I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.
There's really no precedent for someone like me gaining clout in the space that I'm in - a black woman directing films in Hollywood.
'Diary of a Teenage Girl' was my first American movie. It was my first movie in an American accent. It's based on a graphic novel, which was written in 2002 by someone called Phoebe Gloeckner. It was turned into a play by Marielle Heller, who then wrote it as a screenplay for Sundance Labs.
I'm a director first and foremost, and I hope that the fact that I'm female is just one of the many things that informs my unique perspective on the world.
I have been enormously lucky. My first role was in a great film by a woman director.
Certainly 'Wonder Woman' needed to be made, and I'm so beyond thrilled with how it came out. I met Patty Jenkins, and I told her, 'I'm sure you're going to make a sequel, and if you need anybody Amazonian, there's always me. I'm available.'
When I started out, there were three things that made film people look at me with condescension, I was young, I was black, and I was female. I have won a certain respect, but I think the film community still sees directing as a male job.
If we do want to bring a woman in to direct a 'Star Wars'... we don't want to talk somebody into it.
Penelope Spheeris is a wonderful lady. She's a very talented director, and I curse better because of her.
Who should make a great movie about Wonder Woman? It should be somebody who loves Wonder Woman. And I know that I'm that. So let's go and try.
I didn't really realize I was a woman director until I walked onto the set at Pinewood Studios when I did 'Mamma Mia!' and everybody was calling each other 'Governor' and 'Sir'... and then, looking at me, 'Well... good morning!'
I don't know if the scripts are changing so much. I mean, I've been working for almost 25 years and made over 40 films and I worked with my first female director, on a feature, "Planetarium". And it's still the only one.
It's a very tricky relationship, the cinematographer and the director as a woman.
I've wanted to produce for a long time. I'd love to get a bunch of my girlfriends together - a female writer, a female director - and create something. Creatively, it's a different dimension. Why wouldn't people want that?
Being the person who gets to make a movie about Wonder Woman, of course, I take that incredibly seriously. I am a huge Wonder Woman fan, and the aspiration comes totally naturally to me.
I said to Martin Scorsese, 'When are you going to make another film with a woman at the center?'
I've never had help from anyone, ever. I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.
'To the Bone' is autobiographical. It's written and directed by a woman; it's starring all women, apart from me and Keanu, who are in lesser parts, and it's produced by women.
We are going to hire a woman who's going to direct a 'Star Wars' movie. I have no doubt.
I don't want people saying, 'Should we get a female director?' I want to hear, 'Should we get a great director for this movie?'
Working with a female director has great perks.
Directors didn't want to work with me because I was 'too controlling.' If it had been a man, it wouldn't have meant a damn thing.
I'm quite unusual in directing terms: I'm a woman. I'm quite a girly girl. I was never academic.
I was aware that I was the first person of all time getting to direct a Wonder Woman film, and that was taken very seriously.
When Cate Blanchett starts directing, it's over for all of us.
