UD: What I particularly liked is that some of the most brutal moments are also the quietest and simplest moments. TS: There are an infinite number of ways, I suppose, in which to be brutal, just as there are infinite ways in which to be tender. UD: I'm wondering why you chose a female protagonist? TS: I had actually made an 8-minute short about a little boy, and I felt I would be re-treading the same ground and I didn't want to do that. But more importantly, I think that girls do mature more quickly than boys in certain key ways, and since cuteness was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, a girl's romantic yearnings and longings would be taken more seriously and that there would be a little more room for emotional complexity or depth. And then finally, I think movies with little girl protagonists tend to just die at the box office so it's somewhat the perversity of my nature that rose to this challenge. But it's childhood. Yes, it's a little girl, but it's childhood, this particular time of life that I wanted to explore. UD: And yet by having the protagonist a little girl, what you can do and do do quite clearly is show the sexual and sexist intimidation perpetrated on girls by boys that you wouldn't necessarily get the other way around -- is that a theme you deliberately set out to explore. TS: No, no. It evolved in the process of writing. I didn't start writing with that scene [the would-be "rape" scene], it just sort of just came. It was just so volatile, the emotions and things that were going on dramatically which were so interesting, that I just went with it. I was very fearful that I'd get a lot of flack and hostility from many women, or feminists, what have you, because rape is such a hot-button issue and just even mentioning the word, and me as a man directing a little girl...what do you know about it, etc. etc. So I have been fearful of that kind of response. But I had to put it outside my head and just hope that what seemed vital and real and true to the material, in my opinion, would somehow . . . in respecting the integrity of the characters . . . that I wouldn't be attacked. I don't think anyone walks out of it feeling there was any exploitation. 2 of 5