I wouldn't necessarily say that 'Alpha House' or 'Betas' embodied a particular vision of Amazon of the kind of brand or programming they were gonna do. I think those were the first lucky creators who hit it right for them.

You must speak the vision of your project in a way that convinces people to pay for it. If they won't pay for it, that is the artist's fault. It is my fault. It is your fault. It is not the executive's fault or the world's.

For me, when I'm not working, the day goes by so fast. I never have enough time - getting a manicure, getting a pedicure, getting my workout in, making sure that I ate healthy. Those things can become treacherous to the mind.

On some sets, if a helicopter goes by, what would normally happen is that somebody would go, 'There's a helicopter. Stop.' I'd never stop for a helicopter. I am always trying to make sure that the machine is in service to the actors.

Your first job, I tell people I mentor, is managing your affect. Be nice and say nice things. Make it so that the people walk away from interacting with you and say, 'That was fun.' That will make them want to come back and do it again.

Guys, there's only one thing I hate more than bloggers who start sentences with 'guys' - and it's those mealy-mouth hipsters who crochet codpieces and their ye-olde-sideburned friends who pickle stuff and slaughter their own gluten-free goats.

If you go to Europe, public bathrooms have any-gender sink areas and stalls for everyone to use. This is completely reasonable. It potentially involves the destruction of the urinal industry, which I think people would be happy to see go away.

I think of myself as a producer. As a producer and as a showrunner, I already understand what it meant to gather people into a room and step back, to create the boundaries of 'everything's okay' to allow TV writers to go to their craziest places.

Sometimes it seems like America is the Christian and Israel is the little Jew they love in this fetishistic way. Like, you're my little sister and I'll kick anyone's ass that messes with you. But when we're alone and no one's looking I'll harass you.

It's interesting to think about the history of Israel in relation to the history of the U.S.. There were Native Americans living here that U.S. settlers totally displaced, and that narrative is not connected with the Isreal-Palestinian struggle at all.

I guess a show like 'Entourage' would be wish fulfillment, right? But 'Entourage' is wish fulfillment for men. It's that you can be kind of schlumpy-looking and have access to someone famous and find yourself at a pool party surrounded by girls in bikinis.

When you're making an independent film, it's like this actor plus this actor equals this funding, this financing. Pull this actor out, this actor is still here but this money's gone. It's this frightening puzzle mosaic that is the world of independent film.

In the little travel I've done to other countries, the Jews there embraced me saying, Come to our house, come and have Shabbat with us. Jews in the Diaspora. I didn't imagine an Israeli traveling to the U.S. would feel this intensity of a forced relationship.

Whether you're writing television or movies, at some point you're going to encounter a male executive or investor who's going to say, 'I don't like that woman. She's unlikable.' And often, it's literally for being a regular human woman as opposed to an attracting human woman.

As you grow and change, you become possibly someone else. You want to go back to your family of origin and say, ‘Do you still love me? Would you still love me if I become X or Y or Z? When will you stop loving me? Is this unconditional love and if not what are the conditions?’

As you grow and change, you become possibly someone else. You want to go back to your family of origin and say, ‘Do you still love me? Would you still love me if I become X or Y or Z? When will you stop loving me? Is this unconditional love and if not what are the conditions?’

From the moment you say 'action,' this is the fun part - things should happen that surprise you, excite you, scare you, turn you on, make you laugh. If things aren't surprising you, when you say 'cut,' whisper things to the actors that will make them do things that do surprise you.

The network shows have this very commercial voice that you have to adhere to, and the cable shows, it's kind of like winning the lottery. The independent film world is a world you can actually get to. You can get the under-a-million-dollar film by finding a good cast and financing.

There are a whole bunch of people - Republicans or sports fans or reality TV fans - who probably would never have recognized that they have trans people in their world. Caitlyn Jenner really is thinking about the movement and saving lives, so I know that her intentions are honorable.

Getting into Sundance is a certain sort of passport to a level of anxiety I've never experienced, even having had a baby in the NICU for a week. For about ten minutes, you're a world-class director. Then you become an entry-level, harried, low level concierge with absolutely no juice.

We grew up watching Woody Allen and Albert Brooks movies, and we see this neurotic, annoying, unlikeable male at the center of a story, and people root for him anyway. I think that's really what we have been craving as women is the hero who doesn't look perfect and doesn't act perfectly.

I'm like a bit of a feminist, I have kinds of highly political dreams. I'm a dreamer about taking on the patriarchy and all that kinda stuff. So I actually have the secret belief that there are enough people who would consider themselves quote-unquote "other" to support my particular taste.

Many of our holidays revolve around traumas that happened to our people and how we must remember them in specific ways. The way these stories are told and what we take away from them can change, and do in certain contexts, but overall I am not sure whether Jews want to let go of the narrative of the victim.

When I write, I lose time. I'm happy in a way that I have a hard time finding in real life. The intimacy between my brain and my fingers and my computer... Yet knowing that that intimacy will find an audience... It's very satisfying. It's like having the safety of being alone with the ego reward of being known.

I remember learning about the Holocaust when I was in kindergarten and being terrified. I think we even watched a graphic video about it in Jewish day school. Although I was quite young, I remember making these vows to myself such as, I'm never going to love my country so much that I can't leave in a moment's notice.

There are multiple shows of record about a late-transitioning patriarch and how the kids are affected, and there are multiple narratives. That narrative on "Keeping up with the Kardashians," the answer is, they're pretty much fine. It's the same sort of story we were telling which is, you know what? Everybody's okay.

Many of the trans women who are in our world are also in Caitlyn's Jenner world. And yes I've definitely spoken to her multiple times, talked to her, socialized with her. It's a small community when all is said and done, the trans community in Los Angeles. So everybody really knows each other and everybody's in contact.

My experience as a Jewish American has often been as a spectator of one-sided conversations, or more like monologues, about Israel, Jewish History, Jewish identity, etc. Although there are profound divisions amongst Jews on all of these topics there are not many opportunities for deep and thoughtful dialogue about them.

If most of the reviewers are white cis men, if most of the distributors are white cis men, most of the executives in history have been white cis men. Most of the people who have been giving awards to people are people who've already been in the business - retired white cis men. They've been creating a body of narrative forever.

I did a piece where I was talking about torture at Abu Ghraib, and I embroidered my hand with the image of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoners who'd been tortured using a needle and thread. I know that meeting a Holocaust survivor when I was eight and seeing the tattoo on her arm from her time in the camps influenced my piece about Abu Ghraib.

So much of the United State's political relationship with Israel is based on culture. Israel is the only Westernized culture in the region and the Middle Eastern countries bordering Israel are Arab, which is a totally different society. Even though Israel doesn't exactly feel like the United States, by comparison to its neighbors it's very Western.

There was an Israeli artist who was in grad school with me. I remember trying to get to know him on a more personal level. He had moved to the Fairfax area, not realizing that it's a super Jewish part of L.A. He told me, I don't understand why American Jews feel this connection with me. I was embarrassed because I was feeling that connection with him, too!

So for me to actually have access to women, to feminist women, to gay people, to trans people, to intellectuals, iconoclasts, weirdos, academics, just the people who don't normally get marketed to, in some way I kinda hoped that if I could collect all of them, I could say, "Hey! Look over here! There are enough people who like my stuff." And it sorta has seemed to be true.

I had seen "Force Majeure" and I just love that movie so much. And I really wanted to artistically give a little hello to the filmmakers, and that kind of back and forth dialogue between artists that say, "I loved your movie. I was influenced by your movie. If I didn't have this job, I wouldn't be thinking of that. Do my TV show and then one day I'll make a movie where I can play with some of the visual themes in "Force Majeure."

It's assumed that if you're a woman, you want to be the prettiest version of yourself. It always put me in a bad mood. It was like, "OK, I'm successful. I'm supposed to be happy. Well, why aren't I happy?" Part of the problem was that my looked-at-ness had become a priority over my art making. Over and over again it was like, "I don't have time for this. I want to work." I love writing. I don't love somebody putting false eyelashes on me.

If people want to watch that five hours [of stream show] on their own terms in their own schedule. It needs to work if somebody wants to stop after an hour and a half or stop after half an hour. People talk about it like food. Like, "I just want to let you know I'm saving it." They talk about it like pasta. "I'm saving it. I'm only going to have one a week." And I love the fact that everybody can have their own experience and I want to make sure that what we put out there works in as many ways as possible.

We do want the freedom to move scenes from episode to episode to episode. And we do want the freedom to move writing from episode to episode to episode, because as it starts to come in and as you start to look at it as a five-hour movie just like you would in a two-hour movie, move a scene from the first 30 minutes to maybe 50 minutes in. In a streaming series, you would now be in a different episode. It's so complicated, and we're so still using the rules that were built for episodic television that we're really trying to figure it out.

Along the way, female filmmakers will have the feeling that they're not good enough. And that's really just a result of being "otherized" from the moment they're born. Keep an eye out for all those insecurities, and even expect them. Borrow white male privilege and just move through the world as if it was created for you. You have to kind of talk yourself into an imaginary space where the world is on your side and expects you to speak and wants you to speak. You have to create that space for yourself over and over again. Every hour sometimes.

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