Inspirational Women In Hollywood: How Director Sassy Mohen Is Helping To Shake Up The Entertainment Industry

My purpose with filmmaking has been and always will be to try and make the world better for women. Even Fear Actually, it’s not quite as heavy-handed as How to Hack Birth Control, but I purposefully had the women character roles on an equal playing field to their male counterparts and gave their struggles of individuality the same weight as the men’s.

As a part of our series about Inspirational Women In Hollywood, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Sassy Mohen - DIRECTOR | WRITER | PRODUCER.

Sas·sy /ˈsasē/ = adjective: lively, bold, full of spirit; a little bit cheeky.

Sassy Mohen’s innovative and bold, confident style has emerged as a pioneer in the genre of female-driven comedy. She has written, directed, produced, and edited multiple award-winning films, TV Pilots, Music Videos, Commercials, Specs, and Web series. Her latest comedy satire on real-world events, FEAR ACTUALLY was released to rave reviews and won three BEST FEMALE DIRECTOR AWARDS. FX Network tapped her for their online web channel, THIS IS AOK, to write, direct, produce and edit their online comedy shorts. She also won accolades with her rom-com web series ABOUT ABBY and the feature film WEEDLAND.

Website: SassyMohen.com Directing reel: https://bit.ly/3CoXStg

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

Hello and thank you for having me! Well, I was lucky to get a somewhat eclectic upbringing. I was born in NYC, raised in a suburb just outside Washington D.C. (Arlington, VA) and moved out to LA for college in 2004.

My parents both worked in television my entire life, my mom was an aspiring actress turned tv archivist and my dad is a television audio engineer. He currently works on the hill (the US Capitol) but he was one of the lead audio engineers at CNN for over 20 years. He was their go-to guy for all the big shows and addresses, like the state of the union, any presidential speech/event, the Larry King Show, Crossfire, etc. As a kid, it was so cool to visit him at the studio on weekends and hang out behind the scenes. I remember as a little kid seeing the Larry King set up close for the first time and thinking how funny it was because it was so different on TV. You know those ‘lights’ that populate the map of the world behind Larry and his guests? Those are actually painted reflective pieces of plastic. It’s things like this that helped me begin putting pieces together on how to make media.

There was no shortage of art & entertainment growing up as well, because of my family’s deep roots in NYC we would go up there whenever my parents could and often saw the latest Broadway shows. My godfather is an off-broadway playwright who later mentored me in screenwriting, but when I was a kid he would just continually encourage exposure to off-the-beaten-path productions.

All of this sort of culminated when I was in 3rd grade when I made the proclamation that I wanted to be a film director and my parents put me in a TV Production class at this great facility called the Arlington Career Center. Now, that’s not to say things were at all easy for me or my family, this struggle actually led me to a bigger appreciation for the support my parents have given me in my career my whole life. We never had a lot of money when I was growing up, so taking me to these shows, exposing me to new worlds and paying for my classes wasn’t easy for my parents to do. And also, it may be a little better now for female film directors, but having your daughter tell you in the 1990s that when she grows up she wants to break into a male-dominated, impossible to get into industry… well they could have just said no, that’s unrealistic. But they fostered my career every step of the way.

The sort of last ‘element’ to me charging forward into directing at such a young age was my education. I went to an ‘alternative’ public middle/high school called H-B Woodlawn. It was a very cool and artistically lush environment to learn in. H-B bounces around in the top 50 public high schools in the country because of its unique approach to education and their students' test scores and college placement numbers are reflective of the all-around positive learning experience the school gives you. H-B’s main goal is to teach you, as in you specifically, and no one person is going to learn the same way. H-B also challenges you to take responsibility and prove yourself. So if you went up to your TA or Teacher and said “I want to be a film director” they would say “Okay sure, we’ll let you try it, but you have to take this as a real responsibility. If you don’t take it seriously, that’s fine, but we might not let you do this again.” So in 7th grade, I said that, and the head of drama let me Ast. direct the high school musical, which was of course terrifying because I was 12 directing high-schoolers! #But, oddly enough, the high-schoolers listened to me. I still remember the first scene I directed which was the ‘Greecian pose’ scene from The Music Man and having a group of 15–17-year-old girls actually listen and do what you say and then have it actually look good, is a truly powerful experience when you’re still so young.

From there I directed 5 plays between 8–12th grade which was a tremendous learning experience. H-B also let me readjust my schedule so I could take high-school level TV-Production classes at the ACC (Arlington Career Center,) and some of my teachers even let me make films in lieu of finals for classes I struggled in (like science and foreign language.) They did this because they understood filmmaking is something I wanted to do and I was serious about it, so if the best way to reach me through harder classes was to let me make movies about the subject matter, they knew that not only would this help me retain information, but also help my education overall. I wish more schools out there were like H-B.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

Whoops, already touched on that. But I can tell one story that really cemented my decision to be a film director. When I was 16, I was in the middle of shooting my second “feature” in the summer between junior and senior years. I use the word “feature” very lightly as it was just me, an AD and a sound guy and also… again, I was 16 haha. The story revolved around 6 teenagers and actually getting all six of them together at once was a nightmare, (although very educational in beginning my now lifetime career of figuring out how to schedule actors.)

My best friend Jayne was my AD at the time and since I didn’t have a car, she would pick me up for the set. On the way there, we got into a pretty gnarly fender bender. Now, the two of us and the driver were all totally fine aside from whiplash and other aches/pains, but I had actually just been in another car accident two months prior where the car I was in got flipped down a hill and sent me to the ER which was traumatic to say the least. So, I was in full-on flashback, teenage hysterics mode to the point that they thought I was the one driving. Plus, my physical wounds were very intense because I had just been in that experience. My mom came to pick me up and asked if I wanted to go home. Realizing this was the last chance I had to film all six actors together and that I couldn’t finish the film otherwise, I said no. Let’s go to school (which is where we were shooting.)

As soon as I stepped out of the car and onto the set, I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but the hysterics, the throbbing neck, knee and back pain all evaporated. I just got in the zone and despite the delay, we shot everything we needed to that day and shot it well. While we were wrapping, my high-school principal came out and said, “Your mom said you were in a car accident, are you alright?” I still remember this vividly, at that moment all of the throbbing pain washed back over me like a ton of bricks. I suddenly realized that while I was directing, all of that pain had disappeared. It had nothing to do with the pain actually going away, but everything to do with me being streamlined and in the zone and not only that, despite everything I’d just been through, I’d just carried out the most complicated shooting day of the film and without an assistant director. There might as well have been a literal lightbulb that went off above my head. I knew at that moment this career choice was the only path for me because I had found something that I not only loved but could do under, (at the time,) the worst physical and mental circumstance. From that moment I’ve never looked back.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

One story that I get asked about a lot is my first feature film ‘Happy Holidays.’ Fast forward almost exactly four years from the previous story to my junior year of college at Chapman University, I was in film school and for the most part, having a good time. One thing about film school though, and the film industry, is it’s pretty much all men. This never really bothered me since I’d been in the business of trying to get into the film business since I was 7, so it was something I didn’t even think about. However, I started noticing that I wasn’t getting the same opportunities or even just baseline respect from peers and faculty that my male counterparts were getting. It dawned on me that when I finished film school I was going to walk out with a 10-minute senior thesis under the same constrictions of everyone else’s 10-minute thesis, that is if I got to direct one since only a handful of students were given the opportunity. Looking around at the male cronyism around me, I realized this probably wasn’t going to happen, so maybe I should just take my future into my own hands.

I had been working on the feature script of Happy Holidays for a class without the intention of actually shooting it, but then I thought, well I have a script, why not make this? I’d made “feature films,” before (remember those I used earlier,) how much different could it be? …The answer is very different and extremely challenging.

Cutting to the chase, I started assembling a team of students who also wanted to do something big and different. We began pre-production under the guidance of a professor and the assumption that I would be able to use the equipment and resources of Chapman’s brand new renovated film school which had just opened that year. Just like any other student who did an independent production that assumption turned out to be incorrect.

When I presented my initial proposal to get an independent study credit from Chapman to do this, I was flat out denied the opportunity (at first,) under the pretense that the project was, “too ambitious.” I was shocked. I remember getting the voicemail from whoever at the film school and listening to it just totally dumbfounded. I went to my advisor who was surprised, yet also not surprised (being one of the very few female film school professors,) and she told me to go back to them with all my ducks in a row, showing them that we meant business.

This turned out to be advice I needed to hear anyway because it actually helped me and my Co-producer Dillon Morris iron out more details that we hadn’t thought of yet. But, at the same time, the fact that Chapman required us to do this to get the same equipment they practically gave out to other male filmmakers who made short films with bigger budget ask was pretty ridiculous. The school’s motto at the time was literally, “the skies the limit.”

The Head of the film school something or other was ducking my calls, so my co-producer and I literally camped outside the Dean of the film school’s office and somewhat bombarded our way into a meeting. The look on his face was priceless because he obviously had no idea who the f*ck we were and what we were doing there. I imagine his phone call to the provost after we left being like, “Just give these kids the equipment so they don’t annoy me again.”

You’d think that would be enough to get it, but no. The head of the film school guy insisted on having a meeting with us and the head of the equipment rental facility, I’m guessing to prove a point that our ask for equipment was too much. But instead, the rental facility guy had largely the same attitude as the dean which was “Why are we doing this? Just give the kids the equipment, we have plenty of it.” So finally after this, we got our greenlight.

In a way, I’m glad that I had this experience, although it’s easy to say that now. Happy Holidays was absolutely a ‘too ambitious’ project for a 19/20-year-old to take on, but I did. I made countless mistakes while we did the project, but I still to this day have no idea why a school would prevent you from trying something. The worst that could happen is you fall flat on your face, which I also did. But then I got up and kept going. Not only did we finish the film, but we also ended up screening it around the country, turning a profit and got distribution for it.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Hahaha yes! Not bringing a cell phone charger to set. They don’t tell you that super obvious requirement in film school 101. On set day 3 of Happy Holidays we were shooting up at my friend Eric Lloyd’s house in Pasadena and for context, Chapman is in Orange, CA which is about a 1 ½–2 hour drive. For whatever reason, I took a train up ahead of my crew, but by the time Eric picked me up my phone was on it’s last bar. This was also 2006 when no one had the same type of phone and therefore everyone had a unique type of phone charger, so I couldn’t charge my phone.

The cast and crew were all coming up to meet me separately. My co-producer and DP Dillon Morris was coming up with the bulk of the crew and the generator we rented at Home Depot to power the equipment while shooting outside, the AD and I think the three actors were coming up in another car, and everyone else was coming up their own individual ways. This was also a time before smartphones and you need to remember that we were all college students and new at this, which means we were pretty, I’ll kindly say ‘inexperienced,’ at going to set, so I think Dillon was the only one who printed out a map.

The lead actor Mary was the last call that I got before my phone totally died. She was lost and needed directions, luckily I was able to give her Eric’s number. During that time, the make-up artist, who I had never met before, showed up an hour early. She was very nice, but how do you have an anxiety attack in front of a complete stranger 15 years older than you that you want to keep working on your no-budget film?

Sometime later, Eric gets another call on his phone from Mary who is now, not only still lost, but pulled over at the side of the road because her car broke down. Mary handled stress worse than I did, so while she started flipping out, she tossed the phone to the AD who told me he’d try to fix the situation and the other actress Brigitte was already walking to the nearest gas station to potentially find a mechanic.

Call time has now occurred, a few random crew people had shown up, but not Dillon and not the actors. After some time, Dillon and his carload of freshmen roll up to the house and all of them almost comically roll out of the car shivering and coughing. Dillon comes up to me, “I’ve been calling you for an hour, why is your phone off? Also, driving up with a generator and a lot of people in the car is not a good idea.” And he proceeded to tell me how the generator took forever to get, hence him being late and that it stunk up the car so badly with gasoline, they had to drive up the freeway in the middle of winter with all the windows rolled down. At that moment, Eric handed me the phone, “I think you should take this.” On the phone was the AD who told me that Brigitte had returned from the gas station not with a mechanic, but with a bottle of vodka and Mary was currently having an anxiety attack at the side of the road. That was the only day on set I’ve ever had to cancel in my career. And the lesson I learned was … always bring a cell phone charger to set. Always. Also, don’t do any of the things that I did that day.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are seriously so many people I am grateful for, I don’t think I could narrow it down to one. My parents first of all always believed in me, when so many others wouldn’t have. I am also so grateful for every person who took a chance on me, especially when I was first starting. So many people come to LA with big dreams and big talk and then 99% of them give up. It’s easy, especially if you’re in the industry to automatically assume that every kid who says they want to make movies isn’t tough enough, but for whatever reason, I have been fortunate to find really kind-hearted and supportive men and women as I’ve grown. …They’re not always easy to find, but if you’re determined enough to keep looking, they’ll be there. And also, of course, my fiance Vince Yearly. He has been such a tremendous beacon of support every step of the way. I can’t tell you how many boyfriends I had in the past who made an issue of my career goals or treated it like some sort of competition. I actually thought before I met him that I was never going to find a man who would accept me for who I am, which seems ridiculous now. But guess what ladies, there are actually good guys out there. That idea still shocks me too.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

Well, no offense to those people, but you gotta get over that because you’re going to fail. Multiple times. Like, it will become a repeat offensive haha. But you also have to quantify what a ‘failure’ really is. I made this web series called A Single Girls Show that, to be honest, is one of my least favorite things I’ve done. First of all, it was super super low budget, so low budget in fact that I cast myself as the lead because I knew trying to get an actress to commit to it just wasn’t going to happen. Second of all, I had a lot going on personally at the time which bled into the entire writing and production process. For me though, when the going gets rough, I sort of snap into a mode of ‘must make a movie,’ it’s almost become a survival tactic. So essentially, the writing was okay. It’s funny, I look at my current series ‘How to Hack Birth Control,’ and I realized the whole spirit, wit and GFX aspect of that series was what I wanted A Single Girls Show to be. But, because I had so much going on, and this was 8 years ago when I was less experienced, I couldn’t figure out how to articulate that onto the page and then to a screen so it ultimately fell pretty flat online. Was this a failure? No. Why? Because I re-learned to edit during it which is honestly one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made in my career. I had grown up editing, in fact, I learned how to edit tape-to-tape in the 3rd grade and was super into adobe premiere, but then in college they forced AVID down our throats which really turned me off to it, so I just let the skill slide. By the time I got to ‘ A Single Girls Show,’ I was having trouble finding an editor that I could work with. So, true to form, I thought… well, I edited once before, how hard can it be to edit again? It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either. And then because of that, I was able to market myself as a writer/director/producer/editor, which, turns out, in the film world is super desirable! I then used the footage from ‘A Single Girls Show’ and another short I did during that time and started getting legit jobs, which quite literally pulled me out of the funk I was in then. I think that as long as you never give up, I mean really never give up, it’s impossible to fail, because if you’re anything like me you’ll take even your failures and turn it into something valuable.

What drives you to get up every day and work in TV and Film? What change do you want to see in the industry going forward?

Oh man, I think the question for me would be, what doesn’t drive me to get up every day and work in TV and film? The answer to that is very little. As I said, I’ve wanted to do this since I was a little kid and have rarely ever 2nd guessed that decision, so it’s not even really a matter of trying to find the energy to do it. It’s more like sometimes you have to pull me away from work and the computer and force me to take a day off. The difference for me is, I really love what I do and I’ve worked so hard to get here, so when I look at a full day of working on one of my films or even someone else’s, there’s very little that excites me more.

I hope that as we continue to progress as a society, especially through the chaotic times we’re in right now that the industry keeps going in the direction it’s steering in right now… but maybe a bit quicker. Old school Hollywood was not very kind to women and minorities (to say the least,) and it’s great that a lot of people are waking up to that now. I read this really interesting article about how the industry is going through a period of growing pains, it specifically focused on the role of white men in stories. I thought it was very pointedly put about how the show Ted Lasso has kind of skipped the weird & difficult phase that the role of the white male has played for so long and handed us a cleaner and healthier version of what the white male could and should become, while shows like The Chair and Kevin Can F**k Himself are still struggling with that very concept. There’s always going to be a struggle in change, but I don’t really see what’s so difficult about giving women and minorities an equal start in the playing field. I really hope that the industry keeps going on this positive path.

You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?

Well, I am so glad you asked :D I just wrapped a digital series called ‘How to Hack Birth Control’ (www.birthcontrolhacks.com) Actually, our red carpet press & industry screening is next week which is so exciting! I don’t want to jinx this, but there are already a couple of prospective distributors interested in it as a stand-alone piece and as a bigger “how to hack-” series which is even more exciting, to make a film and see a clear path forward for it.

The series is a comedy educating women on how to navigate birth control in America today but all told through hysterical dialogue and awesome visuals so you don’t realize you’re actually getting fed information. We have a seriously phenomenal cast & crew that are all up-and-comers and some who I would even say have definitely already arrived. The series deals with the facts of different types of birth control but also, how and where to hide your birth control, how to deal with a pharmacist that won’t sell you the morning-after pill, and how to deal with crazed right-wing protesters on your way into a women’s clinic. It’s what the title says: How to hack birth control. Being a woman today has tremendous freedoms and choices that weren’t around even 10 years ago, but all of that comes with a ton of hidden and not so hidden negative stigmas & deterrents from society. As a kid (if you’re lucky) you’re taught how to use a condom, but no one teaches you how to deal with a guy you really like trying to coerce you into not using a condom.

My purpose with filmmaking has been and always will be to try and make the world better for women. Even Fear Actually, it’s not quite as heavy-handed as How to Hack Birth Control, but I purposefully had the women character roles on an equal playing field to their male counterparts and gave their struggles of individuality the same weight as the men’s. I would have killed to see more stuff like that when I was a kid/pre-teen/young adult. Any content where the women’s problems, if they were part of the story at all, weren’t ditzy, materialistic or written as trite. The issue for women isn’t and shouldn’t be whether or not to have sex, the issue is, how to do that safely with your income/living situation in a way that doesn’t put your health or livelihood at risk. So ladies, if you want to learn how to hack your birth control, check it out! I’ll keep you posted for when it finds its distribution home. But I will tell you the trailer is now online at www.BirthControlHacks.com

Also, I think the exciting part of where my career is right now is the sky is truly the limit. With everything going on with Birth Control, I’m truly thrilled to see what comes next. I’m developing a post-apocalyptic thriller tv show right now that I can’t wait to bring to the table, but only after Birth Control has achieved its success.

We are very interested in looking at diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture and our youth growing up today?

Oh yes, I could go on about this for a while haha.

1. If you look at the history of the human race from a scientific perspective, the only reason we as a species have survived and thrived as long as we have is diversity. Literally, we require diversity to keep expanding our human gene pool, if we were to keep inbreeding we’d just die out. Diversity keeps us healthier and allows for adaptation to change. To me, that translates to broader society and specifically film and tv as well. You look at a lot of the films from the “olden days,” and while don’t get me wrong, there are great ones, it does sort of feel repetitive. Same problem, same banter, same white people and their white people problems. It’s kind of like creating art that just goes into a looping vacuum. Once camera equipment became more accessible in the 60s and you start opening up space for women and minorities, that’s when some amazing film revolutions begin and you get such a great array of art.
2. There are more than white men in the world, so film and TV shouldn’t be monopolized by them or their stories.
3. Leading to that second question, we need more diversity to positively affect our culture and youth growing up today.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

Wow, that is a great question! Hmm…

1. I wish someone had told me not to take rejections personally. I don’t anymore but that took quite a few years to get over.
2. Tying into that, that most rejections actually don’t even have to do with your content but what that particular person or company is looking for.
3. To meticulously organize my hard drives! That I didn’t learn the good practice until about 6–8 years ago so all my early work is a totally disorganized mess (although I do chip away at that on a weekly basis).
4. NEVER skip good production audio. Even if you have the best sound designer, they’re not going to be able to turn crap into gold.
5. Don’t look at other women in film as rivals. I definitely don’t know, especially after the #MeToo movement, but up to that point across the board, I feel like most women looked at others around them as competition. Now we know that we’re all going through the same process and there’s plenty of room to go around.

Can you share with our readers any selfcare routines, practices or treatments that you do to help your body, mind or heart to thrive? Please share a story for each one if you can.

Oh man, where to begin haha. This is kind of a broad answer, but I really take my own physical and mental health seriously. I didn’t use to when I was younger, because I mean… who does haha. But then I kind of reached this moment where I realized that my lack of attention to my wellbeing was directly impacting my work. I’ve worked especially hard over the past few years to really have a level head and to see each problem for what it is and without being clouded by emotion. I’m not always successful doing that, but if you separate your ego from a situation, your decisions become lightyears better. I feel this is something that women have a hard time doing, not because of the way we’re conditioned, but because of how we’re viewed, treated and raised. Women are always told to be seen and not heard, to look perfect, dress nice, always smile (ugh.) Because of that, I think we tend to bottle things up and the problem with that of course is that those bottles are always going to explode. I tell my fiance Vince Yearly all the time, the best way to solve a problem is to prevent it from ever happening. So, I try my best to address situations as soon as they manifest, even if they’re uncomfortable or difficult. Whatever uncomfortableness you’re running from is going to come up eventually so might as well deal with it now instead of later. There are plenty of ways to achieve this kind of clarity, whether it’s meditation, mentors, therapy, trial and error, wellness routines, or even just regular checkups with your doctor. If you put your physical and mental well-being first in the best way that works for you, good things just kind of unfold around you because people recognize that you not only care about yourself but respect yourself as well, which by default usually causes people to care and respect you back.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Yes! This one happened while I was shooting Happy Holidays. I remember being so overwhelmed and thinking, “how the hell am I going to finish this?” I talked to my co-producer Dillon Morris about this and he said to me, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Now, that sentiment is a very common phrase, but I’d never heard it before and it kind of blew my mind because he was right. If you look at making a movie from the starting line, it’s massive! Huge! Totally unobtainable! There’s so much to do and never enough time or money to do it. You look down that line and see months and months of work and hassle and frustration and you wonder, how do I even get to that? But you can’t look at it that way. You have to look at the next few days, and if that’s too overwhelming, the next few hours. You can’t swallow that elephant all at once. It took some time to refine, but now I know how to better manage my time and expectations. I used to set these totally unrealistic goals like, I’m going to finish this website today! Things like that, but then I wouldn’t because at the time that would have been impossible, but I’d get frustrated and want to give up. Now I set reasonable goals for myself, with the website example, if I know that I only have 90 minutes to work on it today, I’d say, Okay I’ll build this page for the web and maybe get to the mobile layout today and if I don’t, I know I have another hour to do it tomorrow. So my goal is to finish one page every two days and if you have a 5-page site, that’s done in under two weeks, so that's the goal. Once you start meeting those goals, you get to know your own strengths and limitations and are not only better able to manage your time, but you become more confident in what you can deliver.

You are a person of huge influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Now that is an easy question. I want to make the world better for women, I always have. My entire life I’ve always felt held back by things beyond my control, whether it’s not getting called on in class, picked to direct a project, overlooked in a job application or even just being catcalled on the street and dealing with the mental cloud that hangs over you after that. Women have just as much to contribute to our society as men do and we’re just as capable of doing so. When I think about everything I had to go through to even get here and how hard it was… sometimes I wonder how I didn’t just throw in the towel multiple times. It really just comes down to in my heart of hearts I’ve known I wanted to direct movies for pretty much my entire life, and when you know something with such certainty, it’s kind of impossible to ignore it. But in order to even have that knowledge such a convergence of circumstances had to happen by me being raised by parents who believed in me, close friends who supported me, an early education that empowered me and mix all that with this unstoppable determination that I somehow came into this world with. Despite how insanely difficult this has all been, I consider myself very lucky to have that and to even have just been born into a lower-middle-class family. Growing up was hard, but it could have been so so so much worse. I can guarantee you that there are millions of women out there who have not been able to pursue or even discover their own key to happiness and self-truth because they’ve never been given the opportunity to or have been figuratively or literally beaten down when they try. Being rejected by almost everyone around you every day is not easy stuff and when you’re already told from the beginning that you’re less than, it’s no wonder that so many women suffer or end up in abusive relationships, menial jobs they hate, drug addictions and experience sexual abuse. This has to change. And what’s kind of cool, is that it already is, but there is still so much work to be done. My goal with my films is for women (and men too!) to watch them and see a little of their own personal struggles in them and realize that it’s okay to go through that. It’s okay to be scared, or be alone or make mistakes, it doesn’t mean you’re a dumb or bad person, it just makes you human. We should all strive to do better with the women in our lives, recognize their strength and respect them even more for it. That quote “Remember. Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backward and in high heels,” says so much. Women literally live their lives that way and 1) they shouldn’t have to and 2) if they do, their strength and perseverance should be recognized just as equally as men are. That’s what I want my films to help contribute to.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!

I would love to have lunch with Rachel Maddow, although I feel like if I ever had the chance I would be tongue-tied in awe of her amazingness, which would then make her embarrassed because she’s so humble and then we’d end up just eating in silence. 😂😂

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

Yes!

Facebook.com/sassymohenfilms

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