You can have a lot of destruction, but in a realistic female movie, the women are going to be aware of that destruction and apologizing for it.

I have felt that there's a lot of receptiveness to female stories now. I think some of it has a little bit - a lot of it is economically driven and driven by, just, kind of studios wanting to check that box because now they know they have a woman problem that they need to solve.

I didn't have a lot of men to ask questions of when I was starting out. There were two female directors people suggested I talk to when I was starting out, and they were Nancy Meyers and Kathryn Bigelow.

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.

Improv changed my life in the best way. I gained so much confidence and really learned how to use my sense of humor to do something other than make sarcastic comments to the TV, though that remains one of my best skills. I stayed in Chicago for college mainly to continue doing improv, which was an awesome decision for me.

Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.

Just for fun, I'm really goofy and I would love to do some stupid comedy. I'm talking, like, crazy, out there, Will Ferrell type of thing. I love it; I think those movies are so funny.

In 'Pictures from an Institution,' Randall Jarrell was able to transcend the academic novel by simply ignoring it, writing a comedy with no plot at all beyond his own pleasure in language and humanity itself.