Denise Di Novi (born March 21, 1956) is an American film producer and director.
There were a few before me, there was a generation that started a little bit before me of women producers and Sherry Lansing, she was the first woman studio president, and she was really inspiring to me. I was inspired by other women in other fields, I was an adolescent in the 70s with the second wave feminism, and I got very inspired by that and felt like, you know what, there's no reason why I can't do this.
I thought, 'I loved Batman, I loved Spider-Man, I love all these characters, but Catwoman is really different from any other one. '
One common desire that every human being has is to love and be loved. At the end of our lives, it's how we measure our lives.
There's so much good television now, and there's a lot of things on television that would have been a movie or maybe wouldn't have been made at all if it wasn't for cable and streaming. It's a really exciting part of the future and I really want to be a part of it.
The female perspective is what I relate to and I understand it. I find it fascinating. I like to see women in challenging situations and see how they deal with it or don't deal with it.
The movie business can be very frustrating and very circuitous; theres no straight path. You have to have tremendous perseverance, dedication and passion. You have to want it very, very badly and you have to deal with a lot of rejection.
It's funny how things happen in life. Sometimes, you just take the opportunity when it comes. Life can be surprising.
Being a director it's mean - digging deep in yourself as well. I think the deeper I understood the material and the script and the themes and the characters, I felt the more confident I was and the more I could bring to the movie. So I was lucky to have my actors because they were right there with me in the deep end.
If you're lucky enough to experience love, what you find is that it can sustain you through the most difficult times.
Everybody's been decrying the death of movie theaters for decades and, you know, people are still going to the movies in droves. It's gone down, but it hasn't gone down that much. I think the biggest change has been the emergence of cable and streaming on television. That has really had a dramatic effect, and I think it's a positive one. I think there's really good work going on there, and as movies stratify to being these gigantic tentpole movies, and small movies, I think it gives another outlet for character-driven material.
I think that some of the writing, directing, and the content is better than a lot of movies sometimes. Actors, well artists in general - actors, writers, directors - what we all care about the most is good work and being able to create something that is really resonant and meaningful.