I don't think it's a contradiction to find painfulness funny.
— Jill Soloway
If you can laugh with your friends over something, you own it.
I love the Army-Navy surplus store Surplus Value Center. They have really good long underwear and multicolored bandanas, cool camo jackets, and really, really scary-looking knives. If you're into that sort of thing.
A lot of the people I know connect through working. We're all so ambitious. Sometimes my friends will say, 'I want to hang out with you.' And I just go, 'Well, let's do a project together.' That's the only way I can.
I'm very aware that just driving blindly towards money won't get me anything. I drive blindly towards making the world a better place.
The inbox is always open in my brain, and anyone can get in any time and access me. Turning it off is taking back control. I decide who gets in. It's about emotional privacy, having a self.
I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.
I was the kind of Jew who'd be in a bar, somebody would say it's Yom Kippur, and I'd go, 'Really?'
The more horrible the truth that you admit, the better you connect. You have to tell the truth.
Getting into Sundance is a certain sort of passport to a level of anxiety I've never experienced, even having had a baby in the NICU for a week. For about ten minutes, you're a world-class director. Then you become an entry-level, harried, low level concierge with absolutely no juice.
I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.
You must speak the vision of your project in a way that convinces people to pay for it. If they won't pay for it, that is the artist's fault. It is my fault. It is your fault. It is not the executive's fault or the world's.
Every project is a race between your enthusiasm and your ability to get it done. Go fast. Don't slow down. A year from now, new things will interest you.
For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'
If you're in a room and can be seen by actors, you need to understand that you can be felt by them.
I think, because of the Internet, we're not looking at the very, very narrow channels for distribution that there used to be.
If there's a woman who is exhibiting her femininity or performing her femininity, it's always seen as meant to pull in the male gaze.
All writing is propaganda for the self.
For clothes, I like this little store on Fountain, Matrushka Construction. Beth Ann Whittaker and Laura Howe make amazing things. You can get a designer skirt with cool embroidery for 40 bucks instead of $400 or $4,000.
I'm a minimalist Jew, but on Friday night, I celebrate Shabbat. At sundown, we light candles, say the blessing, and I don't turn on my computer for 24 hours.
You just have to say over and over again: 'I am a director.' Nobody gives it to you. Nobody anoints you.
I like to create a community where people want to come and have a good time and do their best work.
We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.
I really like writing television, and I like the collaborative writers room feeling. It's ten people, and you're together every day laughing your heads off.
Some of you guys are going to boo, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't like dogs.
I am beyond excited to share 'Transparent' with the world through Amazon. They've been so supportive through this incredible process.
Guys, there's only one thing I hate more than bloggers who start sentences with 'guys' - and it's those mealy-mouth hipsters who crochet codpieces and their ye-olde-sideburned friends who pickle stuff and slaughter their own gluten-free goats.
The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.
Your first job, I tell people I mentor, is managing your affect. Be nice and say nice things. Make it so that the people walk away from interacting with you and say, 'That was fun.' That will make them want to come back and do it again.
Perfection would be something that you see in 'Architectural Digest.'
On some sets, if a helicopter goes by, what would normally happen is that somebody would go, 'There's a helicopter. Stop.' I'd never stop for a helicopter. I am always trying to make sure that the machine is in service to the actors.
It's a struggle every day to get people to invest financially in portrayals of women that aren't satisfying to straight white men.
I really feel like becoming a director came from other women saying, 'Yeah, you can do this.' I wanted to direct 'Six Feet Under,' and no, they didn't let me.
I've been playing with this idea in my mind that the hero's journey that we're all taught as screenwriters may resonate more specifically for male protagonists and maybe even male viewers.
Years of my life were lived knowing that I'd get a book out of them one day.
On Sunday morning, it's Brooklyn Bagels on Beverly Boulevard. We get them hot. Then we walk some of the famous Silver Lake steps or hike in the hills to the highest vantage point to see the reservoir.
It's hard enough to be a lady writer. Doubly hard to be a funny lady writer.
As much as possible, I put my family first.
My interest in community is what fuels my work as a writer, more than just wanting to write or just wanting to have a TV show.
I always wanted to find my voice and claim my tone, but I was doing it through the steps of being a TV writer. I had the executive producer title. I was running the room.
I noticed that people were craving a way of reinterpreting tradition and of being Jewish without joining a synagogue.
I'm embarrassed that people will know that I can't ride a bicycle. For years, I have been feigning bad ankles and saying I wasn't in the mood for a bike ride.
The first time that I saw people actually make the thing that I wrote was my first episode of 'Six Feet Under.' It was called 'Back To The Garden.'
I just feel like content is content; people want to see it resonate.
To me, it wasn't 'Star Wars' that shaped me; it was more 'Mary Tyler Moore' and, nowadays, 'Louie' and 'Girls.'
From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.
For me, when I'm not working, the day goes by so fast. I never have enough time - getting a manicure, getting a pedicure, getting my workout in, making sure that I ate healthy. Those things can become treacherous to the mind.
Most people privilege the technology, almost as if actors are in service to the machine.
Whether you're writing television or movies, at some point you're going to encounter a male executive or investor who's going to say, 'I don't like that woman. She's unlikable.' And often, it's literally for being a regular human woman as opposed to an attracting human woman.
Femininity in and of itself - and the feminine - can be not only privileged, but honored or worshipped.
