Joey: No, I was never one of those people that thought “What I really want to do is direct.” It just never occurred to me and other people took the script seriously and believe in it before I did. The script did turn out to be a somewhat personal story and I tried really hard to portray the South in a very real way and respect the people there instead of caricaturizing them. It became that I didn’t trust anyone else to direct it and they weren’t going to get the directors I wanted like Michael Apted or Bruce Beresford. The directors they were talking were people I’d never heard of. I wanted to pick the music; I wanted to pick the locations, I wanted to be there when they edit it and that’s what a director does. So for a little while I was going to do both until I came to my senses and realized I don’t know enough about directing to do both.

DRE: You’ve worked with some great directors who have done similar films like Richard Linklater and Kevin Smith. Did you learn anything about this type of film from working with them?

Joey: Yeah, they definitely made it look easy. Rick and Kevin are both so laid back. You don’t see them lose it much. Unfortunately I probably learned more from the bad directors; because when things are going well you don’t really question it. Whereas if you’ve been in your trailer for eight hours, you have a tendency to walk out on set and go, “What the fuck is going on?” Then you start looking at the shot list and thinking “Why did the director decide to shoot that? If he would have shot this and this and this we would have been out of here by now.” Also the bad directors think they know everything and having been an actress, I was aware of every department on a film so I know the language. I know the teamsters are really important, which they don’t teach you in film school, but if you mess with the teamsters you don’t get your generator. Since I was aware of what I didn’t know and where my weaknesses lay, I surrounded myself with really talented people and turned to them often and said, “What do I do now?”