A Quote by Mora Stephens
I like developing characters who I find to have interesting psychology. Like politics and sex, but I'm really looking at bigger social problems that interest me, and that I can obsess over for a while.
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I mean that I think I find the psychology of people more interesting than politics. I think the psychology of politics is more interesting than straight politics.
I always feel super uncomfortable when it's like ah, there probably has to be a sex scene. I feel really bad and then always look around to see if anyone is watching me while I'm writing. I want to apologize to people who have to read those sex scenes, but I feel like it's part of the characters life, it's important.
Fitzgerald describes the social disillusionments and ballroom romanticism of the young people of the upper classes and the loneliness of Gatsby, who gives large parties and has an extensive social life; yet he is lonely, and his guests scarcely know him.... Hemingway's characters live in a tourist world, and one of their major problems is that of consuming time itself. It is interesting to observe that his works are written from the stand point of the spectator. His characters are usually people who are looking--looking at bullfights, scenery, and at one another across cafe tables.
Oh, I shop all over the place, really. Like I love department stores like Barney's and Saks and stuff like that. But I also just like to walk in Soho and find some interesting boutique that doesn't really have a huge name or following, and I'll go in and find something amazing.
Although I do use some of my psychology training in comedy, but it's more like pop psychology, not a course of treatment or anything. To me, it's more like social intelligence.
I really don't find revivals very interesting because I like new work a lot. I feel like if you're going to pay me, then let me do what I do and let me try to solve some problems. Let me try to make something fly. Why would I do something that everybody has already done the hard work on? But that's me. Tons of people do revivals really well.
I would say that my fatal flaw, as a human being, is that I need people to like me, and if they don't like me, I will obsess over it - and try to change my personality until they like me - even if they don't like me for reasons that have nothing to do with me, and even if they're strangers.
I remember somebody had said to me "What're you doing with a movie like Boiler Room? It's all men and you're a woman. You should be making romantic comedies," or something like that. Boiler Room, for me, was a morality tale. I remember this interview where they said to me "Yeah, but all the characters are men," and I was like, "But I'm a girl, I like men!" It's not like there's nothing interesting to me just because a lot of characters in that movie happen to be male. Just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I only wanna make Must Love Dogs over and over again.
With Michael Jackson, what I thought was really interesting was the people saying: 'He looked really well in that final video.' I was, like: 'No, he didn't - he looked like someone had melted goat's cheese over a sex doll.'
Nothing's really changed for me over the years. I like telling stories about people with problems. I can't really put it much simpler than that. Relationships are interesting to me. Not just between men and women but fathers and sons, brothers and sisters and friends.
I'm sick of the tabloids' saying I obsess over guys. Why would you obsess over guys? They don't like it.
Usually, I like to play sophisticated-looking characters. I want to do 'Godfather'-like characters. Given my voice and style, such characters will be apt for me.
I really just like characters who you don't know where they stand for a long while. It's like people. You hang out with them for 10 years, and then all of a sudden they do something, and you say, 'Who are you?' That's more interesting. In life and on-screen.
I want to get back to education. When I was in college I paid attention to child psychology portions of our psychology classes. I watch other people work with babies. And I saw the baby as developing like a computer and it intrigued me in my life. I wanted to do that.
I think there's a lack of really, really good funny scripts out there that work on all the levels that they're supposed to - which is to say that they're not just funny but they have interesting characters that people are going to like and be invested in. I've done a bunch of movies that haven't worked but I like to think I've done some that have worked and that's because not only is the comedy there but the characters and storylines are interesting. The characters are real and relateable and people were invested in them.
Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.
