Did he do any songs for the movie?

"Yes! He has four or five songs in the movie."

Can you talk to me about the process of getting this produced?

"Sure, well I’d written it with some good friends of mine — Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who made Catfish and Paranormal Activity — they’re some of my best friends and I showed the script to them and they were super hype on it. Christine Vachon has been my idol since I was like 13. That was the first meeting I ever went on: I was super pregnant at the time, so I was like, 'Aaah, how do I do this? Are they going to be freaked out that I’m pregnant?' But I went in there and she didn’t even look at my stomach or ask about it."

I read an interview where you said that some early feedback on the script was that people wanted to see Leah have a weird childhood that made her enjoy the sex and drugs in the movie. What was your response to that critique?

"Yeah, [the critique was that] she was so likeable that, ‘Oh, we need a backstory, was she abused, had terrible parents, never had a good relationship, etc.’ I’m like, ‘Actually, I think so often a young person that’s white and privileged and acting out is not the result of a bad background, it’s the result of a really good background where everything has been so protected that they’re willing to take insane risks just to feel alive.’

"Some people think her character was too unlikable because of all these “crazy” things she does, so it was really important for me to find an actress who you could watch doing these crazy, stupid, reckless things and still feel sympathy for, or at least [empathise] with for being young. Most people can relate to that on some kind of level."

What was it like working with Morgan Saylor, especially with bringing a story that’s very personal to you to the screen through her?

"I’m just in love with her. I spent a lot of time trying to find this character, I was so terrified that a young woman who would want to do this role would be out of control, if not more than the character. Morgan is quite the opposite. She’s currently at college for math in Chicago and is so intelligent and mature for a young woman, and I’d actually forgotten how far she went for this role, because she became this character. She dyed her hair, and she started dressing differently.

"I saw her a few months later and her hair was back to the way it usually is and she was back to being Morgan Saylor. I was really struck after the fact, like, 'Wow, this is such an incredible performance, she actually became someone else.' I had the luxury of having time to get to know her — we had months to work together ahead of time, to talk, to hang out to try and get into the character of the film. I feel like there were a lot of luxuries for a low-budget first film, that I really hope to have when making other films, because it was a pretty magical experience."