Susanna Fogel

“I love watching action films, and especially the little moments of wit and humor in the choreography in a lot of them. The editing of an action sequence often has great moments of comic timing.”

“I have to say, my family's always been incredibly open and encouraging of any way I might want to express myself. At a very young age, they accepted that my outlet would be writing, and comedic writing, and they were pretty accepting of that.”

“As a consumer, I love action movies and have a lot of opinions about how action comedies don't really do justice to what I find exciting about an action movie, which is the genuine thrill of watching something that feels really high-stakes. A lot of times, it's played for laughs and action, which waters down the sense of danger.”

“I hope that women know that they can and should try everything they're interested in - with the confidence that men have had.”

“Economics drive the creative, and for a long time, movies about men were just considered 'movies,' whereas movies about women were considered niche and only appealing to women. This is to an extent still true, and what it does is represent movies about women as less profitable.”

“My way of dealing with not really fitting in at my very crappy New England high school and junior high was to write sketch comedy and satirical takedowns of the social hierarchies. At the same time, I was developing a love for movies at the height of the '90s New York indie movie explosion: everything from 'Rushmore' to Nicole Holofcener movies.”

“Any place where the Jewish district is the hipster district is a very surreal and awesome place.”

“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.”

“I love Nicole Holofcener's films for their constant duality of humor and emotion and their focus on very real, if flawed, dynamics between funny people.”

“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.”

“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.”

“When the mumblecore 'Tiny Furniture' thing happened, it reminded me of the thing we were trying to do in my little 1995 way.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The process of working with the second unit director and basically sharing your workload with another director is such an interesting, delicate thing - and entrusting that person with your vision and making sure that you are not adding a completely different aesthetic to the mix that you don't have to contend with in editing.”

“I have these wonderful friends, and they're supportive and loving, and you can really be yourself around them in a way some people even can't with their partners.”

“I love action movies, and I love comedy, and I love writing comedy, but the genre of action-comedy - or, at least, as it currently usually is - is just not something that I feel that compelled by, generally, because I find the action to be silly, or it's too slapstick, or the stakes feel low because people are joking in the middle of it.”

“I want to be someone who takes risks but also stays engaged by trying new things.”

“Have confidence in your own voice, be entrepreneurial, and take big risks with the knowledge that, by default of being a woman, people are going to advise you to be conservative, play it safe, make sure everyone likes you, and constantly question whether or not you're ready to be in charge.”