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.

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.

I remember in film school, when we made shorts, you'd sit there and screen them with your peers, which has its own flavor, because everybody's so competitive and evil, and it's a really nasty environment.

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.

I spent a lot of time on Diane Arbus film, not only writing it, but running around talking through various production issues. All this crud, and then it didn't happen. There's a lot of time-wasting stuff that happens in life with movies.

In terms of my peer group, nobody's parents were dying of old age. There was no dialogue to have among friends. I had that experience, and then 10 years later, I started thinking about writing about it. It's obviously an indelible thing when that happens, and I wasn't looking for material at the time or anything; it just started becoming relevant to me.

Starting writing is stressful and scary and hard, but also, it's just like going to the gym. You're just stiff and weird, and you can't do it as well.