How I Became a Filmmaker

I made my first short film during a summer break from college at Oberlin, right after I turned twenty. I called it a satire, although I’m not sure I even knew what that meant. It was about a high-powered teen-age art dealer who bossed around people several times her age, a scenario that seemed like a fairy tale but was, in retrospect, a rather prescient vision of my life to come. I cast my family members and used our home, a loft in Tribeca, as both a production office and a set. I haven’t watched the film in two decades—I’m sure I would be both charmed and alarmed by its amateurishness—but at the time it felt like one small step for me, one giant leap for womankind. It’s that kind of hubris that defines being a young artist, and it should never be beaten out of anyone.