Are Scientists or Moviemakers the Bigger Dodos?

by Abby Callard for Smithsonian

"You were a tenured professor at the University of New Hampshire and you left to pursue filmmaking in Hollywood. Why?

Storytelling. As I look back on the past 30 years, I realize that the single biggest thing that drew me into science were great scientists who told great stories that caught my attention and enraptured me. I went off and did science for a long time and thoroughly enjoyed it, and then I really enjoyed eventually telling my own stories. I got so wrapped up in that that I got sidelined into a whole, separate aspect of that which is telling the stories for their own sake. That’s what drew me into filmmaking in the early ’90s. The deeper I got into that, the more serious I became and finally decided to go to film school in the mid ’90s. That’s when I changed careers..."

Read the interview.