Hollywood in the 1930s is an incredible period of history. There are so many amazing stories about the stars and the studios at that time that you can't fit into one film.
The supposedly petty sexual harassment that so many women have to endure, from Hollywood studios to the factory floor at Ford, is a national outrage that needs to end. Period.
I am not going to do a film based on a bad scenario just to make a big Hollywood film or work with Hollywood stars.
I like characters and stories that challenge the status quo. Lately, I'm really interested in history because I find that in my public school education, I didn't learn about women in history. I want to introduce the world to some great stories and incredible heroes.
There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.
There are people who have incredible stories that we don't talk about. People who did amazing things, men and women who faced incredible odds, and there's nothing wrong with them being heroes for once, you know?
There was a period around Columbine when horror films were being kind of assailed by the government. The studios got very afraid that they were going to be sued, and studios at about that time were all being taken over by corporations.
There was a period that black film had no chance of making it in Hollywood. So, people just made the made the statements that they wanted to make. Whether it was a science fiction film or whatever, b/c they were just making movie for themselves. Then there was a period where people were creating projects as their Hollywood audition 'pieces'. I feel that today we are moving back to the era where we all have our own voices.
I've worked with Hollywood stars, but the reason most of the Hollywood stars I've worked with are Hollywood stars is that they're excellent actors, so I've been very lucky.
I was living in a terrible time when people were being accused of being communists, and they attacked the movie industry, especially the writers. People couldn't work if they were on the blacklist. The studios banned them. It was the most onerous period in movie history. I don't think we have ever had a period so dark as that.
There are so many venues in which stars are exposed today, that we just know much more and the studios don't have the control over stars like they used to, in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
I would love to do a period piece - in the 18th or 17th century. To me, it would be such an incredible challenge because of the way people carried themselves. There are so many incredible stories within those centuries - just the language and the way they carried themselves and what they were going through.
Sometimes people get fairly obscure just for the creative license of it, and that can backfire. Iconic stories are iconic for a reason, and there are so many incredible, iconic history stories that have not been told that we don't need to go too deep in the well yet.
New Mexico is the second Hollywood. No, it is, it is. They built all sorts of film studios.
There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.
Of course there are many films about the period of Fascism itself but I don't know of any about that period beforehand. But it wasn't that specific fact that they weren't there that got me to think about this in the first place. It's not what led to the basic idea for the film, although it became apparent when I began to think about it.
In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.