Debra Granik

I'd love to do a comedy - something where a character has to use humor to navigate the absurdities of life. ”

It's been a pleasure to see female comedians be prominent and flourish - like Kate McKinnon's Rudy Giuliani impressions, which are uncanny in their precision. ”

Winter's Bone' really suited having a lower budget. It would be so hard rolling into a rural setting, a place where people are poor, and to be thinking you've got $10 million to make a piece of entertainment. ”

Some people have these small, positive schemes for survival, a kind of strength that I am attracted to, maybe because I'm prone to the blues. ”

My first narrative films developed out of a documentary process - finding someone who was willing to be filmed, watching, listening, taking copious notes and many hours of video footage. ”

It's funny: your happiness is contingent on a bigger picture besides just yourself. ”

American film isn't just film and glamor and fame and the lives of people who are fortunate financially. Those aren't the only stories in this vast nation. That's my mandate. ”

I feel like reality TV has thrown a difficult wrench in the system - on the programming and making side, and on the curating side - which is that we now have a higher threshold for the salacious. We have a higher threshold, unprecedented, for fast, cheap, and out of control. ”

I would fail if I had to work with stars. And I also can't afford to work that way. I can't afford to have special circumstances for rarified individuals. So, I work with actors who have given me a sign that they're willing to work in these more humble circumstances, in real-life locations. ”

Social realism takes research. ”