I had the experience of having my grandmother in a nursing home at the end of her life, and had dementia set in with my father. He was in a nursing home with dementia at the end of his life, but it happened for me personally 10 years ago. My father was much older than my mother, so I experienced it as a pretty young person. People's parents die at various ages, but my father died of mortality. He died of being an old person. Illness and stuff happened, but essentially, he was old and he was going to die.

Little projects - not feature - film projects - you know, theater things, writing things, and jobs like doing rewriting for money, stuff like that. I don't recommend it. It's not a schedule that I'd want, although it was really good for me in a lot of ways. I became a better writer.

I just thought that was so interesting, that people that deal with bodies on a much more corporeal level, like the attendants, had a whole different set of criteria than doctors, and that they had this secret knowledge of something. I thought it was strange and interesting, so I took it to my script.

That's what all these studios do: They recruit people who've seen certain films. It's this weird, fake science-y thing the studios call a "tool." That's a very scary process, because it can be used in odd ways. But then there's focus groups and stuff like that. I was so nauseous and terrified, and then you get the cards: very good, good, recommend.

Writing is so... I don't know, it's such a practice, and I feel very unpracticed in it, because I'm not doing it every day. And I really need to do it every day. In other words, you spend all this time writing a movie, and then you stop, and then you're shooting the movie, and then you're cutting, and a year and a half goes by, because in the editing room, you're not writing.

After the editing room, I go and take a nap. I'm not in the practice of writing, and I feel like I'm flabby, and I have to start arriving at the desk every day, and take off one hat and put on another one. So I'm starting, but it's very sloooow.

Ideally, I'd prefer never having to be in a test-screening environment. Some famous director said "The group is smart, the individuals are stupid," about the experience of a test screening.