and liked it. It's sort of a famous story now how we finished the movie and showed it to distributors and nobody wanted it. So it wasn't just they didn't get the script, they really didn't even understand the movie when it was done. But I think that was a particularly hard one. I don't think it was harder because we were girls, but I do think obviously there are particular challenges to working in a male-dominated industry.

The hard thing for me, and it took me many years to understand, the concept of Hollywood not being a meritocracy - I am a middle child, and as most middle children will tell you, that never goes away, wishing the world was fair and understanding.

That can be undersold, I think, the importance when you're trying to do something good is that everybody understands the director's vision, everybody believes in it, and everybody can find their own path to supporting it, and that's how you end with a great movie.

I remember somebody had said to me "What're you doing with a movie like Boiler Room? It's all men and you're a woman. You should be making romantic comedies," or something like that. Boiler Room, for me, was a morality tale. I remember this interview where they said to me "Yeah, but all the characters are men," and I was like, "But I'm a girl, I like men!" It's not like there's nothing interesting to me just because a lot of characters in that movie happen to be male. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I only wanna make Must Love Dogs over and over again.