In chatting with the lovely Jenna Fischer recently I had a chance to ask her if her experience on Lollilove — which she wrote, directed and starred in, with then-husband James Gunn — had really soured her on directing as much as it was made out to be in some other interviews. In a word, yes.

"I just learned from doing that film that I'm an actor," she says. "I approach work very emotionally — like, what's the emotion, what's the relationship here? And that's a part of being a director, but the director is also supposed to think about how things look, how to place things and visually paint a picture. And my brain just did not want to do it, it couldn't paint the picture. Also, I didn't want to think about it, because then when I had to go in and act, it made me very self-conscious. So I like having the tunnel-vision of just focusing on character and relationship and emotion. Directing hurt my brain; it's just not big enough for it."

And the writing? "I'll never do that again as well," she says, sweetly serious. "It was horribly painful as well, I didn't like it. What was great about doing the movie was how much I appreciate anybody who can conjure up something from nothing, anybody who can write or direct and tell a story visually, and any crew member, too. Directing a movie, you gain such an appreciation for what every person on the set is doing, and how things don't happen in a vacuum, and that the actor isn't the most important thing to the movie. They just aren't. Sometimes you get treated like you are, but that's just a way to baby you so that you stay calm and sedate. But you aren't actually very important. And that's a really good thing to know in Hollywood, to keep some perspective."

        

 

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