How did you get started in filmmaking?
SUSAN: When I started out, I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer. When I originally went to college, I went to a school in Philadelphia for design. Just on a whim I took a film appreciation course; this was in the mid-70s, and film schools were not nearly as popular as they are today. I liked watching movies and I got hooked on watching movies.
And then I kept taking more and more film appreciation classes. They didn't have film equipment, and it was certainly before digital, so it wasn't like you could take your home video camera and make a movie. So I started to make radio plays, because they had a radio studio at the school.
Little by little I realized that one of the things that I liked about film was that it combined a lot of the things I was interested in, like design, storytelling, music. And then on a whim I decided to apply to NYU film school. It was not that hard to get into film school back then, and so without ever having made a film (I sent them a design portfolio with the radio drama tapes I'd made), somehow I got accepted.
But once I started film school and got the chance to make my own little films and work on crews and play with the equipment, I realized that was not only something that I loved, but it was something that I found I was kind of good at, on the student level. I was nominated for a student Academy Award, so I was getting positive feedback from the little student films I was making and I was able to win some grants to continue to make longer and longer short films.
But I never really thought how I was going to have a career as a filmmaker. I wasn't very pragmatic in terms of having a long-term plan; I just was making these little films and they were winning some awards and I was getting money to make a longer film. So basically what happened was, after I graduated from film school, I stayed in touch with the people who I had worked with in film school. As my films were getting longer (from a twenty-minute film to a thirty-minute film to my last short film, which was forty-five-minutes), I figured, why not try to make an eighty or ninety-minute film?
So, using the same crew I had been working with earlier, we just did that. I don't even know how. It was just very naive; it was kind of like one of those Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musicals: 'Hey, let's put on a show!'
My grandmother had passed away and I had a little bit of money, about $20,000. So I was going to make a feature film for $20,000. All the people who worked on it did it for a little bit of rent money and some food and deferred salaries that they thought they would never get. But that film turned out to be Smithereens, which was invited to the Cannes Film Festival, and that put me on a professional path.
But I never really planned it and I certainly didn't have any role models to speak of. I had heard of Ida Lupino but I didn't really know of her films. The only role models I did have were some European women, like Agnes Varda and Lina Wertmüller.
But in terms of American women, every once in a while I'd hear about one woman who made a film, but they were more one-off kind of things. But except for Ida Lupino and Dorthy Arzner from the very early days, I didn't know of any women who had a career as a film director and a body of work.
So instead of planning it, with one thing leading into the next, I sort of stumbled into making this feature film that got some attention and got picked up for distribution by New Line Cinema. It made some money and I was able to pay back the deferments to the cast and crew, who had never expected to make any money from this. The film got some good reviews and the next thing I knew I had an agent in Los Angeles who was sending me some scripts.
It sounds like your transition from making shorts to making a feature was pretty seamless and painless.
SUSAN: It really was, because the short films just kept getting longer. And I realized, after the forty-five-minute short, that it just seemed stupid to do a sixty-minute short; I just figured, why not make it eighty or whatever. And that became a feature.
Today young filmmakers are very savvy. They know how to get an agent, what's going on at the box office at any given moment. But back then it was pre-Internet and on TV there was no Entertainment Tonight, so people didn't really know -- or at least, I didn't really know -- that much about the business. And to some extent that was a blessing, because my efforts were totally uncalculated. I never thought, 'I'm going to make this film to get an agent.' I just made the film because it was a story I wanted to tell.
I never thought about how to get a distributor. My ignorance was, in a way, an asset, because I was just doing it for the passion of wanting to make this movie. Which is the best way to do it.
One of the problems I notice now, teaching at a pretty high-profile film school, is that the kids, because they are not naive, are already calculating to some extent how to make the movie that's going to get them the agent. Or what did what at the box office. Or this kind of movie does well and if I get this actor than I can do this. As opposed to just focusing on this is a story that I really want to tell and I think I'm going to tell it in a unique way.
How did you make the often treacherous transition from self-generating your material to looking at scripts submitted by studios?
SUSAN: Smithereens went to the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. There were a few women who had made a one-off movie that had gotten some attention and then they made their next movie, a studio movie, that didn't work and then I never heard of them again. So I was aware of the fact that if your first movie is the movie you've been waiting your whole life to make, and you're doing it your way, that you want to make sure that the next movie you make -- when you suddenly have people looking over your shoulder and you have an outside producer who isn't your best friend from film school -- that you better make the right choices. Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed by the process. You better choose your material wisely.
So between 1982 and 1984 I had this agent and I was getting sent some scripts; a lot of them were dumb and some of them were things I just couldn't relate to. And then I read this script called Desperately Seeking Susan and it just spoke to me.
The subject matter was a little bit about a world I knew, because it was set in downtown New York and that's where Smithereens was set. But it also had a bigger component, because it combined two worlds: it had this suburban housewife character and it had this downtown street character that was very similar to the kind of world I had dealt with in Smithereens.
So it felt like the right organic step -- like going from longer shorts to a feature -- and I wasn't going far outside of the world I was interested in, but yet it was expanding that world a little bit. It was telling a more complicated story and it was a bigger budget, but it wasn't such a big budget that I didn't think I could handle it.
And the other interesting thing about it was that the two producers who had sent me the script -- Midge Sanford and Sarah Pillsbury -- were first-time producers. So it was like I was the experienced one, because I had made a low-budget feature already. So I didn't feel like I was getting this big, heavy Hollywood producer looking over my shoulder who was going to intimidate me. It was two women that I liked and for who it was their first time, too.
Can you remember any of the scripts you were sent that you said "no" to?
SUSAN: I remember one script that I was sent that I think got made into a movie. I think a woman ended up directing and it's a movie that you probably would never remember. I think it was called The Joy of Sex. It was like a book title that they tried to turn into a movie but didn't. It didn't take off.
As a female director, the kinds of things I was sent were teen girl movies. There's nothing wrong with teen girl movies if they're interesting -- certainly Amy Heckerling did a very interesting one, Fast Times at Ridgemont High -- but the one I was getting sent weren't that good.
How involved were you in the casting of Desperately Seeking Susan?
SUSAN: I was pretty involved in the casting, but I wasn't involved in Rosanna Arquette. When Midge and Sarah brought me the script, Rosanna was already attached. She was a given.
It took some time to get the movie financed, so we worked together on script revisions and meetings at studios trying to get it made for several months.
When we knew that the film was going to be green lit, at Orion, it was due to a woman who was in a senior position at Orion Pictures, Barbara Boyle. When she green lit the project, with Mike Medavoy, we started the casting.
We had a casting office here in New York and because I'm a New Yorker I was somewhat familiar with the New York talent pool. I had heard of Madonna -- she actually lived a couple blocks from me in downtown Manhattan -- her career hadn't quite taken off yet, she had one single out that was getting some attention. So I knew of her as the up-and-coming singer who was a downtown New York personality.
Did you face any resistance to casting her?
SUSAN: No, because I was the one that brought them Madonna, they didn't bring me Madonna. They were the ones saying, 'I don't know if we can go with this person because I've never heard of her.' And I was the one saying, 'I think she's right for this character. Let me do a screen test.' And she was right for the character.
Did you feel intimidated at all once it became a studio picture?
SUSAN: No so much, because I really felt that this was the right movie for me. I've made movies that I'd say probably weren't the best movie for me. But in this film I just knew that world. I waited until I got the right subject matter. I grew up in the suburbs; I was a suburban girl. I could have been the Rosanna Arquette character. I had chosen to move to New York and live a different kind of life and so I related to the Madonna character. So for me it was the perfect blend of these two worlds I knew and I had a unique way of wanting to tell this story. And I think when you feel that you're in control of your vision, people can't really intimidate you that much, because it's your vision.
Somebody else could have made the film differently, but I felt like I knew how to make that version of the film.
There are probably many movies that I couldn't have made and I probably would have felt intimidated trying to direct because I was crossing into territory that other people might have been able to do much better or had done better. But because I think this movie was the right one for me, and I think because it was also characters that I knew and a studio executive couldn't tell be how to direct that character better, it gave me a certain amount of confidence.
Of course, technically, I had never worked with that size of a crew and those kinds of gaffers and grips and lighting and all that. But it was a fortuitous experience. I was surrounded by people who were artistically simpatico. I had supportive producers, Midge and Sarah who weren't heavy-handed. And I had a great DP, Ed Lachman, who was a New Yorker who had also come from an independent, European style of cinematography. He wasn't like a heavy, union guy. So we worked really well together; the way we thought about cinema was simpatico.
And the other department heads were first-timers. Like Santo Loquasto, who was the production designer and costume designer, had worked as a costume designer on Woody Allen's films, but this was the first time he was going to be doing both.
It was a wonderful growing experience for a lot of people. The casting directors had cast theater stuff, but this was their first film.
What did you learn doing Desperately Seeking Susan that you were able to take to future projects?
SUSAN: Learning how to work with a crew. One of the things I realized is that it's a collaborative art form, so you're dealing with so many different people, all of whom have their own artistic vision. The director's job is to maintain a single, artistic vision by coordinating everyone else's. Everyone wants to give as much as they can, but it can become a real hodgepodge if there's not one, unifying way of looking at the film -- one unifying vision.
I watched movies where I felt that things were out of control because all the actors were doing something different and all trying to do something to the max and it really needed someone to say, 'No, don't do that. Yes, do that.' Learning how to modulate things, whether it's the performances or learning when to be flashy with the camera and when to be subtle. When to not move the camera and when to move it.
It's all about trying to maintain this one vision and that's what I started to see in Desperately Seeking Susan. I'm still learning, it's an ongoing process. But that's the skill that I realized that good directors have, being able to get what they need and incorporate other people's ideas; knowing how to use the best and politely (without hurting people's feelings) not use the stuff that you don't think works.
Sometimes different directors find different ways of doing that. I've heard about or seen examples of male directors who seem to feel that they have to be like drill sergeants and Nazis to show that they're the boss. Scream and get into fistfights and do that macho tough thing.
Now, as a woman, that isn't a style that particularly works for me, and as a woman who's just a little over five feet, I knew that no one was going to be physically intimidated by me. So I had to find my own way and have found my own way over the years of getting what I needed in a different way.
As I get older, I change the way I get what I need. But certainly, for me, it had to be different than my impression of what a typical, Erich Von Stroheim or John Ford kind of macho male director is like on the set.
Do you think that some scripts were never sent to you, just because you're a woman?
SUSAN: I don't know. The fact of the matter is, there aren't tons of great scripts out there. I think all directors, men and women, will say the same thing. There's not a lot of great scripts out there. You've really got to struggle to find the good ones. And sometimes you do the good ones, and sometimes you do the ones you hope will be good -- they're kind of okay and you hope you can turn it into something fantastic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Do you think it's easier for women today than when you started back with Smithereens?
SUSAN: Honestly, I don't. I want to be encouraging, but I want to be honest, too.
There are opportunities, but I think the opportunities are in new media. I think that, right now, the movie industry is going through a major change. The studios are all owned by huge, multi-national corporations. There are fewer studios. A lot of the studios from fifteen or even ten years ago have been gobbled up and turned into one big corporate thing. There's no longer a New Line, there's no longer an Orion, there's no longer a Tri-Star, there's no longer a Warner Independent. There are just a lot of companies that don't exist anymore. The big studios are making fewer movies, but they're trying to make movies that are bigger budgeted and have the potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars, not just a hundred million.
But where there are more opportunities, I think, is in the independent sector, but in that case it's women making their own opportunities. They're writing their own script, and then they're trying to get a cast attached, and then they're trying to go out and find the financing.
So what still excites you about making movies?
SUSAN: Telling stories, that's what excites me. Telling stories. And that's what excited me in the beginning. To me, characters and stories are the heart of what makes a movie great. And although I'm always impressed when I see movies that have amazing technology and amazing special effects, it's the more human aspect of it that really grabs me.
Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!
"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control."
Roger Corman, Producer
★★★★★
It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!
Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos
John Sayles: Writing to your resources
Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes
John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots
Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals
George Romero: Casting
Kevin Smith: Skipping film school
Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection
Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity
David Lynch: Kill your darlings
Ron Howard: Pre-production planning
John Carpenter: Going low-tech
Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking
And more!
Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!
It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!
Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.
"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond
John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.
The book covers (among other topics):
Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories
Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature
Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period
George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget
Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories
Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations
Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive
Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous
Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget
Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget
Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror
Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget
Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting
L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting
Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing
Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres
This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced!
