I love to champion some of the hardworking actors where, it's been said to me, they don't bring money. But to me, they bring everything. They bring their wonderful selves.
I'm from the East Coast, and so therefore, the Pacific Northwest forest is very exotic land to me.
I find it so hard to make films about my own region, but it could happen.
My producing partner and I were shown a novel we really liked. It was called 'My Abandonment' by Peter Rock, and we enjoyed reading it.
There's a period where you feel very hinky and low about yourself, like, 'That was a lot of time, and there's nothing to show for it.' I've tried to tell myself that if you're going to be a filmmaker, you can't really talk like that about time, because you'll hate yourself or feel very worthless.
When I find those actors who are going to work that hard and collaborate that deeply, my role is to make sure there's a whole lot there for them to work with.
Sometimes you get ensnared by an idea, and it's what I call 'the sticky burr': You go hiking, and a burr sticks to you, and that's the film you're going to make.
American film isn't just film and glamor and fame and the lives of people who are fortunate financially. Those aren't the only stories in this vast nation. That's my mandate.
Emerging actors know there's a whole lot to learn each time they are spending with someone who's done a lot.
I'm reaching for emotion and drama, the drama of the everyday: what happens when you don't have shelter, food, and clothing. There are some stakes. If you're displaced or evicted, there's a suspense: How will you solve that?
The process of starting up a new film is one of looking through a lot of material and trying to find something you really like. And it does sometimes take a minute.
Sometimes I struggle with being American.
We're always on the search for a novel or a source or an existing screenplay, or writing something ourselves that turns us on. But because films cost a lot of money to make and a huge amount of effort to get the people to rally, you have to really like it; you can't just semi-like it. Getting to 'really like' is the part that takes the minute.
In Hollywood, only a female who's massively damaged is interesting.
Films set in 90210 are ten a penny. But there's rarely room to make films about a different postal code, to show the lives of ordinary Americans who have to live with very limited material resources.
It's been a pleasure to see female comedians be prominent and flourish - like Kate McKinnon's Rudy Giuliani impressions, which are uncanny in their precision.
I come from what they call the land of nowhere. I'm from the suburb. It's extremely atomizing.
You can't make movies without known names, and unknowns can't become known, because they can't get work.
Stereotypes are convenient. And yet within them, everyone will say there's something that - you know, they don't come for no reason. It's just that it takes time to explore complexity.
For documentaries, I think streaming plays an amazing role, but it's a problem when the one service you initially relied on to have an incredible buffet - 'Come and see a lot of world cinema, and the lives of ordinary people as well' - all of a sudden is narrowed down until it's just gladiator after gladiator - and bloodlust.
