It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

Categorized in : Children Running Couple

Raising a child is the only relationship you have where if you do it right, it will end in separation.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

separation ends children

I had been at the director's workshop for women at the AFI, which at the time was a great thing to do. I had always meant to direct, and for a variety of reasons that are hard to explain, I never did. I produced many things - there'll be people who tell you I directed through them - and of course I wrote. It took a divorce, a move back to New York and a kind of "now I can do anything" to say, "I really want to do this."

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

divorce new-york moving

For many years I thought, "Well, I need to know a lot more to direct." But I looked around and watched all the people I know directing and thought, "No. I just need to know what I want it to be." Then there will be a lot of people to help me get it to there, especially Bobby Bukowski, he's a brilliant cinematographer.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

people years needs

There are people who've challenged me on that, but I think there still are. Not everybody looses their virginity when they're 12, there are always these girls who are sort of outside the norm, who have only each other to hang with and talk to. Who are what you would call late bloomers; they don't know it now but when they're 25 they're going to be pretty damn interesting.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

girl people thinking

Time matters less than the nature of the people. by Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

Time matters less than the nature of the people.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

matter people

When I was in high school, it was the beginning of hippies and free love and sleeping with people was a sign of your liberation and your freedom. Then we [had to worry about] AIDS, so they started lecturing my kids in elementary school about safe sex. Sex turned from something joyful into something kind of dangerous, and it was hard to avoid that sense that it was a different world.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

hippie sex school

It would have to stand on the basis of what somebody had done to it and that would be the basis on which it would be judged. So it's a funny art form. You gain a great deal when you have good collaborators and sometimes people just don't understand what you've done.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

would-be people art

I am, like everybody else, hurt when the thing I've done is misunderstood or attacked but I've gotten old enough to realize that if you do something, not everybody's got to like it. And if everybody likes it, it's probably not that interesting.

Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

misunderstood hurt interesting