I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.

Once we got over the origin story we could really delve deeper into their lives and characters and angst. So this movie actually has more heart more humor.

M*A*S*H offered real characters and everybody identified with them because they had such soul. The humor was intelligent and it always assumed that you had an intellect.

But because it was able to balance that kind of humor with a sweet story and characters you really rooted for and also got across the girls' point of view I've heard nothing but great things from younger and older females as well.

Back in 2004 Kellie Overbey handed me her play 'Girl Talk' to read. I fell in love with her brutally delicious humor and the fearlessly deft way in which she drew her characters. They jumped off the page and begged me to give them a space in which to stomp around.

With actors like Steve McQueen Paul Newman and Harrison Ford what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies their characters had a sense of humor.

One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.

Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.

When you're young you want to make every kind of film: musicals Westerns horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.

You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.