Susan Seidelman on “Desperately Seeking Susan”

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! 

Tom Noonan on “What Happened Was…”

Where did the idea for What Happened Was… come from?

TOM: I had never written a play. I'd written a lot of movies. So, when I originally wrote What Happened Was…, I was going to do it at the theater, but the intention was to do it as a film. I always thought of it as a screenplay, and because I'd never acted in something I'd directed, I thought, 'Well, if I do it on stage for a while, in front of an audience, I'll find out what the thing's about.' And, because I was acting in it, I wanted to make sure that we'd worked out all the acting parts before we shot it.

We did it for six weeks as a play. We rehearsed for a month and a half. And then, on the last night of performance in the theater, we took out all the chairs, and we shot the script in the theater -- I'd made the theater look like an apartment. Then, for the next six months after that, before we shot the film, we rehearsed pretty regularly. We rehearsed for eight or nine months before we shot, a couple times a week.

Most of the people on the crew, and the producers and everybody involved, had seen the play at least once, maybe sometimes more. And they were all involved in the shooting of the video of the play, and then involved in the rehearsals as we went along, so that by the time we shot, everybody in the crew knew the whole story. They knew what the scenes were about, where the camera moves were. We pre-shot the thing two or three times before we actually shot it on film.

That’s a lot of rehearsal.

TOM: My general rule is that either you rehearse a lot or you don't rehearse at all. If you rehearse the middle, you end up not being authentic and kind of looking like you are. 

When I finally shot the film, they would say, 'It's your close-up, Tom,' and I'd say, 'Okay,' and I'd just sit there and just talk. It wasn't like I was acting; I'd done it so often and what was going on seemed so real to me. I didn't have to worry about learning the words or learning the blocking or doing any of those things that you have to worry about when you're doing a film. It completely went away. It was just me, just being there. So it felt very real to me.

So not only did you come to the film well-rehearsed, you also were pretty well-versed in filmmaking as well by that point, right?

TOM: I'd made movies for 20 years before I made that film. I'd written scores for films, I'd produced films, I had directed TV, I'd directed plays, I'd been in -- at that point -- probably 30 movies and I'd edited a lot. I knew exactly where the cut points were.

I think I have some small amount of talent and I worked really hard for a very long time getting ready to make that movie. When I shot it, I knew exactly what it was going to look like and how it was going to feel, because we'd shot it already on video. So I was not too surprised when I cut it.

The movie is relatively simple when you first look at it, but it's actually got a lot of sophisticated stuff. The camera moves are all perfectly timed to counts. By the time we shot the film, everybody in the crew knew the count on every dolly move, on everything. It was very choreographed.

I took sounds from later in the film and placed them earlier in the film, underneath things. A lot of her story you've already heard by the time she tells it.

What was your budget?

TOM: The budget was $131,000. 

We shot it for $47,000, and then the processing and the editing and all the equipment and music rights and answer prints and inter-negative came to about $130,000. Of which I've never recovered a dime. I don't even get residuals. I made a bad deal. But it's okay; I loved making the movie and I never thought anybody would ever see.

What was bad about the deal?

TOM: When you sell a film to a distributor, there's a certain aspect of the agreement that's called the assumption agreement. It's where the distributor agrees to assume certain costs involved in the distribution of the film, one of which is the residuals for the actors. Otherwise, if I sell you the film for $75,000 and I pay the crew and I pay everybody back, and then you go out and sell the film everywhere, the more money you make selling the film, the more money the actors have to get paid as residuals. And, unless the distributor assumes that expense, I end up losing money in the end making the film. 

And when we made the agreement, I didn't know that and it was left out of the agreement, or somehow it didn't get signed, so I was left with the bill for the residuals. So besides not making any money, I lost some money on the film, paying myself.

I'd done this for a long time and I'd dealt with producers for a long time, and read contracts for a long time. But distribution's the creepiest part of making a movie, and there are so many ways you can get fucked in distribution. I had someone representing me, it wasn't just me, I had somebody who'd sold a lot of movies and they screwed up a little.

When it came time to distribute, I know you weren’t happy with the original video box cover.

TOM:  I had nothing to do with that. (Karen Sillas) took those pictures without letting me know that she had taken them, and I was not thrilled, to say the least. Because anybody buying the movie based on that picture is not going to like the movie; and all the people who would like the movie wouldn't get it because of that picture. It's stupid marketing.

Would you have made the movie differently if you’d had a larger budget?

TOM: You make the movie because you want to make the movie and make it as best you can with what you have. I'm cool making movies for whatever I have. 

I mean, if I had money, I'd use a crane shot, but if I don't, I don't. That part of moviemaking doesn't interest me a whole lot, the toys and doing fancy stuff. I'm a very visual person, but it's all related to the drama and not to showing off. The things that interest me are very simple human interactions.

There’s one moment in the film that really jumps out at you: a couple of cuts when your character, apparently, accidentally touches her in passing. It’s a striking moment, because suddenly this very languid movie does several cuts right in a row.

TOM: There are very few cuts in the film, so when you put a cut in like that, it's very powerful. I knew that was the case and I shot it with that intention of possibly cutting it in.

There's a moment when you're sitting down in a chair, from standing, at which point it's impossible for you to stand back up again. And I find that kind of moment very dramatic. 

What happened in that moment was I reached out to her with the intention to reassure her, because she seemed really nervous. And at that moment, she turned and I inadvertently touched her, not on her butt, but close, without meaning to, because I'd already started the motion and by the time she turned, it was too late to stop. When we did the play, we rehearsed that moment over and over and over again, for days, the timing of it. Because if I touch her too soon, there's no way that she can bend over; and if she bends over, and then I touch her butt, it looks stupid. It has to be perfect.

Have you ever locked your keys in the car and as you slammed the car door you see the keys on the dashboard but your arm keeps going because the signal hasn't gotten there yet? That's the moment I was trying to create. It happens all the time in life. 

I knew the wide shot wouldn't get it, and if I covered the whole thing close you wouldn't get it, so I decided to do this wide shot into an insert, to create this jarring, embarrassing moment. It took a lot, a lot of work, rehearsing for months to get it to seem real. And we would do that for hours on end, I'd reach and she'd turn, trying to make it seem believable. It's very difficult to do that and not make it look phony.

Tell me about the process of casting the movie and finding Karen Sillas.

TOM: Most people who read the script and who are friends of mine, well-known actors who will remain unmentioned, thought the script was stupid. Most of the people I really wanted to do it wouldn't do it and she was the only person who was any good who wanted to do it, basically. I'd written it for my wife who was busy and unavailable, and then I gave it to all these other people who said, 'I like you, but this script is about nothing.'

I'd written scripts for many years before I wrote that script, and I've sold a number of scripts to Hollywood, and I wrote for TV and I was a relatively skilled screenwriter, but I never felt I was really writing a reality that was familiar to me, that I felt was fun or interesting to look at. 

So when I wrote it, I really tried to not worry about what people traditionally worry about when they write a script. And when I gave it to people, if they didn't like it, fuck 'em, I don't care. I just liked it so much and thought it was so funny and had so much fun writing it, that I thought that eventually someone is going to get this. And if they don't, I don't care.

Almost not a word of it changed after our first rehearsal. I mean, even typographical errors that were in the script that I felt obliged to continue to say. Because that's just the way I am.

How did audiences react to it when you did it as a play?

TOM: People were very uncomfortable, because we were pretty good at acting it. Part of the problem, during the play, was that people got so uncomfortable -- because it was like being on a first date that was not going well -- that people really didn't want to be there. And part of what I would try to do during the play, and in the movie, was to not make people so uncomfortable that they didn't want to watch. I wanted it to be funny and make the characters engaging enough and compelling enough that you'd stay with the story even though it was painfully awkward.

There were times when I was doing the play when I could tell that the audience couldn't wait for it to be over, because they couldn't stand how awkward it was for the two of us. They just wanted me to leave and let this poor woman go to bed.

One of the great lessons I learned doing it was that the story of a movie does not have to depend on the story of the script.  What I mean is, there were nights when we would do the play when I could tell that the audience hated me. And there were other nights when I did the play when I could tell that the audience thought, 'Oh, this poor guy. He's being manipulated by this woman, who has invited him into her apartment on her birthday and is setting him up to be disappointed.' 

And other nights, again, people would go, 'This smarmy, condescending, asshole guy is just playing with her like a bug.' And it would change, night to night, and the story would be very different. I learned a lot doing the play in front of people, because that's something I wanted to have in the movie. At times you think, 'God, this guy is such a jerk,' and other times you think, 'God, why doesn't she give him a break?'

The narrative of that script can hold a lot of different interpretations and different stories, without giving away that he's the bad guy and she's good. It's really both all the time, which is what life's like.

What did you take away from making What Happened Was…?

TOM: The thing I learned making the film is that you have a huge advantage when you have no money, because when you have no money you have all the time in the world. The more money you have, the less time you have to make a film, because you've got to move or you're wasting money. 

So, if you're smart and you're talented and skillful and you manage your time well, you can actually do a whole lot better movie with very little money than you can with tons. Because once tons of money gets involved, you have millions of people trying to put their finger in the pie and tell you what to do and rush you along. And I never had that. 

I wrote this at the pace I wanted to, I shot it when I felt like it, and I edited it for as long as I wanted.

Movies don't have to cost a lot.

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! 

Joan Micklin Silver on “Hester Street”

Hester Street breaks many of the rules of low-budget filmmaking. It’s a period piece. It’s shot in black and white. And half the dialogue is in Yiddish.

However, as we know, rules are made to be broken. The late Joan Micklin Silver’s passion for the story Yekl, from Abrahma Cahan's novella, is evident in every frame of Hester Street, and her genius at casting (which would surface again in her next feature, Between The Lines), brought Carol Kane to national attention – and garnered her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

At what point were you in your career before Hester Street came along?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I had made some short films for an educational film company and had written a screenplay which was -- although much changed -- made in Hollywood. And I was looking for an opportunity to direct. I found that in that particular time -- we're talking about the early 70s -- the opportunities for women to direct were just nil, and while I could get work writing, I really wanted to be able to direct the work that I did.

How did you find Abraham Cahan’s novella and what attracted you to it?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: One of the films that I made for the educational film company was on immigration. I read just about everything I could find on immigration and one of the things that I read was the novella by Abraham Cahan called Yekl. 

I was really floundering around and wanting very much to make my own films. My husband, Ray, who was a real estate developer, told me that if I could do a film that would not cost very much, that he would try to raise money from some of the investors that he'd been going to for real estate deals. And that was how we did it.

Frankly I didn't think I'd ever get to make another film. I was pretty discouraged about it all. My family were immigrants and I wanted to make a movie that would count for them.

Was the story in the public domain at that point?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Yes. And that was one of its attractions.

What challenges did you face in the adaptation?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Well, the story itself is more the husband's story. I think what grabbed me about it was what happened to the wife. So it was really just telling the story from the point of view that interested me. The challenge of it, of course, was to try to make it authentic. 

I felt that because my father had told me so many stories about his life as an immigrant boy from Russia, I knew that language was a huge factor in getting along or not getting along. He told me stories of not quite knowing English and once leaving some money on a bus; he was a paperboy and he had made some collections and left the money by accident on the bus. He thinks people were trying to tell him and he didn't understand what they were saying. He got off the bus and then realized it -- things like that. Knowing the English language was extremely difficult.

And also both my parents were Yiddish speaking and I can remember dinners at our house with all sorts of relatives and wonderful stories being told and then punch lines coming out in Yiddish and my mother turning to us and saying, "You know, it doesn't quite translate." She would try to translate it, but never could quite do it. And I associated that language with something very rich and interesting and enjoyable. 

Were you worried about breaking some of the cardinal rules of low-budget filmmaking: You don't do period pieces, you don't do something that's half in English and half in Yiddish?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I didn't know enough to know that I was breaking cardinal rules and that's the truth. I had to tell this story and I had to do what I could to tell it.

Was there anything in the adaptation that you really wished you could have included, but budget prevented it?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: There were many, many things. For example, just after we had made the movie, Godfather II came out. And in Godfather II there's a very long scene in Ellis Island in which there's an overhead traveling shot. The boy who will grow up to be Robert DeNiro is sitting on the bench and you see him in isolation, all by himself. It's just a stunning shot, and I remember that Ray and I saw it and were just pinching each other's arms in jealously.

When it came time to do Ellis Island, I had to do what I think just about all low-budget filmmakers do and that is that you make a part work for the whole. You have to ask yourself, "What’s the most important thing about this?" And I decided that it was the separation between the ones who were already there and the ones who had just arrived. Therefore, I thought if I could do some sort of a fence or something that would keep the two groups apart, that would help to say what I wanted to say. 

I remember that the fence cost about $800, which was a huge portion of our budget. I think it worked -- it isn't re-creating Ellis Island, which if I'd had a chance, of course I would have done. Those were the sorts of things that we did all the time.

What was your process for making the adaptation?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I think I just read it more than a few times and then just thought about it. I like to do research and I was also looking though lots and lots of material. For instance, I went to the public library and there were a lot of files available about immigrant life in New York, with pictures. I went to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which had a lot of oral histories of immigrants. 

There also happened to be an exhibition of Roman Vishniac photographs around that time and although his photographs were not of the period -- they were about Polish immigrants between the wars -- still the Shtel life I'm sure was pretty similar. 

Did you use any of your family's immigrant experiences in writing the script?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Immigrants fall into two groups: the kind that want to talk about it all the time and the kind that never talk about it because it was traumatic and they really want to make the adjustment and be Americans. 

My family was definitely the kind that talked about it all the time. I had heard so many stories about it all. I'd heard stories about people who came and people who left and people who went back and people who went crazy. I had a head full of all these sorts of stories, so I'm sure they fit into writing this screenplay.

Did the fact that you knew you wouldn't have much money to shoot this movie have any impact on you while you were writing the script?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Constantly. I was constantly thinking, for example, about how I could do Ellis Island, things like that. It was one thing after another, just constantly trying to figure out how I could tell the story without having a budget that would have allowed me to tell the full story, where you could recreate the Lower East Side, like they did in Godfather II.

We used one street, Morton Street, and we could only shoot in one direction, because that direction faced Bleecker, where the streets formed a "T," so that you only had to create the look on Morton up toward Bleecker. 

If we faced the other way, it was Seventh Avenue and obviously we couldn't close Seventh Avenue, we didn't have that ability. In Godfather II, they had street after street, traveling shots that were gorgeous. So we just did what we could and everything was written and organized with that in mind. 

My own experience in writing low-budget films is that you often have to do a part of something; a part has to stand for something larger. 

Did you always plan to shoot in black and white?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: No, I don't think I thought about it at all. But when I started doing the research and saw these pictures, particularly the photos by Louis Hine and Jacob Reis and some of the anonymous pictures I found in the Jewish file at the public library, it just seemed to me that it might be a wonderful way to tell it. And I happen to like black and white.

Were you worried about the balance of English and Yiddish in the script?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I don't think I was thinking in those terms. I guess my own experience had been that actors have very good ears. I knew that even if the actors had to learn the Yiddish phonetically, they would do it. 

I was writing this screenplay for me to direct and I didn't think that I would be hiring too many actors who already knew Yiddish. I thought I'd be lucky if I hired some, but I didn't think all of them would. In the end, I did have a few that did, but many didn't. 

But that wasn't something that worried me, because my own experience with actors had been that they really have very good ears, they're terrific mimics. Actors can hear someone and mimic them the next moment.

What resources do you use to get feedback while you're writing?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: The feedback that I got was primarily from my husband. Usually you have to send the script to whoever the financial group is, but this was a group of investors that didn’t really need to see the screenplay. They were making small investments and it was not the sort of thing where they were going to be reading it.

I know I got lots of ideas when I started working with the actors. For instance, I think that two of my favorite lines in the script came from Doris Roberts, who plays the neighbor, Mrs. Kavarsky. These were expressions that her grandfather had said and she said to me, "Do you think these are good lines?" And I said, "Doris, they're fabulous. They're going right into the script."

One of them is, "You can't pee up my back and make me think it's rain," and the other one was, "With one tuchis you can't dance at two weddings." Old Yiddish expressions and they were wonderful and just perfect -- and, of course, she delivered them wonderfully.

Besides the addition of those lines, did the script change much once you started working with the actors?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I was quite open to changing it, but it didn't change as much as I thought it would, mainly because, with the Yiddish and the English and the period, the actors didn't feel really comfortable doing improvisations. 

It did change somewhat when I was cutting it -- it followed the original story more closely. There was a longer section of the husband's life in New York before the wife came. When we did the rough cut, it was just clear that the real story started when the wife came and that the life of the husband could be established in fewer scenes.

Two scenes really stand out for me and I'm not sure how you would have described them when you wrote them. The first is when Jacob finds out that his father has died and he goes home and tries to pray. You really get a sense that this is a guy who hasn't done this in a while.

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Well, he hadn’t done it, so that part wasn't hard. The actor wasn't trying to unlearn something or trying to show that he didn't know how to do something that he really knew how to do. He didn't know how to do the prayers.

And then there's a scene with Gitl and the boarder, Bernstein. We're not sure where the relationship is headed and as they sit at the table he reaches over and touches her garment. 

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: That came from the actor. She was talking about her husband and not knowing where to turn. She sat down at the table across from Bernstein and he tried to reassure her and cover for her husband, although you could tell that he felt very sorry for her. 

We shot it a few times, and I just didn't feel like we had it; it needed something. It wasn't quite there. And I was sitting there, trying to think about what it was that would bring the scene more to life. At that moment the actor playing Bernstein reached over and touched her shawl. And I said, "That's it." 

It needed something to show that he had feelings for her, and it came from him -- it was not in the script but came from the actor.

It just proves that you don't always need dialogue to show the relationship between characters.

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: That's very true. If you can get it that way, you've really got it. You get so many clues of people's behavior by watching them; we all do that, all the time. We do it with our politicians; it isn't just what they say, it’s how they are.

Did you have actors in mind while you were writing the screenplay?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: No. As a matter of fact, I was expecting to find someone who is like the Gitl in the story. She was described as dark and a little plump. So I thought I would find someone like that and that will be fine.

After I finished the script while Ray was raising the money for it, I saw a film with Carol Kane in it, a Canadian film called Wedding in White. I was just entranced by her, I just thought she had such a wonderful film presence. She had a certain Old World quality to her. 

We had a casting director and I told him I'd seen this young woman, but she seemed to be Canadian, and obviously with our low budget we couldn't afford to bring anybody in and put them up. And he said that as a matter of fact she lived across Central Park and she was a New Yorker and there wouldn't be any problem. She was the first one that we hired.

Was it difficult to put aside, as a writer, your vision of Gitl when, as the director, you found someone completely different than you had imagined?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I think every writer/director does the same thing. You write to give yourself a blueprint for the film that you're going to make. Then you see what comes up and you try to leave yourself open to what the actors bring to it and what the weather brings and what the locations brings. You're happy because it isn't just you; everybody's taking this thing and adding to it, bringing more to it. And that was just fantastic.

In casting the Jacob character, I felt that I understood his problem and I understood what he was going through and I really like this character. But a number of the people who came and tried out wanted him to be more heroic and a little less harsh with her and a little less confused about his life. I had to reject those actors, because they didn't want to do the character as written, they wanted to do something else.

For Bernstein, the actor who was cast dropped out at the very last minute and I was quite stuck. It was one of the most devastating moments in the making of the film.

Ken Van Sickle, our cinematographer, said to me, "Well, what about Mel Howard?" And I said, "Mel Howard? Mel Howard came here for a crew job, he's not an actor." And Ken said, "Yes, but when he came you told me you liked the way he looked and you liked his eyes for Mr. Bernstein."

I didn't even remember that I'd even said that. So I said, "Bring him in," and he came in, and of course he'd grown up in a Jewish family and spoke perfect Yiddish. He took direction wonderfully and gave a wonderful performance.

How did you get the scenes that needed to be in Yiddish translated into Yiddish?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: Michael Gorrin recorded the Yiddish for the actors and he did all the translations, except in those instances when the actor already knew Yiddish. The Rabbi, the guy who played the peddler, the man who played the scribe, they all spoke Yiddish and did their own translations.

What movies inspired you?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I loved so many movies. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and in Omaha at the time I was growing up there wasn't any television. It didn't come until I was in high school. So the amusement of the day was to get on the streetcar and go downtown and pay thirty-five cents and see a double feature. You paid thirty-five cents until you were twelve, but everybody was twelve until they were about fifteen.

I still have a wealth of movie images in my mind from that, but there are a couple of movies that I remember very distinctly from seeing them as a kid. One was Shadow of a Doubt. I can see why I was so attracted to it: It's about a girl whose trusted uncle turns out to be a killer. This was not a threat from outside; this is a threat from within the family circle. 

I was very profoundly affected by that. I can remember in the scene where Joseph Cotton tries to push Teresa Wright out of the moving train, I can honestly remember still to this day how I felt: which theater it was, where I was sitting, where my mother was sitting, where my father was sitting. It was quite a strong childhood experience. I think I was only about seven or eight, but I really remember it to this day.

That has a certain power over you and makes you desire to re-create something like that.

What's the best advice that you've ever received about writing?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: I don't think it's so much advice from another person. I think it's just the experience of looking at films. 

When I first started working in film -- this was pre-video -- we used to go to the Museum of Modern Art and sit in the basement and see films. I would say that was the thing that taught me the most, to see the great films and then to try to study the screenplays. Oftentimes those screenplays were available and I could buy them and study them and try to figure out why they worked. I think that was the kind of advice that was the best for me.

Did you learn anything while writing Hester Street that you took to future projects?

JOAN MICKLIN SILVER: You know, I think each one is so different. Certain things become a little bit easier, perhaps, but each one is so different and each one has such different requirements. 

I don't know how much one really teaches you for the next. Maybe it gives you confidence to think, "I did it before, maybe I can do it again." But I think each time you're walking off a cliff.

CLICK HERE for more film interviews.

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! 

Edie Falco on “Judy Berlin”

What the biggest difference between doing The Sopranos and doing an independent film?

EDIE: The budget on one episode of The Sopranos is higher than all the movies I've done, combined.

I know Eric Mendelsohn is a long-time friend. At what point in his process does he start to involve you?

EDIE: Usually he'll wait until a script is finished and then give it to me to read, which is what he did [with Judy Berlin]. After I read it and told him how much I loved it, he said “I would love for you to play the part of Judy.” I was flabbergasted, because he had not said a word to me about it.

I've read everything he's ever done and given my feedback, so I assumed that that's what this was.

What’s the advantage of doing a film like this with a long-time friend?

EDIE: A lot of the films I've done I've done with friends and family. The advantage is you go in there feeling no obligation to prove yourself. You're assuming that these people know who you are, at least socially if not more than that. There's a camaraderie and a trust that is inherent in just all of you being there together. I know they trust me and I trust them. It gets that all out of the way so we can get down to the work.

I know Eric kept you and Barbara Barrie (who plays Judy’s mother) apart before you shot your first scene together. Did that help?

EDIE: It sure did. Although I thought it was just a matter of scheduling. I thought, 'All right, I won't meet her until the day we shoot.' That's the way these things are. I think in retrospect it did help.

She was a woman around whom I was unfamiliar. You hold your body differently; eye contact is different than with someone that you're comfortable around. I think physically the relationship that Judy and her mother had sort of mirrored that of strangers. In that regard, the subconscious stuff that was already taking place probably only fed what was happening in the script. And I imagine that was his intent.

Is your preparation any different when you know you're going into a lowbudget project?

EDIE: No, not at all. Really nothing about my preparation or involvement is any different on anything I do. The only thing that varies is, if I read something and I like it, I'll do it. If I read something and I don't like it, I won't. Once I've decided I'm doing something, I approach everything exactly the same, whether it's a play or a movie or a low-budget movie or a big budget movie. It's irrelevant.

How is working on a low-budget movie different?

EDIE: You get a lot of directors who are nervous, and they don't trust themselves or they don't trust the process. So, they might end up doing a lot more takes than they need, as if the actor is an infinite source of these things. Because at a certain point I know I'm not doing work that I'm proud of anymore, I'm just exhausted. And they are just too afraid to say, 'Okay, let's move on.' And so you'll do another four, five takes, and I start thinking, 'Oh, this is not what I meant to do, this is not the take I want.' So that's a little rough.

But once you start doing things where they put you in a nice trailer, and you've got people running around and taking care of you, when you all of a sudden have to change clothes in the back of a Chevy again, you think, 'You know, this does kind of stink, come to think of it. I would prefer to be in a trailer right now.' 

So, I don’t know if I've been a little bit spoiled by some of the bigger budget stuff. And you realize there's a reason you're taken care of, because you want to show up and do the best you can each time you're out there. It does help to be rested and warm and all that stuff.

There are so many advantages to working on a low-budget project. I feel a totally comfortable with the idea of trying something and having it not work. I feel a sense of freedom to just go for it, because money is not at the forefront of everything that goes on in these things. You don't have a producer standing over you saying, 'We gotta make the day!' Everybody's just flying by the seat of their pants and I feel a sense of freedom that I don't when money is being talked about. 

Also, on a big-budget thing, there are a zillion people working on it. Oftentimes nobody knows who anybody else is and they don't necessarily care about their job, they're just trying to get enough days so they can become an AD. 

On these low-budget things, everybody's there because they want to be. They know the director, they love the work of the director, they're a friend and he needed a helping hand. You know you're not going to make money and you know it's going to be hard work and you're there because you love it. And that is infused in every moment you spend on the set of a low-budget movie. It's been my experience that nothing but good stuff will come out of that.

Judy Berlin has a really exceptional cast – Barbara Barrie, Bob Dishy, Madeline Kahn, Anne Meara, Julie Kavner. Was that intimidating at all?

EDIE: No. At a certain point, if you've dealt with a bunch of these people, you realize that they really are just people. And when it comes down to who's talented and who's nice, that's all I'm really impressed by these days.

Barbara Barrie was, I'm sure, thrilled to get a script that was so good. Doesn't matter what the budget is. You see this big budget stuff that's being made, and you read the script and you're thinking, 'How did this happen to this industry?' 

So you read a good script -- and my experience is, I don't care who's doing it, where it's being done, but I'd give my right arm to be involved in it. As far as I'm concerned, the most valued commodity in this industry is good writing. I was not at all surprised that he got the cast he did. 

I was really sick for a good part of that shoot. We did mostly night shoots, because of the eclipse stuff, and I had a stomach virus. And I thought to myself, 'There's no way I can do this. There's just no way." And there was. I showed up and I felt sick and I was somehow able to get through the days. I was pleased to see that I can show up for stuff even when I think I can't.  

Find more Film Interviews HERE.

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!