I wanted to make connections between Whale's past and present.
I really think the biopic thing so rarely works, because people's lives don't have a dramatic shape that can be satisfying.
I think that finding a way into somebody's life that's sort of off from a side angle can tell you more about that person than a greatest hits approach.
I'm a horrible public speaker.
In Hollywood through the 50s, there were black, English, and Middle European housekeepers and maids.
It is interesting to be here and to see that for certain actors they have to live in a way that you think of nobody living anymore except for in small towns. They have such elaborate double lives.
There's no question that Whale's movies are classics. They were wonderful, and successful.
While that wasn't first and foremost in my mind, you can't get into this without being struck, on one side, by how far we've come, and then the other side, by how little things have changed.
When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years - which are the gay movement and the women's movement - I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those.
I think it would be fun to write about movies again.
We knew that there was a certain kind of interest in Whale among a genre crowd.
Problems emerge and some people try to sweep them under the rug.
Our relationships, relationships between adults, how all those pieces fit together - that's the most complicated thing we all face.
One of the people that became a major source was Clarence Tripp who worked with Kinsey.
Kinsey kick started a lot in shocking people with how much homosexual activity there is.