Andrea Richards: I'm mainly a writer now. I'm interested in filmmaking, I write a lot about film and I make my own short films. For me, I always loved the movies and loved going to the movies. I thought they were incredible and loved the kind of escape that you could find at the movies as a kid. You could see new worlds. I was always a cinefile - as a little kid even.

The first time I made a film was when I was in high school - and it was the typical thing where we had an assignment on the Canterbury tales. You were supposed to do a group project; my group decided we wanted to make a video because we thought that would be a lot easier than writing a paper. It was just two of my girlfriends and me -- we made this crazy video at a friend's house deep into the night and we just had the best time. Even though it was a hilarious project, it occurred to me that you could express ideas with this -- you could create your own new worlds. You didn't just have to go to the movie theater and see other people's versions of what these adventures were or what these new worlds could be. You could really do it yourself and it was pretty easy to do and it was a lot of fun.

" the thing I wish I knew as a kid is -- enjoy your time! Enjoy that time feels so endless to you that you're bored out of your mind. As you get older, you never get bored. You're just always trying to manage your life, and trying to fit creative projects on top of that becomes a time crunch."

Express: Was there a specific movie (or filmmaker) that first inspired you?

Andrea Richards: When I worked at the Chelsea and the Carolina [movie theaters], I was seeing all these great independent films like Allison Anders', Gas, Food, Lodging. As a kid, I loved E.T. and even though I enjoyed the stuff I had seen at mass cinema-plexes, all of a sudden I was seeing movies that spoke directly to me about girls who didn't feel so different from me. They had takes on the world that were similar to ones I was having. Amy Heckerling's movies were like that too. Then I started noticing, "Wow that movie was made by a woman." Part of filmmaking is just being a good film watcher and enjoying going to the movies and being inspired that way. But the other angle … [was] realizing that it was pretty easy to make a film and that was an option instead of just being a passive viewer all the time ...

Express: Are you a people watcher? Is that another aspect that helps inspire filmmaking?

Andrea Richards: Somebody said this to me and I really like it -- in order to create characters, you definitely have to pay attention to what people are like in the real world, be alert to the intricacies of their behavior, their weird quirks and how people interact. Humans are pretty fascinating … Some of my favorite films are slice of life movies where you enter somebody's ordinary life and you see what miraculous things are there: wake up, go to school, get into trouble for being late for class … Getting started when you're young as a filmmaker … you have endless time. You're still playful. You still have that sense of wonder and you're figuring it out and the filmmaking can be part of that and can reflect that. I watch a lot of movies made by teenagers and it's incredible because it's a such a perspective on the world that we don't often get to see. All the sitcoms on TV or all the movies we see are done by adults. You're not seeing what an adult imagines a teenager to be thinking - you're seeing what a teenager is actually thinking and that blows you away.

Express: So, you're mainly a writer now ...

Andrea Richards: For me writing is something I always thought I would be doing and filmmaking is just this great thing that I fell into that is very refreshing and very exciting. To be a filmmaker you have to be everything - you have to be able to work with actors, keep everybody happy on set ... For kids who are not sure what they want to do in the world, it's a great way to try out a bunch of different skills and at the end of it you get this movie... And along the way you've found out [if you] like to deal with people or … like to deal with the camera. In my process as I went along, I figured out that as much as I hate to be by myself with the computer all day, this is what I do - I've situated myself as a writer.

Express: But, you're still making short films, right?

Andrea Richards: Yes - definitely, for kicks I am and I just finished writing my first feature script - I'd never done anything beyond a short script, so that was a challenge.

"The great thing about filmmaking is that it encompasses so many different skills Filmmaking is such a big broad category of so many different activities, which is why I think it's really fun - you get to do a bunch of different things. You get to decide what kind of clothes people wear, how they do their hair, what they need to say and what the room looks like - it utilizes so many different parts of your brain. There's something in it for everyone."

Express: For the feature script - did you follow any of your own how-to suggestions? We really love the idea for the "idea book." Did you do that?

Andrea Richards: Totally. It's such a great way to work. When you're trying to write dialog or come up with characters or imagine a setting, filmmaking is a visual medium, so you always have to be visual about it and that's why the idea book is great - you just start amassing materials - cutting stuff out of magazines, figuring out this girl would dress like this girl. Sometimes it's on an unconscious level. You just know or feel like something is right - for some reason the yellow house I see in this picture is the house [this character] lives in. You've got a blueprint of what you're working with. I completely used the idea book to put together the script., I even went further than that, I had this big bulletin board that I'd just stick stuff on - if I was working on a particular character, I'd put up pictures of what I thought they'd look like, the places they might go, the shoes they'd wear…

Express: A lot of writers and filmmakers talk about going back to old journals from when they were 10 - being re-inspired by their 10-year-old self. Do you do anything like that?

Andrea Richards: Yes, definitely. I'm a big believer in journals and writing things down and daydreaming and really taking the time to be in your life and reflect on it. Write down what happened to you in school and what it meant to you and why it meant that. Kids can do this with film as well. That movie I made in high school - were I to go and shoot a film of the Nun's Priest's tale in the Canterbury tales now, you better believe it would look a lot different than what I did in high school. But I love the high school movie. We had such a good time doing it - it takes you back to that age, right back to that moment … Unless you keep a journal or make film, unless you let your voice be heard - if you don't ever do that, there's no record of it - nobody's going to hear it.

Express: You interviewed more than 50 female directors for your book...

Andrea Richards: Doing the interviews and talking to all the incredible directors was the best part of the book by far. The great thing about being a writer or a filmmaker is that you can figure out a project where you get to talk to your favorite people. You have an excuse to talk to whoever you want …If you decide you want to make a documentary on rock-and-roll music, you start calling up your favorite bands and you have a reason to talk to them -- you're not a fan anymore. With so many of these women directors I was a fan more than anything and now I had this reason to call them up and ask them questions ... It was incredible to me the response I got …[they] were incredibly supportive and thought this book was a great idea.

Express: So, there's a new edition of your book coming out soon, right? Is anything different?

Andrea Richards: There's a new publisher, they had me do some updates. We put in a little more about digital filmmaking. I put in a couple of new directors that I couldn't get in touch with at first. So I've updated some stuff. It's exciting that it's going to come back out again. I was especially excited that Sofia Coppola is now in the book. She's one of my favorite directors.

Express: Where did you go to school?

Andrea Richards: I went to Apex Sr. high [in North Carolina]. My dad was in the military before that so we moved around a little bit. I went to Carolina [the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] for undergrad. And then I moved out here [Hollywood] to go to an MFA writing program at the California Institute of the Arts.

"Sometimes people ask me, "Why Girl Director? Why not just, Director? Why not Boy Director? Why not Kid Director? One of the primary reasons I came to the decision to do this book geared specifically at girls is that there's a small percentage of women film directors making work in comparison to the large percentage of men making films. The reality is that it is still a male-dominated industry. And there's no reason that it should be."

Express: Did you do student television or lab theater at UNC?

Andrea Richards: I didn't do any of that stuff, but I did participate in the Critical Studies Journal. I've been into writing and publishing since then. But I've gotta tell you working at the movie theater was great. It was what totally sealed the deal and what probably made me end up living in Hollywood right now. Because it was an exciting period of time for independent films. People were making films with [practically] no money, writing and directing them themselves and going outside of the studios and doing edgy, interesting and new stuff. Now I'm surrounded by people who are doing this. It's pretty exciting.

Express: Who's your favorite writer?

Andrea Richards: I love Flannery O'Connor. All-time favorite writer might be [William] Faulkner. I love southern fiction.

Express: What about favorite movie or filmmaker?

Andrea Richards: All-time-favorites category would be stuff by Agnes Varda - the French filmmaker who just blows me away every time I see one of her movies.

You can read more about Agnes Varda and dozens of other female filmmakers in Andrea Richards' book.