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mystery by putting yourself out there like
this? I don’t know that mystery has
ever been my strong suit as a person, so I don’t feel like I’m giving
up some Garbo-esque reclusion.
In some ways I feel safer with this
movie exposing myself because
it’s so written and structured. It
was pored over and made as perfect as possible on the page, so I
felt like I could put my parents in
it as found people. It didn’t feel
exposing as much as it felt like,
“Oh, this is a really good and true
detail I can add in now that I know
I have this superstructure around
it.” But I feel like if I was making
a movie that was just improvised
and just on the fly, I would never
put them in it. It would feel much
too much like, those are my people
and this is my life.
I don’t know, though, that the
films I’d like to make would benefit
from reticence. Sometimes I try to
cultivate it but it feels so fake for
me. Whenever I think, “Oh, just
be boring and don’t say anything
about it,” I remember growing up
in Sacramento where my only access to knowing films and actors
were in interviews or books. I used
to go find those things. I feel like
because of how much I benefited
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from people just talking about
how they did things, I owe it to my
young self to be open about it. I
even read my contemporaries who
are younger than me — I read what
they say. I’m fascinated. Then I’ll
have some experience with an art-
I think it’s one of the
tragedies of people who make
things: They really do care
more than anybody else what
people think. You have to
have a weird combination
of caring and not caring to
actually get something done.”
ist who I think is great, and they
will not talk about anything and
I’ll think, “God, they have it right.
You shouldn’t talk!”
You mention contemporaries, and I know
you’re planning to direct a film in the
future. Do you look at how harsh the media can be on female writers and directors — like the kind of visceral criticism
levied at Lena Dunham — and worry that
could also happen to you? I hope it
doesn’t happen to me because I
have very thin skin. I wish I was