With “Girfriends,” Claudia Weill reacted against buddy films, which ignored or downgraded women. Simplistic in their notion of friendship, most of these films revolve around “two men with beautiful faces and the adventures they have together,” but for Weill, “what's more interesting is what's not said, what people want from each other.”

Miguel Arteta complains that, “because I am Latino, people tend to expect me to make one of two types of films: either a gang-banging, drug-dealing hustling film with one-dimensional characters, or a film that deals strictly in positive images of Latinos.”

Poseidon raises personal questions: What would you do if the whole world turned upside down Would you be a courageous leader or a follower Would you give up or keep on going

“James used to share with me the hardships, fears, and sorrows of a migrant worker's life. But he never neglected to tell me memories from his homeland, Nigeria, and the dream of the life he hoped to achieve one day.”

“George Lucas took out a full-page ad in Variety in support of my right to free speech, but it no effect on radical fundamentalists or the government and the protests raged on long after production had stopped.”