I studied English in college and approached filmmaking from a writing background while trying to learn as much as I could about the technical side of things by making shorts and a webseries.

I'm a writer-director originally from Rhode Island, now living in Los Angeles. I've spent the past eleven years working with a writing partner, Joni Lefkowitz, and am now making the transition into feature directing thanks to this script we wrote together and our incredible producer Jordana Mollick.

I still feel, when I meet actresses, no matter how high-profile they are, that they are starved for good roles.

I try to write from a place of writing what I know, and what I know is interesting and appropriate women with edgy senses of humor. They're not soft people, so why are all the movies about women soft? My friends are all blazing their own paths. Some are married with kids, but a lot of them aren't. Some of them don't want that life.

When I was in high school, I was writing a lot. I dealt with my high school angst by writing short plays and short films. I was obsessed with reading 'Entertainment Weekly' and 'Premiere' and 'Movieline' and all those magazines.

In Providence, we didn't have a first-run movie theater. But we did have an indie movie theatre on the Brown campus. That was the theater we'd go to. I think, as highbrow as it sounds, that I grew up on the films.

The older I got, the less pretentious I got in my art tastes and work.

I think it's good that we're talking about it, but I think there's still a gendered nature to the way that people see female directors' skill sets. And I think we need to keep examining that. I don't know if people know how complicated the issue really is.

We're so used to seeing women in movies about a romance where they don't seem to have any inner fortitude. They're completely defined by their relationships, and it's hard to engage with those characters and relate to them.

I feel like most movies about female friends derive their conflict from an extension of the high school movie rivalries, or there's some petty grievance: a competition over a guy or a wedding date or something. And I don't relate to any of that.