The most sought-after ticket at the Sundance Film Festival on Monday morning was not a movie but a Women in Film brunch featuring a conversation between Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. So many women (and a few men!) turned up to see the long-time friends and Nine to Five co-stars (who are reteaming for a new Netflix series), in fact, that most were forced to sit or stand for the duration of the conversation. Fortunately, Fonda and Tomlin more than made up for the cramped conditions with inspiring words for female filmmakers, anecdotes about their own careers, and hilarious repartee. Ahead, the highlights:

On Their Acting Careers

Jane: “I took the easy road for awhile. I would say that ended with Barbarella. [But] I liked playing somebody that caused a certain generation of men to have their first erection. When I became an activist I didn't want to be put into that [sex object] slot anymore. . . There were no movies that I wanted to be in so I thought maybe I would just leave the business. But a very wise person said to me that the movement doesn’t have a lot of movie stars, so you career is important. So I thought, ‘If my career is important, then I'm going to start making my own films.’”

Lily: “I didn’t go into performing to be famous. I wanted to work. . . I thought you absolutely lose integrity [with fame]. . . and I have.”

On Paving the Way in Hollywood for More Female Directors

Fonda: “We have to shame the studios for being so gender-biased. We have to make sure that they realize they are being gender-biased so that they are self-conscious about it. . . We have to show that movies made by women make money. So we need to go to movie theaters and see them and talk about them and Tweet about them and tell our friends to go. We just have to prove that we can be commercial. I have no integrity,” she joked, referencing Tomlin’s earlier comment. “So I can say that. I gave it up long ago.”

On How They Could Have Co-Starred in Another Film Together

Lily: “Do you remember you tried to get me the job that Vanessa [Redgrave] took in Julia?”

Jane: Not seeing to remember this, Fonda jokes, “You would have been wrong for the part.”

Lily: “[Julia director] Fred Zimmerman didn’t know who I was or didn’t want me or something so you told him to watch the Oscars because that was the year I was nominated for Nashville. And I went as a 50s movie star. I wore a tiara and a fur and gloves. . . I looked like Edith Ann at a birthday party . . . ”

Jane: “You would have done a great job.”

Lily: “I could swing just as well as Vanessa.”

On Fonda’s Box-Office Flops

Jane: “Rollover was totally brilliant and prescient but no one saw it or could understand it, including me and [co-star] Kris Kristofferson.”

On How They Would Have Gone About Their Careers Differently

Jane: “Relationships are important. You don’t have to sleep with [people] but you have to be friends. I didn’t realize how important relationships are. The growing myth is that women don’t support each other. Women fight each other. But this [brunch] just shows that we don’t.”

On Female Friendship

Jane: “I think that is one reason why women live longer than men. Friendship between women is different than friendship between men. We talk about different things. We delve deep. We go under, even if we haven’t seen each other for years. There are hormones that are released from women to other women that are healthy and do away with the stress hormones. . .It’s my women friends that keep startch in my spine and without them, I don’t know where I would be. We have to just hang together and help each other.”