In the nineties, she was considered a specialty in the male-dominated filmmaking profession, and today Hollywood asks her to imagine what it’s like to be a woman. Nicole Holofcener gave an exclusive interview to Népszava in Karlovy Vary.
In the overseas press and professional publications, more and more analytical articles are written about how the cancel culture has destroyed Western societies and made it impossible for artists to express themselves freely. What do you think about this?
Wow, you’re taking me straight to the minefield? Cancel culture is ugly and disappointing, but people need to take responsibility for what they do. Anyway, I agree that the genre of comedy has lost its meaning at the altar of political correctness.
When her mother married producer Charles C. Joffe, she moved to Hollywood. How do you remember this period?
I had nothing to do with Hollywood then. All I cared about was getting my acne and hair straightened and looking like a California girl. Moving from New York to Los Angeles in the 60s was a very difficult transition. Everyone was very different. I drew a lot because I thought I wanted to be an artist like my biological father. But I wasn’t that good. Then I started taking film classes, which were easy and fun. I thought maybe I could be a writer or a set designer or something, but I never thought about being a director. I didn’t really know what it really was until I had to direct some things in film school. And I found it very entertaining. The teachers also thought I was pretty good at it. So I decided to continue.
As a woman, you were able to become a successful director in the studio system when there were no quota numbers.
Growing up with independent film in the nineties, people gave new voices more of a chance. And I think I had a distinctive female voice when I wrote about personal things and little stories. And I was just one of those few women. A kind of specialty.
He started learning the tricks of directing from Woody Allen.
If it counts that I wasn’t even ten years old and I was a statistician, then yes. Then I got a job as a production assistant for the sex comedy Midsummer’s Eve. We shot in the countryside, they sent us up into the mountains to make the “Cut!” to shout the word when there was no one there to control the crowd. So I felt pretty useless, but I felt really good because it was a party. Then I worked in the editing room on Hannah and Her Brothers. Woody Allen usually comes in and cuts during filming, but not this time, he was away the whole time. And the editor entrusted me with putting together the daily materials. However, when Woody came back to cut the film, the editor wanted his own people with him, and I had to go. It was very disappointing that I could not be there. But I learned a lot watching the daily footage.
What was Woody Allen like?
Very nice. He poked me, slapped me with a newspaper like a joking uncle. As I got older, he became more and more distant from me.
But do you watch his movies?
Not necessarily the latest, I prefer his early works. But quite a few of them, and sometimes I take them out again. I have very mixed feelings about his personal scandals, but I’m still accepting of his works.
Are there others who have influenced you?
Elaine May, Neil Simon, Albert Brooks, Hal Ashby, Ken Loach, Mike Lee. I wish I could name more women. Judy Blume was also a big influence on me. When I read his books as a child, I felt that he could write stories about ordinary things. Then I thought I wanted to write films about everyday things.
What do you think of Greta Gerwig?
About the director of Barbie? Make him the next president of the United States! Because a change would be necessary. Our planet is going to hell and that puts a lot of things into a different perspective. I’m terrified. Everyone is terrified. Especially our children, and it’s very, very scary. I’m Jewish, and I’ve never felt more Jewish in my life than I do now.
Just as Asian people probably didn’t feel so singled out before so much violence was directed at them in my country.
If I ask you what your profession is, what will you say?
Even I would laugh at myself if I said he was a professional filmmaker. I usually say I’m a writer and leave it at that. The directing thing comes with an undertone of pomposity. But when I’m in a room like this, I’m a writer and a director.
Writer-director who deals with the problems of the American middle class in his works.
Now you want to hold me responsible for why I don’t deal with the poor?
No. Rather, I would like to ask why the neuroticism of the rich excites you so much?
I don’t think I only write about upper middle class people. I think they are struggling with their class rights and their sense of guilt, apparently because they don’t know what they can do to make the world a better place. And are they useless? That’s the big question here. In this sense, my films are about different classes. I don’t think I celebrate the rich.
I didn’t even claim that.
I know. I’m very interested in class and class inequality, and I express that as best I can. I can do that in a personal way, not with political films. I think there is politics in my films, but I am not a political filmmaker.
As a director, he undertook work in TV series that are credited with the explosion of the series genre.
I am very grateful for these opportunities. At the same time, you will be surprised because I think this explosion was too much. Many series look beautiful these days, but a six-hour format could easily be a tighter two-hour movie on the big screen. At the same time, I admit that I watch these and survived the Covid period with series. Then, over time, I tried to start my own series four times. I wrote two of them, and in the case of two I joined as a director. Even the actors were there. Then they paid a lot of money so that there would be nothing of them. Which is not good, because it is increasingly difficult to put together movies. At least ones that show human stories and wouldn’t cost more than five or six million dollars.
As a screenwriter, he takes on increasingly surprising tasks. He has a co-writing credit, for example, with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel. How did this opportunity come about?
It was fantastic. I was scared at first because I had never done anything like this before. But when Ben and Matt approached me personally, and then Ridley, who obviously had to approve me coming on board, they gave me a lot of confidence, made me feel that I could do it. The boys were very nervous because they did not know how to speak and write in the medieval French setting. We all did a lot of research. At that time there was not as much information about women as there was about men. I had to invent female characters to make the story better. They were there on set, that’s for sure, and it was a very exciting experience to go to France and Ireland and watch Ridley shoot with five cameras and shoot the battle scenes. This was completely new to me after my single camera dramas.
Business card
Nicole Holofcener was born in 1960 in New York. Oscar-nominated American film and television director and screenwriter. He directed seven feature films, including Exes and Lovers (2013), Girlfriends (2006) and Will you ever forgive me? (2018), he also worked on series, among others he directed some episodes of Sex and New York.
As a director, didn’t you feel the urge to “give advice”?
Well, how the hell could I not have felt it? Sometimes it was hard when I felt like he didn’t quite understand the scene – you know, the women. Sometimes I told him, and then he said: “Get out of here!”. I don’t need your opinion. And I fully respect that, because if a writer had done this on my set, maybe I would have reacted the same way. I might also be open to the writer’s ideas if I thought they were great. But if I thought it was intrusive, I wouldn’t be happy about it. And I think he also felt that I was intrusive at times.
Didn’t he take it to heart then?
No, of course not. I might have cried in my thirties. if Ridley Scott sends you to hell, but as you get older, humility increases and ego decreases. At least ideally.
Could you tell us about your writing method?
When I write, I’m very aware that I’m not going to include exteriors of the White House or interiors of, say, a ballroom. It’s just ingrained in me, and that’s okay. I usually start with a topic. For example, would my ego be able to handle a spouse or close friend who doesn’t like my work but loves me, would I feel too humiliated to be in such a relationship? Or what if I have an adopted black sibling? I like to let the characters suffer for me. For Lovely & Amazing, my idea was, what would it be like to grow up in a family of neurotic women? A lot of things in the film are very autobiographical or biographical, but only on the level of inspiration. I was also often inspired by what it was like to live as a single person. I once started dating a man who spoke horribly about his ex-wife. I wondered: what does my ex-husband say about me? Of course, my works are not real stories, but everything can be unfolded on film. This is what the producers of Marvel and the new Tron are asking me now: to imagine for them and describe what it’s like to be a woman. Isn’t it mind blowing?
Source: nepszava.hu
