While writing her senior thesis as a social studies major at Harvard in 1985, Stone said she first realized a passion for film during a screening of “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.” The film was written by John Sayles, and was about single mothers. “It was really powerful and had a lot to say,” Stone said. “That was my big epiphany moment. I just had stories I wanted to tell that could best be told visually, because my first love has always been storytelling.”