Vera Farmiga and Nick Stahl in Quid Pro Quo Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

[BIID] is a real Mad Hatter's tea party. There are several categories within that — there are the wannabes, who really differentiate themselves from the pretenders, who really differentiate themselves from the fetishists. For apotemnophiliacs, there's no sexual gratification in it whatsoever. It's really an arousal of their identity, as the fully functioning human beings that they know they can be, if only... And there's usually a real line of demarcation on their body [gestures to her wrist] that this part, left below my wrist does not belong here, or, you know, right above the knee. It's unexplainable. It's not something that Quid aims to explain. Carlos [Brooks, the director] kept saying, because it's so uncomfortable, and I think he's not someone who, if you met him, you'd see he's not someone who gets off on, like, pointing to sensationalizing something like this.... He's so much more discreet than that... He kept telling us, "I want you to approach this whole thing from the perspective of that moment that happens between deep sleep and wakefulness."

The whole thing feels sort of like a dream sequence. It has that amber glow look, and you look like almost Veronica Lake. It's got that sort of noir-ish thing going on.
Yeah! And I think that is what we aimed for. It was also an easier way... of dealing with everything that was so uncomfortable to delve into in the script.

It did seem like there was a little bit of a sexual component to Fiona's syndrome — the corset, the leg braces.
I think Fiona is the ultimate actress. I think what she does is she plays dress-up... She takes on this character; she explores these different facets of this character sexually, sensually, intellectually, emotionally, until she can come to some greater truth about herself. And that's how I approached it as well. Like, she's constantly pushing; she's constantly testing. She's also the audience, you know, watching herself and critiquing herself as she goes along. So there is [a sexual component], I can't say it's so deeply rooted that it's just sexual gratification, it's not. It might be an element for Fiona.

That first scene you sleep together, I believe she is literally sort of stroking the wheelchair as she's kissing him.
Yeah, because you know, that scene was written in a very open way. It literally just said on the page, "They kiss," or it might have even taken it further than that, but it didn't say specifically what to do. And Nick and I have two totally different ways of approaching the work, and I'm so much more, "Let's see what happens, and let's play around and surprise me," and he's more, "No, I need to know what's gonna happen," which is always so stimulating for me. It's fun to tickle him that way, and Carlos kept, especially for that love scene, the camera rolling... [In] New York apartments, all the floors are really wonky, so I couldn't just sit like this in a wheelchair, the wheelchair would keep rolling, so... it clinked into his and it became this ballad and this dance.

Are you going to keep focusing on independents? Because you've struck a nice balance between things like The Departed and The Manchurian Candidate.
You know, it's interesting. The last several projects, the last three projects, were studio projects... A couple of them start off as independents, and now have gotten taken hold of by Miramax and other [studios]. The next three things I'm very proud of are.... The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Orphan, which is a major Joel Silver film...

Orphan sounds a lot like Joshua.
The only thing really that's similar to it is that she's a mother who's having a hard time being a mother. It's radically [different]. There are enough differences in the plot; it's actually a twist, another twist that you've never really seen in films before, and it was that twist that made me say yes, I'm going to do this film. And working with Peter Sarsgaard. From the outside, it does sound [like Joshua] and that was a big concern of mine when I took it, but the character is so radically different. I'm not suffering from psychotic post-partum depression [in this film]. It is really a story about a husband and a wife who are having trouble in their marriage, and who feel like the only way they can [re]unite is by adopting an orphan. Working with Peter Sarsgaard is amazing. That was worth it alone....

I just did a film with [director/writer] Niki Caro, an epic 19th century film called The Vintner's Luck, about a countess... Things come to me, you know, and directors come to me and scripts come to me and I gravitate towards some and [not] others.