I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.
We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.
And with Aaron, I’d have to find a reason not to work with him.
Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would’ve existed.
Unrequited love is always a great thing.
Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It’s about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?
I will say that the idea of a woman being deceptive came from that original discussion with critics and reporters about if woman could do that kind of thing. Evelyn, herself, grew out of the discussions about how capable women are of deceit and lying and manipulation.
And I’ve got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.
First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they’re reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.
My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We’re all protective of the self.
I make movies I want to see.
Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.
People think my work is therapeutic. I don’t see it that way. It’s not like I’m saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.
If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we’ll come up with some scary stuff.
But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he’s in a place where I wouldn’t have expected him to be – taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend’s wife.
I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.
I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.
I’m more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.
My business is can I create a world that’s possible and could happen? I think that’s the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.
With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult.
You start as an audience member and create a world you’re interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member.