We have a lot of people in our culture who look at this and consider it to be some kind of coddling or apologizing for people who engage in pretty inexcusable behavior. Did you hear a lot of that along the way, as you were working on the picture? And even now, do you still get feedback from people who don't necessarily get what you're trying to get across?

I definitely did all along, and to that part - I expected it. But it always surprises me, too, just in the fact that so many times what those comments are based on is people saying, you know, "How could you ever think that this person is a human being that's capable of doing this?" And every time I look at those people and I say, "How many men in our country went to Vietnam and justified similar actions? And how many people go to war all over the world, or commit acts all over the world, all the time on a daily basis and find a way to justify those acts?" It's not about me justifying those acts. It's about saying this is something that is a fact.

As tempting as it is to be sheltered from it in our country and say that we do not have within us the capability of doing anything close to this, the reality is the overwhelming proof is that we do. And when we know that, it's an important thing to look at. It's not about saying it's OK that she killed seven people; it's about saying people can get to a place, under pressure, where they're capable of doing horrific things, why and how are they working with the same emotions that we are working with, to make those decisions. And that's a chilling and an important thing to look at.

It's interesting to me, too, that that has been like a - that has been such a classic tradition, not only with woman and men, in what Shakespeare and Greek myth and whatever, but it's been such a classic tradition with men, and so rarely are the movies with men seen this way.

You talk about the men who went to Vietnam and justified certain actions. Could you apply that same observation to what's happening now?

Absolutely. Yes, I mean, I think absolutely. It's something that is very heartbreaking to me. When I approached this story - I've always watched a lot of true crime, and the reason that I ended up ultimately making this movie is because she never looked to me like a "serial killer." Serial killers are usually sexual deviants who have some sort of shame about their deviancy, and they kill people as a result of that.

This was completely different than that, and she always looked to me much more like a war story, like someone who had once been something, but had gotten to a place where they could carry a picture of their wife and kids back home, but murder women and children in this country because you learn to detach that those little kids have bombs on them and they could kill - you know, whatever - killed your buddy, whatever the case may be.

I think that it's definitely what's going on right now, and I think that the hardest thing for me is that there's very little outlet. I feel so badly for people who get pushed to that place, because there's no outlet or voice in this world for expressing shame, for the horror that lives within us, ourselves.

And when we stay in a really puritanical world, and we look at it and say, "Good people do this, and bad people do that." Well, once somebody crosses over to being bad in Vietnam, and comes back to a world where that's still the way it's perceived, what do they do with that shame, about the horrors that they committed and the fact that they have that within them?

It is not necessarily forgivable for someone like Aileen, but it is something that is true. And for me, I was so touched by making this film, by the kind of struggling, like Internet posts that I would read of people trying to express their own shame, of their own rage, being manifested in seeing a much more extreme case of Aileen.

Would people be surprised perhaps to know how many of us genuinely struggle with sometimes fierce issues of shame and rage? I mean, is there a lot of this going on that we don't necessarily know about, because "Monster" is the exception to the Hollywood rule?

Yes, I absolutely think so. I mean, when you look at the basic human emotions, they're the same. They are pursuit for shelter and food, pursuit of love and procreation, and rage and violence is a defense mechanism and, you know, it's extremely present in all of us.

Roman Polanski was talking about "The Pianist" the other day, and I thought his quote was so appropriate, when he said, "People can do almost anything in any given circumstances." It seems so obvious that we all have these things within them, and when you have World War II and Vietnam and people - you know, terrorism and people killing each other, for things that they believe are right all the time, and then having to live with that, not even to begin to talk about the murder and domestic abuse and all of the things that happen within our own country. This is obviously - a large portion of people are walking the earth who have been involved in that side. It's not like that's the dark - I mean, it is the dark side, but it's not that that's like a bunch of aliens walking around. Somebody did those things.

While Charlize Theron purportedly gets plenty of credit for her performance, Christina Ricci really stuck me as being amazing as the monster behind the scenes. Did she do similar preparation based on actual footage, or was that mostly in the script, or she just conjured this up out of her own skills?

It was a completely different process. It's fine, and it's reality and it's something that we all know. I knew going into this film that the greatest thing that could ever happen - it's a performance movie. And based on the history of those movies, it's Robert De Niro that you're going to notice, and that's correct. You notice the person doing the tour-de-force performance like this.

The thing was, Aileen was someone that everyone knew what she looked like, and I felt it was incredibly important that Aileen needed to look like the story we were telling. You can't show a drop-dead beautiful woman on the side of the highway and tell the audience that no one is going to help this person, you know? And people - visually we can tell when someone's lived a rough life or drinks a lot or is homeless, and these are really important details.

With her girlfriend, the reality of what her actual girlfriend looked like, in the context of the world they live in, is that she was cute. She was cuter than Aileen and she was very sheltered, and she was a little chubby and, you know, kind of quiet and all of these things. But she was missing a tooth and she a kind of, you know, masculine haircut. And when I looked at that and I thought about it, I thought to get another actress and have her take a tooth out, would just push the audience a little too far and would become like the "Beverly Hillbillies." And the point was not what exactly does Aileen's girlfriend look like. That was something that people don't know as much of and it doesn't matter.

The point was to stay true to the relationship between them. So, in that case, instead of studying one person specifically, Christina and I talked a lot about what the dynamics were between these two people. One is very independent - I mean, one is very dependant, very naive. She romanticizes what she thinks Aileen is doing, and that's her way of compartmentalizing the horror going on is because she just can't quite grasp how serious it is.

So, those things were very important, but then beyond that, we tried to make someone who more to me mirrored what she looked like in Aileen's eyes, rather than just push it so far out of the audience's mind that they couldn't ever get into or understand the love between these two people.

But it's been bittersweet, when I saw how hard she worked and good she was, and how that - Charlize's performance is really impossible without Christina being the kind of level of actress that she is. So, you know, I was blown away by her, and also being someone that came into it knowing that it would never have the glory. It was never going to be the appreciated role.

Charlize has said that, unlike some movies where you have three hard days, this was a marathon of hard scenes. Did you do anything in particular, like at the end of the day, to help people just kind of step away from this and get a little relief before they had to get back into it the next morning?

It's funny, I wish I could have. I wish there was a way - I was - the interesting thing is I had written this script in a very short period of time, too, and I struggled a lot with that myself. And the truth was, this was such a hard place to go into. It was actually much more matter of - the person who played Aileen, and this was paramount in my thought process when I decided to cast Charlize - had to be strong enough to go there and not come back for a little while, because it was almost impossible. Not to say that you don't go home and have a glass of wine and, you know, talk on the phone to your boyfriend or do whatever to make yourself feel a little better. Like there was a lot of watching junk TV, you know?

But I knew that there was not much we could do. It had to be someone who could handle that. And so, instead, my job as a director was her mental health. it really became almost maternal. I had to be incredibly protective of her, and gave her all the love I could, constantly had my eye on her and where she was and made sure that she felt safe.

Beyond that, there was nothing I could do for her. I knew she was in this dark place and I just made sure no one was making it worse, at any given time, and that she felt safe and loved and not judged.

Was there anybody who was behind you who provided similar faith and support?

Yes, my producer, Brad Wyman, who was the first person I had met and he had just, in a completely offhand conversation, said to me, "Oh, yes, all these people are making serial killer films." And I said, "Oh, that's weird, I've always kind wanted to do a movie about Aileen." And I wasn't pursuing doing a movie about Aileen at that time. And he said, "Oh, just as a favor, I'll introduce you to the people that do them."

I ended up not being willing to do any of those deals, but at the end of the day, when I finished my script, he was the person who said, "Give it to me." And when he read it he said, "I don't know if other people believe in it, but I believe in it." And then, he was the person was confidently went forward and said, "It's hers and she's directing it and we're doing it." And so, yes, Brad Wyman. He was the person who was believing in me that way.

And my boyfriend, Jesse Stern, you know, was by my side the whole time, too.

What effect is DVD content having on the creative process for you? Is it something that you embrace and enjoying doing, or is it more of a labor that you wish that you didn't have to do?

I'm in a continuing dilemma about it, because I've just had a couple of conversations with other directors who were arguing back and forth. One is a director who I have a ton of respect for and who's done great films, and he saying that he will never do like a director's commentary, because the work should stand on its own.

But as someone who has learned a lot from other people's books and DVDs and, you know, as a filmmaker getting to watch them, it's kind of weird, because granted, you know, the general public is getting a view behind the curtain in a way that they never have before. And whether that's bad for the film or not, I don't really know. But for me, deconstructing something, as a filmmaker, doesn't kill its power for me.

I don't know. It's a tough one.

I noticed that there were no deleted scenes on the DVD, and I wondered, with a pretty modest budget, did you have extra footage or, you know, did you have to be conservative in - you know, in what you spent and what you shot?

Well, the first thing is that actually there is going to be - this whole thing happened so quickly. This was a movie that was finished in November and came out weeks later. It was actually a movie that should have come out this year, and it was only because of, like, the amount of publicity that we've gotten everything happened really, really quickly. And I went straight from finishing the film into being on the award and European press circuit. So, this is an initial release of the DVD that they just had to get out what they could, in order to meet the dates - the correct dates. So, there will be another DVD with more - with footage and a director's commentary and bonus things.

But the truth is that it's been funny even working on that; there's one deleted scene. I mean the movie, by the time - with me being the writer, as well as the director, I was writing at such a furious pace, and we had to shoot the whole film in 28 days. So, there was not a lot of fat and it had to be very exact, by the time we went to shoot. Scenes were longer and scenes were shorter and slightly different, but it's almost exactly verbatim - the script.

When will that special edition come out?

I don't know. I think it might be around September. I'm not sure

What is coming up for you next?

I don't really talk about what I'm doing, just because if I hear it come out of my mouth, it sounds all wrong. So, until the script is done, which should be not too long, I'm not really saying what it is, but I'm writing it myself and I'm still - have stayed open to reading a lot of scripts that have been given to me. But you know, all I can say is it's not true crime, and it's not a true story.

Do you have a dream project? Is there something that you're not working on now, but is something that you've always wanted to?

There's only one that springs to mind, which is, I think, actually in development right now with somebody else. It was of the first things I asked about. The only other bio pic I have been dying to do my whole life, as strange as it sounds, is about Chuck Yeager. My father was a fighter pilot, and I grew up in the world of fighter pilots. And this sort of folklore about him and the romance about life is something I really feel and would love to do a movie about Chuck Yeager.