When you're making an independent film, it's like this actor plus this actor equals this funding, this financing. Pull this actor out, this actor is still here but this money's gone. It's this frightening puzzle mosaic that is the world of independent film.
— Jill Soloway
I used to think that, when I was a director, I would have a very specific vision of what everything would look like, but now I am more of a camp counselor.
So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.
My sister and I are incredibly close, and we created together from childhood through the time we spent in Chicago at the Annoyance Theatre.
I'm a fan of Louis C.K., I'm a fan of Lena Dunham. I love shows about people that other people would consider unlikable, or, like, the work of Woody Allen and Albert Brooks.
If you're female, and you want to express your femininity, you're actually demonized in the 'Free To Be... You And Me' generation.
Normally, you cast a pilot, and you have to make compromises about being political about who you cast.
Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.
My sister and I created a show called 'The Real Life Brady Bunch,' which was sort of a theatrical sensation that got us attention in L.A. and New York.
I've always been really interested in how people's identities are shaped by where they come from and how they want to get away from where they come from.
We're a whole culture of people who have a really hard time seeing beyond themselves.
I guess a show like 'Entourage' would be wish fulfillment, right? But 'Entourage' is wish fulfillment for men. It's that you can be kind of schlumpy-looking and have access to someone famous and find yourself at a pool party surrounded by girls in bikinis.
I love TV, I love writing, but I love movements more.
It's really easy to do sad; you just put on some sad music and write dramatically - everybody can do that.
When I write, I lose time. I'm happy in a way that I have a hard time finding in real life. The intimacy between my brain and my fingers and my computer... Yet knowing that that intimacy will find an audience... It's very satisfying. It's like having the safety of being alone with the ego reward of being known.
What I have to offer as a writer/director is the stuff with the feeling in it.
My purpose as an artist is to heal the divided feminine in our culture. Well, okay wait, that sounds incredibly cheesy and like something a massage therapist might do at Esalen.
I'm a naturally open person - some might say radically open.
When I went to Sundance for 'Afternoon Delight,' I came back feeling like I wanted to take my experience that I learned from directing and bring that into a series.
I'm always going for truth and honesty.
I've been writing about misogyny for 20 years and trying to understand what femininity means for my entire career.
I always love the soapy conflicts between somebody's family of origin and their new family - 'Do I have Thanksgiving at my husband's parents' house, or at my parents' house?'
'Six Feet Under,' for me, was college. Alan Ball and Alan Poul ran that show and really taught me what it meant to really run a show in a classic way.
People who don't have experience setting healthy boundaries, they have secrets instead.
I always wanted to do a family show.
Normally, I think the people you would use on your first film, it would be a real struggle to bring them with you onto your television show. I just brought every single person with and expanded my little indie film world.
Watching 'Girls,' it was really angering for me at first, because I really had spent decades hiding unlikable, unattractive Jewish girls in likable, attractive, non-Jewish actors and characters.
Being pretty... I'm just confused about it. I mean, I love getting my nails done, but I also like dressing like a boy. I think I feel most myself when I'm mixing femininity and masculinity. Like, fifty-fifty.
It's really easy to be funny. You get a lot of funny people in a room, the show is funny.
At East Side Jews, we can take a risk because it isn't all about the rules. I started it to create a space for all those people who wouldn't go to temple because they were scared of getting the rules wrong.
I've noticed that women are always punished for their sexuality in popular culture.
There's something about the kind of unconditional wild joy of creating that you have with your siblings that I am always trying to get back to.
I love a kind of shambling outsider protagonist who always feels like they're 'other.'
I really relate to the feeling of falling in love 10 times a day and wishing I could never stop falling in love.
I wouldn't necessarily say that 'Alpha House' or 'Betas' embodied a particular vision of Amazon of the kind of brand or programming they were gonna do. I think those were the first lucky creators who hit it right for them.
I took all my TV experience and what I learned about - by writing and directing and bringing a movie to Sundance - about the realities of the independent film market: 'Transparent' is the marriage of those two situations.
After 'Nikki' and 'Steve Harvey,' I had written on a show called 'The Oblongs,' which was pretty well respected and had a lot of 'Simpsons' writers on it. So I was a TV writer with an interesting voice at that moment.
I've always been really interested in secrets - how people find ways of doing things without telling anyone else in order to keep themselves feeling safe in the world.
There's always been something about Jeffrey Tambor, not only as an actor but as a person, where his ability to embody a sort of very dignified feminine way of being just - this was just very clear to me.
Independent filmmakers already have their heads around people on their couches watching their movies.
In most shows, there's usually a hero or a protagonist, and even if there are multiple heroes or protagonists, most shows try and make it so you really always know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy.
I'm constantly confused about how to dress.
I think I've always had that struggle my whole life, of feeling a little bit more gender-neutral, feeling more comfortable as a creative person when I'm dressed like a boy, when I'm dressed more masculine.
