June 25, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s “Script Magazine” article: What Do I Need to Know About Writing Spec Scripts? Your Questions are Answered!
Susan Kouguell dives deep into questions about writing spec scripts, including steps for selling your screenplay, rewrite advice, and more!
With over 25 years of teaching screenwriting at universities and script consulting, I often believe that I’ve probably heard and read it all.
I’ve heard (and lived it myself)—“My script almost got made, but…” Fill in the heartbreaking blanks.
Over the last decades I’ve read the most brilliant scripts that were in development hell and never made it to the silver screen. I labored over just about the worst scripts (you can define that for yourself—whether it’s lack of story, stilted dialogue, endless action paragraphs that offer equally endless back-story, cringe-worthy characters, and so on) and yes, I have seen these scripts end up on that silver screen. I’ve sat there in the dark movie theater, appalled, if not crying out of frustration, that these movies got made. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always sincerely happy for the writers who get their movies produced yet honestly dismayed by the fact that somehow they did get produced.
But I digress. Let’s stay positive here.
The following are the most common questions posed by my Su-City Pictures East, LLC clients, my students, and seminar attendees about spec scripts.
What exactly is a spec script?
A spec script is a screenplay that is written on speculation—meaning without payment or before a deal has been negotiated.
How likely is it that I will sell my spec script?
Selling a script is like winning the lottery. Someone has to win the lottery… and some writers do sell their spec scripts!
I know, you didn’t want to read that this all sounds like a huge gamble.
To keep sane and not discouraged against the staggering odds, it’s important to keep in mind three potential goals:
You want:
to get your script sold;
to get your script produced; and
to have it serve as a writing sample for future work.
How many rewrites do I need to do before I finish my spec script?
This question has been posed to me probably on a daily basis by my clients and students, and it’s usually prefaced with, “I know you don’t know the answer but…”
Right. There is no definitive answer.
My response is always the same: It depends on your own gut instincts, along with the feedback you are getting from a script consultant, film industry executive, trusted friend or family member who will tell you the absolute truth.
You may be able to nail your script in a couple of drafts or it may take 30 drafts or more. The number of rewrites is not a reflection of your talent.
How much money can a beginning screenwriter expect to make by selling a spec script?
It depends on the market, the type of project it is, and who’s buying: a Hollywood studio, which could offer thousands of dollars or more, or an independent production company, which could pay you significantly less.
What are the steps to getting my spec script sold?
Write a great script. (Yep! That one’s obvious (and I see your collective eye rolls) but take your time and don’t submit your script until it’s the best it can be.)
Write a strong query letter that will entice an executive to request to read your script.
Compose a strong synopsis that demonstrates why your script needs to be made and how it is unique.
Prepare a powerful pitch that will inspire an executive to buy your idea and/or script.
Target the production companies, studios, and talent (actors, directors, producers) that are a solid fit for your script.
You’ve heard the joke: “What’s the best way to Carnegie Hall? … Practice. Practice. Practice.” What’s the best way to break into the film business? “Network. Network. Network.” Writing is solitary, but the film industry is all about connections. No matter where you live, find a way to make personal contacts with industry professionals. Attending script conferences, pitch festivals, and film festivals are ways to make connections.
Find representation. Query agents, managers, and entertainment attorneys. Notable script competitions often offer opportunities to connect with representation.
Final advice
Patience is a virtue. It’s not just an old adage, it’s the mantra to chant daily.
Don’t submit your spec script to film industry folks unless it’s absolutely ready and not because you’re tired of it. It’s tough enough to get film industry folks to read your work, but once they reject it, it’s nearly impossible for them to reconsider. Your script is your calling card so put your best screenplay forward!
March 31, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with “Sorry We Missed You” Screenwriter Paul Laverty
Susan Kouguell speaks with Paul Laverty about his new film “Sorry We Missed You,” a wrenching, intimate family drama that exposes the dark side of the so-called “gig economy.”
I sat down with Paul Laverty in Manhattan to talk about screenwriting and his longtime partnership with director Ken Loach. Mr. Laverty is passionate about social injustice, which is not only reflected in his films with Loach but evident when he recalled researching various subjects for their projects and the people behind the actual stories.
About Screenwriter Paul Laverty
Paul Laverty
Born in Calcutta in 1957 to an Irish mother and Scottish father, he studied philosophy in Rome, then law in Glasgow. In the 1980s he worked for three years as a lawyer in Nicaragua, recording human rights abuses; he also travelled to Guatemala and El Salvador.
In 2002, Laverty won Cannes’ Best Screenplay award for Sweet Sixteen, about a young Scottish delinquent battling for a better life. In the same year, Laverty, Loach and their producer, Rebecca O’Brien, formed Sixteen Films, the company which has been behind most of their work since, as well as several films by other directors.
We spoke at length about his new film Sorry We Missed You a wrenching, intimate family drama that exposes the dark side of the so-called “gig economy.”
Sorry We Missed You
Ricky, a former laborer, and his home-attendant wife Abby—who lost their home in the 2008 financial crash—are desperate to get out of their financial distress. When an opportunity comes up for Ricky to work as his own boss as a delivery driver, they sell their only asset, Abby’s car, to trade it in for a shiny new white van and the dream that Ricky can work his way up to someday owning his own delivery franchise. But the couple find their lives are quickly pushed further to the edge by an unrelenting work schedule, a ruthless supervisor, and the needs of their two teenage children. Capturing the sacred moments that make a family, as well as the acts of desperation they need to undertake to make it through each day.
The Interview
Kouguell: Your first venture into screenwriting and subsequent meeting with Ken Loach was something that many aspiring screenwriters can only dream about.
Laverty: Yes, it was the one and only treatment I had ever done. I was working as a human rights lawyer in Nicaragua for three years and was an eyewitness to war in El Salvador and Guatemala, writing human rights reports. In my naivety I thought, I could write a screenplay (with no experience or training) about what I witnessed.
I had no idea what to do, so I bought a bunch of books and learned what a treatment was and wrote what I thought was a treatment and sent it to Ken. I sent it to everyone in the whole world and of course only a few people responded and those who did respond said, it’s a war zone, it’s in Spanish, and I hadn’t written a screenplay before and they said, thanks but no thanks. But Ken was very curious and said, ‘Come on, let’s meet for a cup of tea.’ He said, write a few drafts of scenes and that was a total collaboration.
The film was made a few years later, Carla’s Song (1996), in which Robert Carlyle’s Scottish bus-driver accompanies a Nicaraguan refugee back to her homeland at the height of the Sandinista/Contra conflict. The pair’s next films, My Name is Joe (1998) about a recovering alcoholic, and Bread and Roses (2000) spotlighted Latina workers in Los Angeles struggling to unionize.
The first time working with Ken, he insisted to come to Glasgow and said, ‘I always follow the writer.’ He’s a man who’s been making films for decades and I was green and had no idea what was going on. Writing was like a drug; I’ve never lost that sense of excitement when writing. I was very lucky to meet Ken. We’ve been working together for over 20 years.
Director Ken Loach
Kouguell: How does your collaboration work? Does he come up with an idea or do you?
Laverty: It’s much more organic than that. Now we’re close friends and we’re always exchanging ideas and notions and conversations. Every project has had a different kind of beginning.
We do very different jobs. He directs and I write, but we meet in the middle as filmmakers. Every film is a different genesis. You find things that you have in common.
Ken is the most respectful man you’ll ever meet. He’s very respectful towards writers. He never calls it “A Ken Loach film”—he always demands that the writer has equal billing. I haven’t got an agent, that was all him from the beginning.
Ken always says the most creative thing in a film is the screenplay.
Kouguell: Sorry We Missed You and I, Daniel Blake share similar sensibilities.
Laverty: We imagined Sorry We Missed You as a companion piece to I, Daniel Blake. One was a cruel welfare piece and this one we decided to look at work. They grew out of each other. We were visiting the food banks in Scotland and England. In the past, food banks were usually for the unemployed, but now it was the working poor; they had jobs. There were families where two people were working, but still not getting through the month. We were asking ourselves, why is that?
Our last two films have grown out of a fascination with what’s underneath the surface. With I, Daniel Blake, something cruel was going on in the welfare system, the recipients were stereotyped, and the propaganda campaign was so successful; it was a grand lie. It was the right-wing press demonizing the poor. That whole cruelty of the welfare system was a way to support the gig-economy and the zero-contract culture that we have.
The gig-economy of bogus self-employment. You don’t get paid a wage; all the language is designed by lawyers about opening a franchise but it’s a deception. Instead of technology liberating people, it ties them even more. All that was fascinating.
Kouguell: InSorry We Missed You, there isn’t that stereotypical antagonist often found in many films. Here, they’re all trying to survive.
Laverty: Maloney, the boss, is in a place that if he doesn’t keep ‘the box’ happy everyone loses their jobs. The drivers are all cogs in a wheel.
Kouguell: Tell me about the research you did.
Laverty: It was harder to do the research for this one than in I, Daniel Blake—we usually find people through grassroots organizations, personal contacts or journalists.I started to give up. Then I went to car parks and spoke to drivers at the start or end of their shifts and persuaded them to come with them. It was actually by being with them and seeing them do the work, seeing how they are at the end of the day. No time to eat. Pissing in a bottle. No toilet breaks. Not seeing their kids. Then you get the sense of how relentless it is.
Kouguell: While the film is specific to its setting, this issue is universal.
Laverty: Yes. How can you maintain this work pressure six days a week? It crushes families.
Kouguell: Your writing poignantly portrayed the downward spiral of a well-intentioned family without pulling at the heartstrings speeches or preaching.
Laverty: That’s the challenge of writing, isn’t it, to get to the heart. The hardest thing is to be on story.
Kouguell: The script is very lean. No scene is extraneous.
Laverty: Ken wanted to make sure we weren’t wasting any energy, and that everything was really tight. My favorite films are the leanest ones like Bicycle Thieves.
The great secret in screenwriting is to find a premise which resonates and echoes.
Ricky’s a van driver and delivers boxes. His wife, Abby, a mother who can’t look after her own children, a mother whose work is deemed to be second. She even gives up her car. Women are diminished once again. You talk to these caregivers, it’s such a complex job. It requires real intelligence and working with patients with complicated needs. I was amazed by the skill and communication skills they had to deal with all that. They have just a short time to spend with each patient. They don’t get paid for their travel time. How unjust is that? Women are bearing the brunt, and in that family her job is secondary. Just by that little premise you’re actually tapping into honest questions and you can get that premise.
Kouguell: Advice for screenwriters?
Laverty: It depends on what story you want to tell, but if you’re writing the types of stories that we do that are about life and power, you have to dig underneath the surface. Listening is greatly underestimated. The more information you get and the more you understand someone else’s point-of-view, and if you spend time with them and listen, it will give you golden nuggets that open up stories for you.
Ask questions with respect, which I think is greatly underestimated. If you spend time with people and they’re telling stories about their experiences, listen to them; they’ll spark your imagination and take you to places that you’ve probably never been.
January 2, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with “BOMBSHELL” Oscar-winning Screenwriter Charles Randolph
Susan Kouguell speaks with Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Randolph about his writing process when adapting a true story for the screen and the challenges of bringing “Bombshell” to life.
I had the pleasure to speak with Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Randolph in a very insightful discussion about the craft of screenwriting, the adaptation process, and his new film, Bombshell. Randolph’s credits include Love & Other Drugs, The Life of David Gale, and The Big Short, for which he won the Academy Award®.
About Bombshell: Starring Academy Award®-winner Charlize Theron, Academy Award®-winner Nicole Kidman, Academy Award®-nominee John Lithgow and Academy Award®-nominee Margot Robbie, and based on the real scandal, Bombshell is a revealing look inside the most powerful and controversial media empire of all time, Fox News, and the explosive story of the women who brought down the infamous man who created it. The film is directed by Emmy® Award-winner Jay Roach and written by Academy Award®-winner Charles Randolph.T
Kouguell: Let’s start with talking about your adaptation process for this film.
Randolph: It was really trying to cobble together as many sources as you can get. Part of that was that there was a great deal of journalism available. Usually what happens is when you do a canvas of stories you can generally feel who has access and who doesn’t. If you were to read 50 articles on Roger Ailes and Fox at that time, it became pretty clear that Sarah Ellison at Vanity Fair and Gabriel Sheman at New York Magazine had access to the Murdochs, and if not the Murdochs, to their label in a pretty intimate way. So, what happens is that you start to figure out pretty quickly whose perspective is framing the story and that helps a lot, and you can start to hierarchize and know what you can trust.
Charles Randolph
Over the course of writing the film, various people produced books, including Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, and these can be helpful for color and background. Then once I’m done with that process, I will meet people. It varies from project to project. I usually meet people later in the process. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is that I don’t want anyone’s NDA (non- disclosure agreement) to be put into question. There’s also a journalist thing when you sit down with someone who tells you a heartbreaking story of their lives and then you’re not be able to use it, because it feels very ugly to do so.
I wait and see whose story I’m going to need and then reach out to their representatives, contact them, and go meet them. I tend to do less than Jay Roach, the director, who likes to meet everyone. We made a concerted effort to sit down with just about everyone who has more than say, two lines in the movie.
For me, it’s a combination of primary sources in terms of books, articles, people writing about other people, and then the interviews, and from those three, using the most potent narratives you can. I love doing the primary research myself because you never know what jewels you will find that another writer might leave out, so if you have the time to do it, that’s great.
Kouguell: Was there any resistance about getting permission from Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson and the others? How did that work?
Randolph: It makes a difference, and I won’t lie to you, if you have an Oscar. It gives you a little bit of credibility, so the big, important people know that this is going to be real. It’s much easier to do that now than it was previously. Then more than that, once the project is going into production and actors become attached and those names are associated with the project, then generally people want to talk. Leveraging a bit of that can help a lot.
It’s also about being as gracious and honest as possible. I always tell people, I’m not a journalist, so we can have conversations that are background that not only will no one associate with you, but also, even if everything is on the record, I don’t know if I’m going to be using those details, so people won’t know it’s you.
It’s really a matter of everyone getting to know the world and recognize that some things, even though there are only two people in the room when it happened, one of them had to have talked. Volunteering information for a film is a much safer prospect than speaking to a journalist. And generally speaking, people like to talk.
Kouguell: Let’s talk about your choice to have the Megyn Kelly character break the fourth wall in the opening scenes.
Randolph: We employed some of this in The Big Short to explain technical concepts. In Bombshell, the idea here was that you needed to very quickly get the logic of the Fox News architectural space, how it exists in that building, how the power was represented in that building, but also what it means to the culture, the flavor of that culture, what the culture was, and the role of Roger Ailes in that culture. We thought we’d do a presentation moment because Megyn is a journalist, and occasionally on her show talked to the camera, as she did famously in the election of 2012.
With all these meta devices, I always say the same thing: Only use them when they’re the only solution available to you to communicate something that you cannot communicate otherwise.
And even in doing that, realize they’re not always going to work.
Kouguell: You created empathy for your characters who many might feel are not empathetic in ‘real life.’
Randolph: Some of these characters we think we know but really don’t. The film is inherently humanizing and one of the things that’s fascinating to me, is a lot of people struggle with the fact that they are identifying with Megyn. We don’t ask you to like the characters, although some people say we do, but that’s not true—we just want you to see them as human. So, much of our understanding of these humans is based on the news, and news is a different function than entertainment. News is about imposing order on chaos. It’s like giving us a story about what’s going on in the world. It’s like giving things labels. Because Megyn and Gretchen don’t live up to that label you have in your head, it gives me an opportunity as a screenwriter to play with your expectations.
I have a friend who asked, ‘Why didn’t you show Megyn as complicit in that culture at Fox?’ and I said, the whole point of her character is that she comes to understand that her silence makes her complicit in the harassment of other women.
I say this to actors all the time, great performances come from characters we are ambivalent about. Do you like Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane? Well, no, you don’t like him, but you understand him. Or Tracy Flick in Election? She’s so interesting and so indicative of a cartoon but also of a type that is sort of real. But do I like Tracy Flick in terms of like? No, I don’t like her—she’s just mean. There’s that thing—great movie characters occupy that space that transcends our judgments, our easy judgments, and so that’s what you’re always striving for as a writer—to get people into a world where they see that character in the terms of that world, and that’s often very uncomfortable in terms of life itself.
December 17, 2019 / sucity / Comments Off on Susan’s Interview with “Parasite” Editor Jinmo Yang
INTERVIEW: “Parasite” Editor Jinmo Yang
Susan Kouguell speaks with “Parasite” editor Jinmo Yang about his collaboration with Director Bong Joon Ho, defying the rules of genre, and finding the rhythm of the film.SUSAN KOUGUELL
DEC 5, 2019
“As a depiction of ordinary people who fall into an unavoidable commotion, Parasite is: a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains, all leading to a violent tangle and a headlong plunge down the stairs.”
Just days before my Skype interview with editor Jinmo Yang (he was in South Korea and I was in Manhattan) the Cannes Film Festival Palme D’or winner Parasite became the top grossing foreign-language film of 2019.
About Parasite
Meet the Park Family — the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity. Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist, to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide “indispensable” luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims’ newfound comfort, a savage, underhanded battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks. (Source: Neon)
The Kim Family: Woo-sik Choi, Kang-ho Song, Hye-jin Jang, So-dam Park
Jinmo Yang
Award-winning film editor Jinmo Yang has edited over a dozen feature films, including Train To Busan and is a long-time collaborator of Director Joon-Ho Bong, having worked with him sinceSnowpiercer (VFX editor) andOkja (editor).
THE INTERVIEW
We began our interview talking about a quote from Director Joon-Ho Bong about Parasite:
“It’s a human drama, but one that is strongly imbued with the contemporary. Although the plot consists of a string of unique and distinctive situations, it is nonetheless a story that could very well take place in the real world. One can see it as taking an incident that was on the news or on social media, and putting it on the screen. So in that sense it’s a quite realistic drama, but I wouldn’t object if one were to call it a crime drama, a comedy, a sad human drama, or a horrific thriller. I always try my best to overturn viewer expectations.”
Kouguell: The film defies traditional genre, as it transcends drama, dark comedy and thriller. Talk about how you worked with the director to create this in the film.
Yang: The script itself reflects how the genres were mixed in the story because that’s a common thread in Bong’s films. I wasn’t really shocked at how all the genres were mixed.
Kouguell: Tell me about your collaboration process with Bong.
Yang: I first began working as his on set editor and for Parasite I actually had my assistant working as my on site editor so I was really able to communicate with the team even as they were shooting. In the editing room, based on the rough edit we got, director Bong and I delved into the details pretty much straight away in our process.
Kouguell: How did you and Bong find the rhythm in the film? There’s such a specific rhythm especially as the genre shifts and the story unfolds.
Yang: There’s always a certain rhythm when Bong writes a script and he continues to develop that sense of rhythm through his storyboarding process, and as he’s shooting; he thinks about how this rhythm will be created during the editing process.
Mr Park (Sun-kyun Lee) and Yeon-kyo Park (Yeo-jeong Jo) in Parasite
When Bong comes to the editing room, we start working on this together, there are some changes that he makes with me in terms of the rhythm he’s constructed during the previous processes. With very specific sequences, he does leave it to me in terms of creating the rhythm and pacing and the tempo, and because we worked on so many films together, with Parasite it wasn’t very difficult to coordinate our senses of rhythm.
Yang cited an example:
One obstacle was that the beats in certain shots felt too lagging. Director Bong wanted to shorten their length and tighten their rhythm, yet maintain all the essential beats. In these instances, we shared the same goal — remove all the “fat,” yet save the “essence.”
One example is when Ki-taek holds up Moon-gwang’s blood-ridden tissue. Originally, Ki-taek had to go through a lot of motions and gestures, such as opening and spraying the packet of hot sauce, to reach the final gesture of “holding up the tissue.” However, we felt like this dragged on too long. So what I suggested was to create jump cuts of Ki-taek’s actions. In the end, the audience didn’t miss out on anything. There were no problems with continuity, yet we achieved the rhythm we were aiming for.
Kouguell: Bong was the co-writer of the script along with Han Jin Won — how closely in the editing room did you work with the screenplay?
Yang: When I’m editing I hardly rely on the actual script; I just work on the footage and the images we have because the basic structure of the story is already set at that point so I don’t go back to the script. I take in account that for director Bong everything he shoots is pretty much in the script.
Kouguell: So, not much improvising then?
Yang: In terms of the story it’s really not different at all but within particular sequences the tone and pacing are often fairly different from what’s in the script.
Kouguell: Advice for film students and aspiring filmmakers?
Yang: Watch a lot of films and not only films that are currently playing in theaters but international films. For me, I tend to be inspired by classic films and older films. When I’m working I tend to use older films as my reference. I’m very inspired by the French New Wave because I think at that time there were new editing styles and techniques that came out. One of my favorites is My Life to Live by Godard and I also watch a lot of films by Akira Kurosowa from the 60s and 70s.
November 22, 2019 / sucity / Comments Off on SUSAN’S INTERVIEW: Academy Award-Nominated Producer Rosalie Varda Discusses Her Documentary Film, “Varda by Agnès,” Collaborating with Her Mother and Preserving Agnès Varda’s Legacy
Susan Kouguell speaks with Academy Award-nominated producer Rosalie Varda about her new documentary film “Varda by Agnès” and collaborating with her mother Agnès Varda.
At the 2019 NYFF Rosalie Varda (Producer: “Varda by Agnes” and “Faces Places”)
Decades ago, when I started making short films in college, it was Agnès Varda’s work that influenced me most. Certainly, a groundbreaking female filmmaker caught my attention, but it was not just about her gender, it was about her art; her portrayal of characters in her narratives, the intimacy she conveyed in her documentaries, how she moved the camera, framed images, and captured moments of color and language—all these elements and more, deeply connected with my artistic sensibilities. Agnès made me believe I could express my voice as a filmmaker. And this was all before I even met her in person.
Over the last few years, I was very fortunate to interview and spend time with Agnès Varda at several events, including her 2017 photograph and installation exhibition at the Blum and Poe Gallery in Manhattan, at Film at Lincoln Center events, and the Locarno Film Festival in 2014 where she received the Pardo d’onore (the lifetime achievement award) during which time I was honored to be the only journalist invited to her masterclass for international students—a fortuitous event, witnessing firsthand her interactions with aspiring filmmakers, which is captured in Varda by Agnes. (There are three years-worth of masterclasses from Agnès Varda’s international travels included in this documentary.)
What always struck me during our conversations was her generosity of spirit, and specifically her pointed questions to me, which admittedly were sometimes intimidating because she had always been a personal inspiration as an artist and filmmaker.
Agnès would ask me: What did you think about the characters’ interactions and movement in the triptych in the installation?
At Blum and Poe Gallery
Why do you teach Vagabond and Cleo from 5 to 7, and what did you specifically discuss with your students? Where can I see your films? Excuse me?! That gave me pause; no other filmmaker I had interviewed over the years asked me questions about my work, nor was I ever forthcoming about my own films. However, the prized interviewer pried it out of me. We talked about our respective challenges and experiences of making movies on low budgets, raising children while making films, and themes close to our heart in our past, present and future work.
I told Rosalie that the last time I spoke with Agnès one-on-one, she gave me the needed push to get back to making my own films. Rosalie smiled and nodded knowingly, “Agnès was always pushing women: “Go! Don’t be afraid. Just go and do it.”
I am forever grateful to Agnès.
Agnès Varda giving a masterclass in VARDA BY AGNÈS courtesy Janus Films
About the Documentary Varda by Agnès (Excerpts from Notes from the director Agnès Varda)
“In 1994, with a retro at the French Cinémathèque, I published a book entitled VARDA BY AGNÈS. 25 years later, the same title is given to my film made of moving images and words, with the same project: give keys about my body of work. I give my own keys, my thoughts, nothing pretentious, just keys.
The film is in two parts, two centuries. The 20th century from my first feature film LA POINTE COURTE in 1954 to the last one in 1996, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS. In between, I made documentaries, features, short and long. The second part starts in the 21st century, when the small digital cameras changed my approach to documentaries, from the GLEANERS AND I in 2000 to FACES PLACES, co-directed with JR in 2017. But during that time, I mostly created art installations, atypical triptychs, shacks of cinema and I kept making documentaries, such as THE BEACHES OF AGNÈS. In the middle of the two parts, there is a little reminder about my first life as a photographer. I’ve made a wide variety of films in my life.
So I need to tell you what led me to do this work for so many years. Three words are important to me: Inspiration, creation, sharing. INSPIRATION is why you make a film. The motivations, ideas, circumstances and happenstance that spark a desire and you set to work to make a film. CREATION is how you make the film. What means do you use? What structure? Alone or not alone? In colour or not in colour? Creation is a job. The third word is SHARING. You don’t make films to watch them alone, you make films to show them. An empty cinema: a filmmaker’s nightmare!”
Rosalie Varda
The Interview with Producer Rosalie Varda
During the 2019 New York Film Festival (which was dedicated to Agnès Varda) I had the great pleasure to sit down over a glass of wine and speak with producer Rosalie Varda about her new documentary Varda by Agnès, which was a Main Slate selection at the Festival.
A tour de force in her own right, Academy award nominee Rosalie Varda spent 25 years as a costume designer and fashion artist before she began to produce her mother’s films full time. She once commented, chuckling: “At the age of 20, I never would have said that at 50, I’d be working for my mother.”
Susan Kouguell: You and Agnès had a very special and unique collaboration. What was it like working with your mother?
Rosalie Varda: Our collaboration was very interesting because both of us wanted to share more than just being a mother and a daughter and speaking about holidays and children. I really started working with her in 2005 on an exhibition that we co-curated together. In that experience we saw that we were able to work together. I don’t have any ego, and I know where my place is. I loved the idea of helping her to be more free to do exactly her project with no concessions and to do it really as she wanted it, which means not taking care of the production, not taking care of the money, not taking care of how it should be, but just be involved in creation because her urgency was creating. She knew at one point she would not be there anymore. She still had new projects and it was like a race of doing everything, which means we did everything.
I realized when working on getting the archives together we had done so much in ten years between when she was 80 and 90-years old. We had maybe 30 exhibitions, four catalogues, and two films.
Portrait of Agnès Varda – Courtesy of Ciné-Tamaris
I traveled a lot with her over the last 10 years. We shared good times; she was very easy and open-minded. I would always say yes to what she wanted to do. I was not there to judge. My job was to produce and help her. It was very rewarding to be able to see her notes she did on the street or a train and then you do it, and see it, and then it’s done and the satisfaction of that is wonderful.
On the personal side, I was happy to share time with her, talking art, music, people, seeing journalists, having a glass of wine—you know, just life. Sharing a life of not just being a daughter coming to see your mother once a week; we were seeing each other every day, working together every day. We laughed a lot. We were very good partners. She would never put me down. She would always put me in the front. She was so generous. She would always say, ‘I wouldn’t be here without you doing everything for me.’ I wanted Agnès to be more in the light and have the younger generation know her.
Agnès Varda (right) and JR (left) in Faces Places directed by Agnès Varda and JR.
SK: I understand you were the one who initially got in touch with the artist JR.
RV: Yes. Agnès didn’t know him and neither did I. I saw his books and I called him on the telephone and said. ‘I’m the daughter of Agnès Varda and I’m calling you because I’d like you to meet my mother.’ There was a blank (silence) on the telephone. Then he said, ‘Well, I know about your mother, I would love to meet her.’ We organized a meeting. And after their meeting, Agnès and JR said to me, ‘We’d like to do a little installation,’ and I said, ‘I think it’s going to be a short film’. They said, ‘No, we don’t want to do a short film.’ I thought, OK, they are going to do a film, but they don’t want to tell me right away, and I thought, I need to find money right away. I went to a French art dealer who’s a friend of mine who gave us the first money. With this money we did the first shooting. And then I produced the film.
Agnès Varda in VARDA BY AGNÈS courtesy Janus Films
Varda by Agnès is both an introduction to her work for those not familiar with her vast body of narrative and documentaries, art installations, and photographs—and a love letter to and from Agnès.
SK: One constant in all her films is her humanity, a poignant trait that came across once again in Varda by Agnès.
RV: Yes, the film is a joyous legacy. This film to me is very important because it’s about legacy, and it’s about education on image. I think this film should be shown to students doing cinema; to discuss (elements of filmmaking), like frame, what is a frame, what is a photo, what is documentary.
SK: The film is a lesson for students without feeling like one, for example Agnès’s discussion about the tracking shots in Vagabond.
RV: Our project was not to be boring for people, it was a conversation about cinema, but it had to be cinema first. Not filming a masterclass. I’m happy you liked it.
SK: What’s next for you?
RV: A kind of documentary but I can’t talk about it yet. I’m also taking care of Agnès’s archives and I hope in the next few years to do an exhibit of her photographs and installations that will be more global. I want to be able to protect all her films; it’s what I do with my brother (Mathieu Demy) so I will continue to travel where people invite me and try to share a little bit of what Agnès had with her curiosity and her humanity — and always pushing people to do things. She would say, ‘Just stop talking about it, just do it.’ I will never forget that.
Agnès had a beautiful life; she has done so much. Agnès did a lot to the end.
Agnès Varda on the beach with birds in VARDA BY AGNÈS – Courtesy Janus Films
November 22, 2019 / sucity / Comments Off on SUSAN’S INTERVIEW: “Beanpole” Director Kantemir Balagov
Susan Kouguell interviews the 28-year-old Russian director and co-writer Kantemir Balagov about his award-winning second feature film “Beanpole.
This is not a story about a historic period: this is a story about the world today. The fact that we live in a world where wars still rage, makes Beanpole a very universal story.
—Kantemir Balagov
Kantemir Balagov
During the New York Film Festival, I sat down with the 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov to talk about his second feature film Beanpole, which received the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film and Best Director in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in Nalchik, Russia, in 1991, Beanpole marks his second feature film; his first feature was the multi-award-winning Closeness (2017). Balagov graduated from Alexander Sokurov’s directing workshop at Kabardino-Balkarian State University in 2015. During his studies, he made a number of fiction and documentary films which took part in various domestic and international events.
Beanpole
1945, Leningrad. World War II devastated the city, demolishing its buildings and leaving its citizens in tatters, physically and mentally. Although the siege – one of the worst in history – is finally over, life and death continue their battle in the wreckage that remains. Two young women, Iya and Masha, search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins.
KOUGUELL: Let’s start with the meaning of the title Beanpole.
BALAGOV: In Russian it means not only about height, it’s about clumsiness too. So, every character in the film is a beanpole in some way. They feel clumsy, they move clumsy. The way they try to start a new normal life is clumsy.
KOUGUELL: The book The Unwomanly Face of War by the Nobel Laureate Svetlana was your inspiration for this film. How closely did you follow the book when writing the script?
BALAGOV: If we’re talking about the plot of the film, it’s original. If we’re talking about the intonation about female destinies it is close to the book. The most touching was the female side of this because I didn’t know about the role of women in the war. Before I read the book, I thought they were serving only in the medical centers and hospitals, but when I knew more, and the amount of sacrifices that they did, I was just blown away. I knew when I finished reading the book in 2015, that I wanted to make a movie about it.
I wanted to show audiences who are the same age as me, that female side because in modern Russian films no one really shows the female side.
BALAGOV: Terekhov is a great Russian writer. Before we met each other, I split the script into small episodes, like a treatment. I sent it to him, and he didn’t like it. I liked that he didn’t like the treatment and we started from scratch. (Balagov smiles.) It’s a funny thing, we had some fights while we worked on it and he said to me that you want me to talk in whispers and I want you to scream. We tried to figure out this middle. He’s a very talented writer; and he knows almost everything about that era. He was a journalist, and worked a lot with archives, and then he started to write books.
KOUGUELL: Masha and Iya are layered and complicated characters; they’re at times in psychological opposition to each, but neither is stereotypical; neither is all good or all bad.
BALAGOV: The layers and shades came to me from literature. My professor Alexander Swgurv told us that I should read more books and watch less movies; this is the motto for the director. I always try to understand my characters and for me as a director it’s always interesting to understand the moral actions of my characters; we’re not black and white.
KOUGUELL: You chose not to include any traditional communist symbols from this era.
BALAGOV: Cinema is a tool of immortality and these women and these men who are in the film, I think they are immortal. I think these kinds of (representations of) political characters don’t deserve this immortality in my films at least, that’s why I didn’t include them.
KOUGUELL: There is a stillness about the film when Iya freezes due to her PTSD. It was visually and emotionally striking.
BALAGOV: We had history of cinema lessons with Alexander Sokurov. He showed me that cinema is a visual code and told us that if you want to see the connection between camera, rhythm, and the characters, to watch Fassbinder’s films. After I saw some of these films, I understood the connection between character and point of view, and for us, with the DP it was really important because that’s how we try to be closer to them and I want audiences to feel close to them, too. It relies on each other, not just editing cuts, etc.; it should be more than that. It’s all interconnected.
I recently had the pleasure to speak with Phillip Youmans about his journey as a writer and filmmaker, and bringing Burning Cane to the screen. The film was featured at the Urbanworld Film Festival in September in Manhattan, which I attended and I was excited when our schedules finally synched up and we could talk.
Written, directed, shot, and edited by Phillip Youmans during his final years of high school Burning Cane tells the story of a deeply religious woman’s struggle to reconcile her convictions of faith with the love she has for her alcoholic son and a troubled preacher. Set in rural Louisiana, the film explores the relationships within a southern black protestant community, examining the roots of toxic masculinity, how manhood is defined and the dichotomous role of religion and faith.
Burning Cane won the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival for Best Narrative Feature, Best Actor (Wendell Pierce) and Best Cinematography.
Phillip Youmans
PHILLIP YOUMANS (Writer/Director/Cinematographer/Producer/Editor) is from the 7th Ward of New Orleans. Before high school, Phillip began writing, directing, shooting, and editing his own short films. During his high school years at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), Phillip solidified his technical foundation of filmmaking in their media arts program. Phillip’s most recent video installation titled Won’t You Celebrate with Me premiered through Solange Knowles’ creative agency Saint Heron at the end of his senior year of high school; the installation is a showcase of black female unity in a non-material, alternative future.
His latest short film NAIROBI, also made with Saint Heron, about a Harlem-based family of francophone West-African immigrants, will premiere on their platform in 2019. Phillip is in postproduction on his short documentary about the Grammy-nominated jazz musician Jon Batiste titled The Vanguard: Days with Jon Batiste.
KOUGUELL: The film has a very poetic quality. There isn’t that much dialogue. Tell me about the writing process.
YOUMANS: I had gone through the script and it had a lot of dialogue; it was explaining too much. The first pass was to see what we communicated through action lines and then I began axing dialogue from there. I approached it with that lens. So much of the crafting and staying within those moments were found during the editing process. During editing there was still too much talking; it was too exposition heavy. It didn’t drop us into the world, it over-explained the world.
Burning Cane began as the short film The Glory that Youmans penned in November 2016, in his junior year of high school. During this time, Youmans began working at Morning Call Coffee Stand in New Orleans City Park to raise money to shoot the short.
The original short screenplay featured most of the same key characters as Burning Cane: Reverend Tillman, Helen Wayne, and Daniel Wayne. Akin to Burning Cane, The Glory followed a protestant woman as she deals with an unexpected visit from her estranged son.
Wendell Pierce
KOUGUELL: How did the The Glory evolve into this feature?
YOUMANS: The short film was very centered on the two pillar characters — Helen, living in isolation and surviving independently, and her son randomly appearing. In the feature I wanted to give more backstory to the characters.
When Wendell Pierce came on board, it changed everything. One, he’s a phenomenal actor and two, I was able to expand the role of Pastor Tillman. His character is in a mayoral position, and what he’s preaching he doesn’t believe in; all that was built upon after the prospect of Wendell being attached came to fruition.
KOUGUELL: Given your age, were there naysayers that said you couldn’t make this happen?
YOUMANS: There were a couple of local filmmakers in New Orleans that I volunteered on their sets who thought it was a monstrous undertaking and not possible to do this and raise the money. But, I was working with people who were my friends and didn’t care about getting paid. They wanted to be on set. A lot of people’s reservations were valid but my situation was different. I went to NOCCA; we had a full sound stage, mixing room, great cameras and audio gear and a crew of people that I would have been hanging out with regardless of making this film.
KOUGUELL: What questions do you wish people would ask you about your film and your journey?
YOUMANS:: What it’s like submitting a film to a festival. Letting it go after investing so much energy. After so much time and hours, donated hours, I wanted the film to be seen, I wanted people to connect to the work, I wanted it to resonate with the world. The process was tough. My mother said, ‘Let it go, you can’t keep on it forever.’
When I first made the film, the first cut was three hours; the script was 80 pages. The first cut was me being too attached to the material, I overindulged. I got feedback and listened, and took it into consideration. The feedback sessions changed the whole game.
KOUGUELL: Advice for aspiring writers and directors?
YOUMANS: When I was younger I thought I needed to be in New York or Los Angeles to make a name for myself and find a story. But, falling back into my roots, into the world I knew and people I was familiar with, I gave an authentic perspective and unapologetic statement on my work.
My advice — fall back into the things you really know and what means something to you. People are very interested in a story that we haven’t spoken about in a new way before. The only way to bring in a new perspective is if it’s coming from you with authenticity and from whatever you can honestly speak on.
Burning Cane opens in theaters in New York City October 25, and November 8th in Los Angeles. It will be released on Netflix November 6th.
During the 2019 New York Film Festival, I sat down with director Michael Apted to talk about his new documentary 63 UP where it is an Official Selection, as well as his wide-ranging body of work.
Since the 1960’s, Michael Apted has helmed an extensive list of feature films and documentaries. His feature films include Gorillas in the Mist, Coalminer’s Daughter, Gorky Park, Thunderheart, Nell, The World is Not Enough, Enigma, Enough, Amazing Grace, and the third installment of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treaders, and Unlocked.
Mr. Apted’s documentary credits include the Boris Grebenshikov film The Long Way Home, Incident at Oglala, Bring on the Night, Moving the Mountain, Me and Isaac Newton, Power of the Game and the official 2006 World Cup Film. Mr. Apted has also worked extensively in television, including directing episodes of HBO’s epic series Rome, the Showtime series Masters of Sex and Ray Donovan, and the Netflix series Bloodline.
The UP Anthology Documentary Series
The internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning sequels based on the original 7 UP documentary, have followed the lives of 14 Britons since the age of seven in seven-year increments.
The original 7 UP was broadcast as a one-off World in Action Special inspired by the founding editor Tim Hewat’s passionate interest in the Jesuit saying, “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man,” and his anger at what he saw as the rigidity of social class in England. 7 UP featured the children talking about their hopes and dreams for the future. As members of the generation who would be running the country by the year 2000, what did they think they would become?
This groundbreaking documentary anthology has now reached 63 UP, gaining further illuminating insight into its premise of asking whether or not our adult lives are predetermined by earliest influences and the social class in which we are raised.
Director Michael Apted, who moved to Hollywood in the late 70s, has returned every seven years to chart the children’s progress through life. Over six decades, the films have documented the group as they became adults and entered middle-age, dealing with everything life has thrown at them in between.
63 UP
We began our interview talking about 63 UP.
Kouguell: There is nothing rehearsed in this documentary.
Apted: It has to be the first time it has ever been said or thought.
Kouguell: Did you work from a script or an outline?
Apted: Neither. I write down thoughts and look at all the episodes again just to see what I left behind or should pay more attention to.
I used to plot out the questions I would ask and sometimes give them clues about it, but now I don’t tell them beforehand what I want to ask them. I know some of them don’t want me.to ask certain questions and so I don’t ask those questions; I don’t want to lose them.
I also don’t see them hardly at all between the times we’re filming every seven years, so I won’t get confused by what’s happened to them otherwise it gets so complicated. I know the big issues we talk about in their life and what they’re doing in this particular point of time.
Kouguell: At what point of the process did you add the voiceover narration?
Apted: I added it during post-production; it’s the last thing I do during the last 2-3 days of dubbing. And then I polish it so it can be as up to date as possible.
Kouguell: Tell me about your collaboration process with the editor.
Apted: I’ve been working with editor Kim Horton since 21 UP. I give him an outline of what we filmed. We type everything up and it’s about 100 pages. I do a rough first draft during the time I’m shooting. Then once I’ve got the major outline of them (the subjects) and I start deciding where I put them, then I mark lines through the transcript and give a rough cut of it to him. If there are problems, he’ll let me know. By the time I finish shooting, we’ve got a pretty good sense of where the subjects are.
We do a rough assembly and the film is about 40 minutes too long and then we start slashing. Then I get into the interesting parts. It’s by elimination; sometimes you do an interview and it doesn’t go well and then you’re looking at something and you go back to it and see something good, it’s to keep the big picture of it. It’s not the same order in every film.
Directing Narrative and Documentary Films
Kouguell: The many films you directed include the biographical dramas Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist. How did the UP series inform your narrative films as a director?
Apted: I think doing a documentary is one set of your muscles and doing a drama is another. You can learn from both of them — how to place material, where you build it. I learned those lessons doing both documentaries and drama. Both of them helped the other; how to keep things interesting on camera when interviewing them, the same way you keep the actor of a drama alive and not just doing it by numbers.
The dramas I do are usually character-driven. It’s very similar to doing a documentary; in a drama you’re always trying to build to something. I say to documentary directors to look at more dramas, to give it more wit so you don’t put one great thing at the beginning; structure the documentary to keep the audience’s interest.
I learned a lot in documentaries about how to cut performances in dramas and to keep the audience on their toes. It’s so interesting to me in a lot of my movies, the more documentaries I do, the more non actors I use in narrative films.
Kouguell: Words of advice to filmmakers?
Get feedback
Apted: It’s painful to have people look at your work. Better to know now than later when you see the reviews. It’s hard to get feedback. It used to drive me mad. Always show it to someone who will tell you the truth.
Rhythm
Apted: The film’s rhythm in both documentary and fiction is important. Keep the audience on their toes so they’re not quite sure what’s going to happen next. It’s that element of surprise that is important, but not bogus surprise. If you know you have five big moments in your film, spread the drama around.
63 UP opens November 27th at Film Forum in New York City, December 6th at Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles and nationwide December 13th.
Susan Kouguell speaks with filmmaker Tânia Cypriano during the New York Film Festival where her powerful documentary Born to Be had its world premiere.
“I’ve always been interested in stories related to health and the body in the context of individuals and communities.”
~ Tânia Cypriano – Director
Tania Cypriano and cinematographer Jeffrey Johnson
I had the pleasure to speak with Tânia Cypriano during the New York Film Festival where her powerful documentary Born to Be had its world premiere.
Born to Be follows the work of Dr. Jess Ting at the groundbreaking Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York City—where, for the first time ever, all transgender and gender non-conforming people have access to quality transition-related health and surgical care. With extraordinary access, this feature-length documentary takes an intimate look at how one doctor’s work impacts the lives of his patients as well as how his journey from renowned plastic surgeon to pioneering gender-affirming surgeon has led to his own transformation.
ABOUT DIRECTOR AND CO-PRODUCER TANIA CYPRIANO
Tânia Cypriano has been working between the United States and her native Brazil for over twenty-five years. Her films and videos have won international awards including Best Documentary at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, New York AIDS Film Festival, Festival do Cinema Brasileiro de Gramado in Brazil, and Fespaco in Burkina Faso. Her first documentary Viva Eu!, which won five international awards, including Best Documentary at Joseph Papp’s Festival Latino in New York, is about the first man diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in Brazil. Her television credits include working on documentaries for PBS, the History Channel, NHK in Japan, GNT in Brazil, and Channel 4 in England. Tânia has also been a grant recipient from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Soros Documentary Fund, the Jerome Foundation, Experimental Television, and the National Latino Communication Center. She has served in productions for Bill Moyers, Martin Scorsese, and Nelson Pereira dos Santos. She has also co-organized film series with MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, Exit Art, the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, and the Grazer Kunstverein in Austria.
Dr. Ting (center)
KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about the creative collaborative process.
CYPRIANO: After a year of getting the hospital’s permission to film and finding funding, we started production with no sound recordist—just using mics on the cameras and for that matter no crew; it was just our cinematographer Jeffrey Johnson, our producer Michelle Koo Hayashi and myself. Michelle had a lot of creative input with me, and it was her first film. I try to include and be open to everybody’s suggestions and thoughts. I try to include and be open to everybody’s suggestions and thoughts.
With the filming, I went in with Jeff and myself often carrying all the equipment. We had no sound person in the beginning. It was the three of us or just Jeffrey alone because of the size of the rooms. It was very tough to film in such tight spaces. I was lucky to find Jeff and to work with him. It was hard to find camera people who would feel comfortable filming surgeries and exams; a lot of people are not good with seeing blood.
Dr Ting with Jordan
KOUGUELL: How much input did Dr. Ting have on the project?
CYPRIANO: Dr. Ting had quite a bit of input. He helped me gain access to both the director of the hospital and inside the hospital spaces. Sometimes Dr. Ting would meet a patient and then suggest them to us. Other times we were just there by chance. This happened with Cashmere; we were there by chance, and we were able to film her on her first consultation and follow her journey.
Devin waits for Dr. Ting pre-op
KOUGUELL: Did you work from a written outline or script?
CYPRIANO: We filmed without a script or outline. The film was shaped in the editing room. After we started editing, we did do some more filming. For example, with Devon’s story, more happened after we were already editing. We had to bring the material to the editing room and then rethink how we were structuring our acts. It totally shifted where the film was going originally. To the very last day, we had to make sure to be as accurate and open to tell this very story.
KOUGUELL: There was a poignant comfort level that you established with the patients and their families and friends.
CYPRIANO: I spent almost three years following the people in the film. I built a very tight relationship with them. I’m part of their life, too. That’s a way I also work. Once I start getting involved with personal stories it’s difficult to separate myself as a person. A lot of the material we have is because of these types of relationships.
It was important to me that everyone felt comfortable; it was important for their bodies to be part of the story. All of the patients felt very comfortable being in front of the camera. I tried to make sure that the surgeries (seen in the film) were treated in a certain manner; what we could see and not see. It was a big decision how and what to show.
For transgender people to get this healthcare is historical. Before, patients would have to be wealthy or travel great distances.
KOUGUELL: Were there any questions or subjects either Dr. Ting or the patients did not want to discuss?
CYPRIANO: Once I found the right people to be part of a project, I needed to know that we could talk about everything. They were all very open.
It was essential to me that everyone be comfortable sharing their names, their faces, and their bodies. It was important to me to follow people of different ages, ethnicities, gender, and financial backgrounds. There are those who have family support and those who don’t; there are those who have partners and those who hope their transition will bring them to one.
KOUGUELL: Looking back on this experience, what are your final thoughts?
CYPRIANO: I was overwhelmed by how many people in the film wanted to show their faces on camera and be involved in the project. They knew the importance of this film, and how historical this moment is.
Tony Shalhoub, Caroline Aaron, Alex Borstein, Daniel Palladino, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Rachel Brosnahan, Michael Zegen, Kevin Pollak, and Marin Hinkle attend the Making Maisel Marvelous featuring Amazon Prime Original The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel at The Paley Center for Media (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel)
At the opening of the interactive exhibit Making Maisel Marvelous at the Paley Center for Media, I had the opportunity to speak with the creators and cast members of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Our focus was on the writing of the series and the resonant characters brought to the screen. The show recently received 20 Emmy Award nominations, more than any other comedy, including nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.
About The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
In 1958 New York, Midge Maisel’s life is on track—husband, kids, and elegant dinners in their Upper West Side apartment. But when her life takes a surprise turn, Midge has to quickly decide what else she’s good at—and going from housewife to stand-up comic is a wild choice to everyone but her.
Interview Highlights
Alex Borstein and Rachel Brosnahan (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )
Kouguell: What initially attracted you to the material and the role of Midge Maisel?
Rachel Brosnahan : I knew I wanted to do this project from the bottom of the first page. The first scene of the pilot, at the wedding, Midge is really patting herself on the back. I loved how sure she is. I loved her world. I loved how unburdened she is. She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s flawed. She’s selfish. She believes she’s the center of the universe. We’re watching her grow and getting taken down a peg.
Kouguell: Some of the choices Midge makes are nontraditional for that era, and perhaps some might even consider for now. What’s your take on some of the criticism about Midge’s character regarding her mothering?
Brosnahan: I find some of that criticism valid at times but also frustrating. The kids have two loving parents, four loving grandparents. They have a village, including a nanny who is devoted to them. They have a mother who’s not always around; she’s pursuing her dream and as a result, is asking their father to step up, asking the neighbors to step up, and asking the grandparents to step up and help raise them. The kids aren’t wanting for anything.
I was asked once in an interview if I thought Midge loved her children, and Alex Borstein (Susie) turned around and said, “Well, do I not, not love my children because I’m here doing press and I feel the same.”
I get frustrated when people say that it feels like lazy writing as opposed to attributing it to her character; she’s not a perfect 1950s ideal of a doting mother that we’re used to seeing on television. In a show like this, I appreciate the idea of what a good mother could be—someone who is out to provide for her children, looking to make herself satisfied, and to grow. I don’t know what part of that makes Midge a bad person.
Kouguell: What drew you to the character of Susie Myerson?
Alex Borstein: I was on my way out of the country when Amy (Sherman-Palladino) said, ‘I have this part I want you to audition for.’ So, I read it and I said, ‘Oh damnit it, it’s so great, how do I not do this?’ I like playing characters with a unique voice and Susie’s got that. I like playing people who are dissatisfied and angry, there’s some joy in that for me. Someone who’s battling uphill. And Susie is all of that, a perfect storm of what I want in a character. She is strong yet incredibly vulnerable and that’s hard to find in female characters. Susie’s really fun to play, and I get to wear flat shoes.
The way that Amy envisions things is extremely thorough. She uses as many words as she can in any given sentence. It’s really challenging to memorize it all sometimes, to find a pattern that feels somewhat theatrical yet somewhat believable. Her material is theatrical in a sense, in a good way. It feels like a Katherine Hepburn-Cary Grant relationship between Midge and Susie sometimes. It’s fun to have it feel like a game, but you want to find the truth in it, the reality. That’s always the challenge but that’s what’s fun about this material.
Kouguell: The relationship between Susie and Midge continues to be realistic, unpredictable, and not stereotypical.
Borstein: Yes! It’s a love story. A platonic love story. You rarely get to see a good one of those regardless of gender. It’s more interesting in a way because you don’t have this, ‘Will they, won’t they’ type of element that you would have with a Kathrine Hepburn-Cary Grant comedy or Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd—remember Moonlighting? Those kind of shows and films where you’re always teetering on that ‘will they won’t they?’ and this is not what it’s about. It’s: Will Midge trust Susie with her career? Will Susie trust Midge to give up everything at the Gaslight and really move forward and just focus on her? It’s terrifying but that’s what makes it fun for both characters.
Kevin Pollak, Michael Zemen, Carolyn Aaron. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )
Kevin Pollak: (Moishe Maisel) As a proud member of the WGA since 1987, I love Script magazine! Everything starts on the page and in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the subject matters and the relationships jump off the page. I’ve never personally played a loud obnoxious Jewish man, which is a weird irony, starting out as a stand-up comedian and then becoming somewhat of a loud obnoxious Jew in my real life. The show continues to raise the bar and then top it.
Kouguell: Joel’s character, Midge’s husband, is not the stereotypical antagonist. He’s empathetic; he’s both sympathetic and unsympathetic.
Michael Zemen: When I read the pilot I thought he was going to be the villain, but as the season progressed, there was a peeling away of layers, and I realized he’s not the villain, he’s a human being who’s made some mistakes. That’s what I love about him; there are so many layers to him. It’s apparent that he’s a good guy, he’s a good father, and he does care for Midge. I don’t feel bad for him; he did this to himself. At the same time, he was the catalyst for Midge to pursue her stand-up career and without him she wouldn’t have discovered her secret talent.
Carolyn Aaron: I play Shirley Maisel, not the Marvelous one, but the other Mrs. Maisel. Joel’s mother. I have a daughter who watched Gilmore Girls incessantly. When my agent called me about auditioning for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I said you know my status with my daughter is going to be incredible.
We talked about our respective 20-something daughters growing up watching Gilmore Girls, and how Carolyn Aaron was struck by the unique mother-daughter relationship portrayed in that series, and the humorous yet realistic portrayal of the family relationships in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Marin Hinkle and Brosnahan. (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )
Marin Hinkle and I talked about the choices Rose (Midge’s mother) makes to seek more independence, pursuing her own goals and dreams outside of her marriage, and a voice within her marriage. Hinkle stated: “There are few roles out there for women (air quotes) of a certain age, and one that is so complex like this one.”
The Creators
Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino . (Photo by Lars Niki/Getty Images for Amazon Studios and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel )
Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino serve as showrunners, executive producers, and have directed and penned most of the episodes. The show was inspired by Ms. Sherman-Palladino’s upbringing.
Sherman-Palladino: We have complete creative control. That’s the only way we’ve done things ever. We had complete creative control over Gilmore Girls because they kind of forgot we were there.
We talked about the layered characters in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which each of the actors with whom I interviewed, marveled and admired.
Daniel Palladino: That was the goal, to have multi-dimensional characters who had depth.
Kouguell: What advice can you give to writers trying to break into the business?
(There was a beat and then the three of us chuckled, saying “OYE” in unison, like right out of an episode from Gilmore Girls—for fans of that show, we did not add the infamous phrase: “…with the poodles already” though I whispered it under my breath.)
Palladino: There are a lot of hurdles. Stay true to your core. Even if they (executives) are happy, the audience won’t like it. They’ll sniff it out. The audience has the final say.
Sherman-Palladino: You got to keep remembering why you love the project in the first place. The deeper down the rabbit hole you go, the more people that chime in, the more people who have ideas, good, bad or indifferent, you got to keep remembering why you love the project.
The exclusive New York engagement of Making Maisel Marvelous is free and open to the public and will run at the Paley Center for Media August 10 through September 6.
Season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will air on Amazon Prime at the end of 2019.
