I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.
Kathryn Bigelow
If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.
What's most galvanizing for me is the opportunity to be topical and relevant and entertaining. That's the holy grail.
It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't.
Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.
You never think the universe will reward your first choice - it just doesn't work like that.
I choose material instinctually - at the heart of it are characters that I feel are fresh and original, and allow for an opportunity to, I suppose, explore uncharted ground.
I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.
The urge to purge the material I come up with is, I guess, an ongoing process.
Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.
My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.
I don't believe in censorship in any form.
I don't know if I thrive in normal life.
One should make morals judgements for oneself.
My dad used to draw these great cartoon figures. His dream was being a cartoonist, but he never achieved it, and it kind of broke my heart. I think part of my interest in art had to do with his yearning for something he could never have.
I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn't sell.
On the other hand, I believe there's hope, because the breakdown and the repair are happening simultaneously.
I think violence in a cinematic context can be, if handled in a certain way, very seductive.
When he brought it to me four years ago, Rodney King had just arrived, I was involved in the clean-up of L.A. and I guess it was part of my experience.
Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.
My interest is to work in as uncompromised a way as possible.
There's really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. I mean we all try to make our days, we all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can.
Perhaps the only thing in my favor is that I am very tenacious. I don't take 'no' very well.
I really look for peak experiences and dramatic material that can allow peak experiences.
Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.
I like high impact movies.
One of the elements in the film that really fascinated me was not to look at the world in bi-polar terms of us vs them or east vs west, which was a by-product of the Cold War.
Our film examines the heroism, courage and prowess of the Soviet submarine force in ways never seen before.
The Communist regime didn't consider this to be a shining moment in history and assigned no heroism to it. They classified it as merely an accident.
There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.
When I made my first film, I didn't think of it as directing, so it wasn't like I set out to become a director.
When James Cameron brought me the script, which I developed with both Cameron and Jay Cocks, I wanted to make it a thriller, an action film, but with a conscience, and I found that it had elements of social realism.
War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.
I suppose I like to think of myself as a film-maker.
I'm drawn to provocative characters that find themselves in extreme situations. And I think I'm drawn to that consistently.
There's a conventional reaction when you see a star: You anticipate he'll be a part of a particular denouement down the road, so you don't worry for that character.
I do have to say I have been very fortunate.
I've always developed all my own pieces, and they're time-consumers.
You only have so much money to shoot a movie with.
Jordan is a very secular, Westernized country in some respects.
For some individuals - some soldiers, some contractors - combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison.
The journey for women, no matter what venue it is - politics, business, film - it's, it's a long journey.
I'm interested in social commentary.
I don't do what I do to try and break a glass ceiling.
I'm definitely not drawn to shooting on a stage, I'm just not.
Am I a 'woman of action'? I don't think of myself that way.
You have to disengage at some point in order to be fresh.
I like to be strong.
I realised that there's a more muscular approach to film-making that I found very inspiring.
I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.
