Already a veteran of original web production, writer/director/actress Lena Dunham first popped up on the cinephile radar screen with her terrific 2007 Slamdance short Dealing. She followed that up with an Nerve.com original serial Tight Shots, and this week she debuts a hysterical new web serial Downtown Delusional Divas on Index Magazine’s newly redesigned site. We caught up with her to discuss watching Helen Mirren play a homicide detective, why she hasn’t gotten around to reading Anna Karenina and what Lynn Ramsay and Tori Amos could do together.

What films and TV shows have you watched recently?

I just finished the last season of Prime Suspect, the BBC show starring Helen Mirren as a hard-boiled homicide detective with a disastrous personal life. That show is so well done and Helen Mirren’s performance is just epic—the seven seasons span more than ten years, so we really see this woman go from zero to hero and back again. I’ve also been watching this not-very-good but totally addictive TBS show called My Boys. It’s replaced How I Met Your Mother as my drug of choice. Ever since Full House, I’ve always needed a go-to feel good sitcom.

Which ones, if any, had any lasting significance for you? Why?

I recently re-watched Angels and Insects, the period drama starring Patsy Kensit, Kristen Scott Thomas, and Marl Rylance, and I have been thinking about it a lot. It is strangely modern, with all sorts of surreal costume details (goth stripes, ironed hair.) The filmmaker, Philip Haas, creates this totally self-reflexive universe that really appeals to something in me.

How do your viewing habits effect your work as a film director?

When I’m in the middle of writing/plotting, I watch a lot of movies and it feels more important than eating (or at least as important. I often do both things at once.) Then, when I’ve started shooting I get very self-conscious about how many different influences are right there on the surface of what I’m doing and I stop watching and just read perezhilton.com and cooking magazines and try to forget that anyone else has ever made a film.

What have you been reading lately?

I recently finished Diary of An Emotional Idiot by Maggie Estep. She’s this sort of riot grrrl, punky spoken word artist and her book embodies all the descriptors I used on her. It’s funny and grotesque and very cinematic. I also read a memoir called Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso, about her experience getting very sick with an autoimmune disorder as an undergraduate at Harvard. It’s a heartbreaking and uncompromising coming-of-age story, as well as a searing indictment of our culture’s whole approach to health (care).

What would be your ideal literary adaptation? Why?

Blue Angel by Francine Prose. I’ve wanted to see it as a film since before I even wanted to make films. It’s a caustic and aggressive story about a past-his-prime fiction writer stuck teaching at a mediocre liberal arts college. He gets caught up in a psychological affair with a talented female student. It asks all kinds of important questions, most notably “how do you define success?” And it forces the reader to suspend ethical judgment and just sit with these characters. I’d like to shoot it in Vermont during a very windy Autumn. David Straithairn and Angela Bettis would star, with Mary Steenburgen gaining thirty pounds and then playing the wronged wife. Animal House meets Wonder Boys.

What are some of the books you’ve always wanted to read that you haven’t gotten around to?

Anna Karenina. And not just because I think I’m supposed to want to read it—I find everything I’ve heard about that book very appealing. Fur! Trains! Unrequited love! But it’s dauntingly thick.

What’s been coming out of your stereo recently?

Sara Rossein, one of my collaborators on Delusional Downtown Divas, found some amazing, danceable music for our soundtrack. Like Lissy Trullie, who is this pixie-ish redhead who opens her mouth and Ramones sounds come out. And Mod Rocket, these teenage girls with a very un-teenage rock band.

I’m also listening to Patrick Cleandenim, There Are Some Who Call Us Tim/Doggie Hi! Yippie (both projects by Penn Sultan), Maria Taylor, Teddy Blanks’ new EP, and way too much Katy Perry (I  don’t know why. I don’t even like it that much.)

Is music an essential part of your process for conceiving and writing films?

Very essential! The whole idea for [Dunham's first feature] Creative Nonfiction came about after listening to 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon and walking down the road in Connecticut acting out the lyrics with myself. With my short Dealing, it all started because of the Wilco and Billy Bragg song Hoodoo Voodoo. When I’m writing I take many music breaks and listen and fantasize. And then of course I have to reconcile the fact that I can’t afford to actually use any of the songs that have gotten me so excited.

What would be your ideal pairing of director and musician for a concert film? Why?

A nice serious collaboration between Lynne Ramsay and Tori Amos could be very fruitful. Lynne would know what to do with all of Tori’s damaged-bird characters. I’d also like to see a young pop hunk like Jesse McCartney get the John Waters treatment.