Girlfriends
7/19/19 - We look back at Girlfriends, the 1978 film that took women's friendship seriously long before Hollywood was ready to do the same. Director Claudia Weill talks with Gina about how Girlfriends was made and financed, her creative endeavors in television and theatre, and why she made just a handful of movies.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Watch Girlfriends (Rent on YouTube | Criterion)
The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir
Other work to check out:
Film producer Lucy Fisher
Marsha Norman’s play ‘Night Mother
Katherine Mansfield’s story “Bliss”
Eliza Hittman’s films Beach Rats and It Felt Like Love
TRANSCRIPT: GIRLFRIENDS
[Ads]
(0:54)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman!
Ann: Hello.
Aminatou: Ooh, I'm really excited about this week's episode.
Ann: Me too! You know why? It's a Gina episode!
Aminatou: Yes, the yummiest voice in radio. She's back! She's back.
Ann: Oh, why do we let this only happen like twice a year? This needs to be a way more common occurrence.
Aminatou: It's wild. Give that woman a podcast.
Ann: Truly. Well on our agenda this week Gina spoke with Claudia Weill who's the director of a movie that I think has been foundational for a lot of women filmmakers who came after it, Girlfriends.
Aminatou: It's an iconic friendship movie about a young New Yorker cast adrift after her roommate moves out to get married. Who among us has not been there?
Ann: Ugh, classic rite of passage movie for a certain demo.
Aminatou: Classic conundrum. Love it.
Ann: So yeah, so Gina went and talked to this cinematic icon who has been telling women's stories since long before Hollywood wanted to listen.
[Theme Song]
(2:28)
Ann: Hey, hey, so you may have already heard or seen but we are going on tour this fall heading to a handful of cities where we've never done a live show before and we are so excited to see all of you IRL. It's our Stay Hydrated Tour 2019. You can find us in late September and early October in Toronto, Detroit, Denver, Austin, and Houston. Get your tickets and get the full tour schedule at callyourgirlfriend.com/tour and if you are not in one of these cities we're sad to miss you but please give your local besties the heads up that they should come hang out with us. We always have a great time and we can't wait to meet them too. Callyourgirlfriend.com/tour.
[Interview Starts]
Gina: Thanks for being on Call Your Girlfriend, Claudia Weill.
Claudia: I'm very pleased to be here.
Gina: Your feature film debut, probably the most iconic film you've made, is called Girlfriends.
Claudia: Right.
Gina: Which made us even more excited to talk to you. How long did it take to get Girlfriends made? And how did you finance?
Claudia: It took a long time.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: I mean I first got the idea, it was three short films. The first was the story of what happens between these two young women who live together, who are roommates and close friends since college, what happens when one of them meets a guy and decides to get married.
The second film in the series in the -- this is a trilogy -- was going to be . . . was based on a Katherine Mansfield story called Bliss and it's a woman -- young woman who thinks she has the perfect marriage to the perfect man and they're having a dinner party at their apartment and at the very end of the party she sees him helping this young woman, another young woman out of her coat and kissing her shoulders. And she realizes her whole notion of her bliss has been shattered in that moment.
Gina: Yeah.
(4:18)
Claudia: So that was the second segment and I named that woman Cleo who shoulders -- the young woman that we don't know.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And the third story is Cleo's story. So basically the first is Susan's story, the protagonist of Girlfriends.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: The second story is Anne's story, it's about Anne's marriage.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: And the third story is about Cleo's.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Life and what's really going on. So that was the original idea.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: For Girlfriends and so we set about . . .
Gina: It's almost like short stories as the film.
Claudia: Like short stories, right.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: We set about trying to write and Vicki Polon, really talented writer wrote . . .
Gina: Was she a friend?
Claudia: Good friend.
Gina: The script is sparkling. It's so sharp.
Claudia: It's a sparkling script. She's so smart. So smart and so good. So we started just with Girlfriends with the first section.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: And we filmed it I guess in 1976. We filmed like a half an hour with so much exposition about how they knew each other in college and how they became best friends and then how they rented an apartment and then they moved in and then they got the lease on this other apartment that was even cooler and they were talking about that. And all during this time Anne is dating Martin and then all of a sudden she decides to marry him and tells Susan and Susan is distraught and it ends with the wedding. It was a half-hour movie and even though it was way too long -- that whole section of the movie is now cut down to seven minutes.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: I realize that the character of Susan, the young woman who's the best friend, the -- if you will the Rhoda type, right?
Gina: Right, but the protagonist in this movie.
Claudia: Is the protagonist.
Gina: Yeah.
(6:08)
Claudia: The Rhoda type is not usually the protagonist.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: She's usually the sidekick to the Mary Tyler Moore.
Gina: Right, especially in that time.
Claudia: Right. But I realized this was a great character and a really much more interesting character to follow. Vicki and I talked about it and she kept writing.
Gina: So many of the themes feel contemporary.
Claudia: Right.
Gina: Susan is a little bit adrift and is excited about her marriage but not sure. I think these feelings that -- the intensity of the bond of their friendship that have . . . I think friendship between women, you know, has gained more cultural currency as a validated status.
[Clip Starts]
Anne: You know other people have lives too. This is Martin's only day off and it's past time for Rebecca's nap.
Susan: Well I said I'm sorry.
Anne: The world revolves around Susan Weinblatt, never me back, too busy to come over.
Susan: Annie it's hard when you're married and I'm alone, don't you see?
Anne: No, I don't see. You have your own place.
Susan: Thanks to you.
Anne: A job, a show even, a new boyfriend, and you're still free.
Susan: Ugh, and you're living in the depths of poverty with a man who beats you three times a day, right? I mean come on, you don't even have to have a job. You have a man who really loves you and a baby and . . .
Anne: Yeah, you can't stand it. Oh now wait a minute. You know you don't know me at all anymore. You really don't.
Susan: How could you? You haven't been alone for more than ten minutes in your entire life.
Anne: So that's why you don't come over?
Susan: You're the one who left me.
Anne: I didn't leave you. I got married.
Susan: I just wanted more of your time.
Anne: Bullshit. I couldn't even talk to you, you were so goddamn critical.
Susan: Well you didn't want to know what I thought. You'd already made up your mind. You knew what you were going to do.
Anne: So? But even if we want different things I'm still the same person.
Susan: No you're not. You're married.
(8:00)
Anne: He's my husband. You're my friend. Does marriage mean you give up on me?
Susan: Marriage means the only time I get to see you alone is if Martin is busy. I wanted a friend.
Anne: I am your friend.
Susan: Well I felt betrayed.
Anne: I think you're selfish.
[Clip Ends]
Claudia: I think what sparked the film was I never saw myself in movies. I never saw the best friend who was not gorgeous and, you know, the blonde, blue eyed, waspy standard who was Jewish, who was sort of funny.
Gina: Very funny.
Claudia: Who was maybe a little overweight at times. Who was, you know, not perfect. You know, I wanted to see somebody like me in a movie and that's kind of what sparked it. Not consciously.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: You know, it's not like "Hmm, I want to make a movie about me." It was more like unconsciously it was what came out of me. It's what I was talking about and what Vicki wrote and it was drawn from our lives.
Gina: What sticks out to you when you watch it now? Like what are the things that feel . . . are there still elements that strike you as wow, we really nailed that in a universal way versus oh, this was so much a time or a moment?
Claudia: I think the sense of what New York looked like then, what SoHo looked like then. It was a windblown kind of wasteland with a few things popping up. You know, I love the look of New York at that time and how strange and alone it was as a young woman to try and make a mark.
Gina: Melanie Mayron's character Susan kind of wandering into these office buildings.
(10:00)
Claudia: Yeah, right.
Gina: Finding some secretary somewhere.
Claudia: Exactly.
Gina: And that in some ways, you know, you could kind of talk your way in.
Claudia: Right, exactly.
Gina: There was some accessibility. And, you know, she's a white woman so who knows how different that might've been.
Claudia: Exactly. Well it was based on a lot of stuff like that.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: You live in New York now.
Claudia: Mm-hmm.
Gina: How does it feel compared to the time back then? This kind of . . .
Claudia: Oh, it's much too slick.
Gina: Yeah?
Claudia: Yeah, it's not raw anymore.
Gina: Yeah, what was your life like in that time? Does it -- are the characters we see, you know, how much of this is sort of the environment that you and Vicki were in as you're writing the story?
Claudia: Yeah, it was very much the environment we were in.
Gina: Yeah?
Claudia: And our friends.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: You know, when you're young you think the gulf is between yourself and -- as a single person -- and people who are married. That's this whole separate culture. Then you realize well it has more to do with people who have children than being single, that's a different culture. And it's sort of about when your friend passes over into another culture.
Gina: Different life phase, yeah.
Claudia: Different life phase. And how do you interface for lack of a better word with them?
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: How do you maintain a friendship across like a different time zone, different currency?
Gina: How has that played out in your own life?
Claudia: You know, I've been back-and-forth across that. For a long time I was a Susan. I didn't get married until I was 39 so all my friends were getting married and disappearing into that other world. And now there's a whole new generation that's not married that feels like colleagues because I'm sort of out of the early childrearing age as my sons are on their own. So a lot of the colleagues that I'm working with are women in their 20s and 30s.
Gina: So it's kind of a return to that?
(12:00)
Claudia: It's kind of a return, yes, it is. Particularly in theatre.
Gina: To that time. And it's interesting to think about because we know each other through your son that's my age.
Claudia: Mm-hmm.
Gina: What did it feel like to cross over into that other culture of the married person or the person with kids? Were you ready by the time you got there?
Claudia: I was but I found it very isolating. You know all of a sudden you're sitting with a baby in a house and depending on your situation it's a little hard to work or to get out to work or to get work consistently or you get work then you have to get back in the carpool line. You know, it ceases to be -- this is the beauty of it too -- it ceases to be the melodrama of moi, you know? My career, my love life, my blah, blah, blah. You know, there's more important things going on. But it's also really important to keep up your life.
Gina: Well that seems like so much of what Girlfriends is definitely about.
Claudia: Yeah, yeah.
Gina: Is the what it takes to stake out a life as an artist and not stated so overtly.
Claudia: Right.
Gina: But in that time that was pretty hostile to women working.
Claudia: Right, right, right.
Gina: I mean even in the late '70s.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: There’s that creepy photo editor.
Claudia: Right.
Gina: Who Susan has a meeting with.
Claudia: Who cropped.
Gina: Who cropped but I think she's so focus on the crop and all I can see is what a douchebag this guy is.
Claudia: Right, right, right.
Gina: And maybe that was par for the course. I mean you capture it so well, yeah.
Claudia: That's par for the course, right? And he was like thinking he was doing you a big favor.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Not realizing he's being condescending.
Gina: Do you have a favorite scene in Girlfriends?
Claudia: I like the scene with the rabbi in his office.
[Clip Starts]
Female: So I decided that if he wasn't going to let me talk to guy I'd just have to talk to God myself. So when I was seven -- when I was seven I decided to become a rabbi.
Male: You would've made a great rabbi.
Female: Thank you. Did you want to be a rabbi when you were a kid?
Male: Actually I wanted to become an actor.
Female: What happened?
Male: Well my parents didn't want me to. They wanted me to become a rabbi. They said there was no future in acting.
(14:25)
Female: You really are an actor, I mean sort of.
Male: Sort of.
Female: This is what I like about being a rabbi. It's wonderful.
Male: Better than talking with God?
Female: I don't know yet. Is he here?
Male: Always.
Female: God, this is my chance, right? God, do you think that you could teach me to tango? [Laughter] In sickness and in health.
[Clip Ends]
Claudia: Yeah, I love that scene. I love the party scene where she meets Eric.
[Clip Starts]
Female: Do you live nearby?
Eric: Yeah, just a couple blocks away.
Female: You want to go?
Eric: Actually I was going to wait around a little bit and talk to a couple people.
Female: Oh sure, sure.
Eric: You live near here?
Female: No.
Eric: On the east side huh?
Female: West side.
Eric: I live near here. Just a couple blocks away.
Female: Oh?
[Clip Ends]
Claudia: I like the red wall.
Gina: Oh yeah.
Claudia: Which was a great way to save money because I didn't have the money to shoot a wedding.
(16:00)
Gina: [Laughs]
Claudia: I had to figure out how the fuck am I going to -- I can't shoot a wedding so I shot a few stills at somebody else's wedding and then I had recorded a toast. I had a friend of mine make up a toast.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Then I just decided I'd just have Susan paint the wall red which was the color they were going to paint it together.
Gina: Exactly.
Claudia: And that's the way I kind of leapt through . . .
Gina: Oh it's so poignant too.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: It's better for not having had . . .
Claudia: For not having had the production value of a wedding.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Like what do you need the wedding for really?
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: It's a transition into her new life.
Gina: I have on my list something that just says Woody Allen question.
Claudia: Mm-hmm.
Gina: And we have a couple of New York films in the '70s, very time and place, very snappy dialogue, but also kind of on our show the perennial question of why the fuck is this guy still working as much as we know about what a creep he is?
Claudia: Right, right.
Gina: Do you think that if you were generationally in the same position of the people you work with now who are in their late 20s and 30s and kind of your younger self, do you think that you might've gone, you know, continued to make more features and really chase down that side of things versus the path that you have taken?
Claudia: I mean why didn't . . . are you asking why didn't I make more films? Or are you asking . . .
Gina: Do you think that the limited progress of the women's movement that we've seen still, how limited it is, stopped you from making more films? Or was that your own choice?
Claudia: I think it stopped me from making more films. I think it was really hard as a woman to make films and to have children.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: You know, there was no real support system. And there was a huge amount of sexism that I encountered on set and off.
(18:00)
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And that I tried to discount and not make -- you know, not pay much attention to and make light of but cumulatively it really gets to you.
Gina: Well you still were a bad-ass and a swashbuckler right?
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: So you want to feel like this isn't stopping me but . . .
Claudia: Right.
Gina: You know, you're an individual and yet . . .
Claudia: And yet, you know, you only have so much energy.
Gina: Well and to rephrase what I was saying before and then, you know, the Woody Allen defenders, the separate the art from the artist people, seem to be so focused on the writing or the portraiture or time and place and I don't think any of his films hold a candle to Girlfriends. You know, that sparkling wit, that portrait of a moment. You both do -- you and I think Vicki's screenplay as well, you do so well with so much less bullshit, with so much more emotional honesty.
Claudia: Well I think Annie Hall is a . . .
Gina: It's a good one.
Claudia: A beautiful film.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And at least it's between peers, unlike Manhattan.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: You know, at least they're the same age or roughly.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: And it has complexity and humor and great character study.
Gina: Right. Well and Diane Keaton's phenomenal.
Claudia: Phenomenal, yeah. Manhattan I remember liking at the time and now I'm kind of revolted by it. But that's how much, you know, you interiorize the sexism. You sort of take it for granted. Even as a feminist you don't see it at first.
Gina: Right, it's the frog boiling in water.
Claudia: Right, yeah.
[Ads]
(22:28)
Gina: It came out 40 years ago. How does that feel?
Claudia: Whoa, did it really?
Gina: I think so. It had its main release in '78 right? Did it . . .
Claudia: '79, yeah, you're right. Yeah, went to Toronto and it went to Sundance which was then called Utah Film Festival.
Gina: Oh really?
Claudia: And Cannes and, you know, it sort of made the rounds of all the festivals.
Gina: Yeah. And . . .
Claudia: In '79/'80 I think. I’d filmed the first part on $10,000 from the AFI.
Gina: Insane to think about.
Claudia: Yeah. I mean people were just all doing it for next to, you know, nothing. I mean I went -- I didn't have a lawyer and I had to go to the unions and say "I have $10,000. I don't have any money. I can't afford $500 a week for an actor."
Gina: Right, the scale. Yeah.
Claudia: Yeah, which was the scale minimum. "I'll pay you half of that, I'll pay you $250, but if I ever sell the movie and make money I'll double what I owe you. So instead of getting another $250 you get $500." You know, I would go around to each of the unions and kind of negotiate myself.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Just common sense.
Gina: Yeah. And hustle.
Claudia: And a bit of hustle. And they were -- they were game because people were eager to bring production back to New York and to develop an independent film movement in New York which didn't exist at that point.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: It was mainly Cassavetes and even he was working in L.A.
Gina: This is still '76/'77 now?
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: So there was very little independent film production then.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And what was there was very fringe. So I was lucky the unions and people went along with it.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: I mean I would call -- I had met Eli Wallach at a party in East Hampton where I had been visiting my uncle and I approached him at this party and I said "Would you -- I'm making like this little independent movie and would you play the part of this rabbi who falls in love with this young woman who's a photographer for him? Photographs the weddings." And he said "Sure, I haven't had a romantic lead in years."
Gina: [Laughs]
Claudia: You know, he was completely cute about it.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And I so I said what do we -- so how do I . . . how do we . . . what do we do next? He said "Just call my agent Biff Liff." I thought that was a joke, Biff Liff.
Gina: Biff Liff.
Claudia: But that was actually a very famous theatre agent called Biff Liff.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: So I called Biff Liff and we're talking and I'm trying to maintain my own and at some point he says "So what about billing?" And I'm thinking billing? Okay. Well why don't you bill me, right?
Gina: [Laughs] Yeah.
Claudia: You know, why's he -- why's he asking me about billing?
Gina: Right.
Claudia: I didn't know that it meant where your name goes on the screen.
Gina: Right, right.
Claudia: You know, it's like -- really naïve times.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: So we shot and shot and shot.
Gina: How much time did you get with Wallach? And I don't know how well Bob Balaban . . .
Claudia: About five days with Wallach.
Gina: Yeah, uh-huh.
Claudia: Maybe a week with Balaban, maybe a week with Chris Guest. Maybe less than a week with Amy Wright.
Gina: You're -- but you're booking it. You're hustling.
Claudia: Yeah, we were booking it. We shot it in, I don't know, 20, 30 days?
Gina: Wow.
Claudia: I can't -- I really don't remember. I had by then accumulated two other grants. So I got a $50,000 grant from the NEA which was a bicentennial grant and a $20,000 New York State CAPS, Creative Artists Public Service grant, so that was $70,000, not a lot of money.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Not quite enough.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: It was also the time of a big tax loophole.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: Where people could invest in movies and . . .
Gina: Uh-huh, they're trying to entice investment. Yeah.
Claudia: Yeah. And so a bunch of dentists invested like $60,000.
Gina: Dentists? Not even rabbis.
Claudia: Not even rabbis. So that was the cash.
Gina: Wow.
Claudia: That was the cash was $100,000 and the earlier section had been $10,000. And then I was very lucky that the labs didn't make me pay each time I had to process the film or make a work print. And even made a blow-up to 35 for me.
(26:45)
Gina: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: Because I really wanted to finish in 35 otherwise I didn't think people would take it seriously as a movie.
Gina: Mm-hmm. What would indie normally -- would you just do 16 in that time?
Claudia: Yeah but there wasn't any indie anywhere.
Gina: No one could play 16? Yeah.
Claudia: Right, 16 was documentaries and . . .
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: I didn't know what Cassavetes shot in. So the first time . . . invitation I got was to Rotterdam for what was a very kind of esoteric, arty film festival. So I finished the film so that it would be shown there and we did a blow-up. The film came out of the lab -- as the reels came out of the lab we packed them up and left for the airport.
Gina: Oh my gosh, amazing.
Claudia: And, you know, woke up on the other side of the Atlantic and went straight into a screening room and screened the film. And there's like a thousand people in the audience and they start laughing and I'm convinced they don't know English.
Gina: [Laughs]
Claudia: I don't understand why they're laughing because by then it's been four or five years I've worked on the movie and it's kind of an albatross.
Gina: You're very close to it.
Claudia: Yeah, I'm very -- I forget it's funny.
Gina: Yeah. Yeah.
Claudia: I forgot.
Gina: And it's hilarious.
Claudia: But I completely forgot.
Gina: Yeah.
(27:55)
Claudia: And then an article appears the next day saying "What is a commercial movie like this doing in an avant garde festival?"
Gina: [Laughs]
Claudia: That's a backhanded compliment.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: So based on that I went to Paris and screened it for the Cannes committee.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And they booked it for Cannes.
Gina: Amazing.
Claudia: And then based on that I went back to the States and screened it for Don Rugoff who was then the only real distributor in New York. He owned Cinema 1 and 2. It's where all the good films opened, Kubrick, everybody. Hal Ashby. And he didn't like it so I thought I'm fucked.
Gina: [Laughs] And that's how it was.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: It was just some distributor somewhere, that was how you get in or out.
Claudia: Right. And the New York Film Festival didn't accept it. By now, you know, the film was barely going through the gate.
Gina: Yeah, yeah.
Claudia: So I went out to L.A. where I'd never been.
Gina: You'd never been here?
Claudia: And I literally looked up -- I stayed in a place, a motel, and I called up the studios by name. I would call Warner Bros.
Gina: Yeah, like out of the phone book?
Claudia: Yeah, out of the phone book.
Gina: Right.
Claudia: And they would say "Production or distribution?" So I figured out I needed distribution.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Okay, so I say distribution and then I would speak to whoever was the underling that . . .
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: You know, saying "I made this movie. It's the story of a young woman who . . . It was shown at Rotterdam. Here's the review. They're going to show it now at Cannes. Would you like to see it?" So it took a lot. And within a week it'd go to the head of the studio.
Gina: Wow.
Claudia: And I get a call from the studio, "Who are you? What is this? Will you come in? We like your movie. Blah, blah, blah."
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: And so then it became a bidding war between three studios.
Gina: Really?
Claudia: Finally we sold it to Warner Bros.
Gina: And were you pleased with the price at the time?
Claudia: I was so pleased that I sold it that I could care less, you know?
Gina: Yeah, right.
Claudia: It was enough to pay everybody back and then some.
Gina: Right. And when you were saying, you know, you cut these deals with the unions did the actors or other people get points? Did they see a little extra something from the sale?
Claudia: They all got a little extra something.
Gina: That must've been exciting.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: And so then -- then it was distributed and shown in New York and L.A.?
Claudia: Yeah. New York, L.A., worldwide.
Gina: Yeah, amazing.
Claudia: Worldwide.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: London, Rome.
Gina: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: Australia. You know, all over the place.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: It did very well abroad.
Gina: Yeah, that's amazing.
Claudia: But, you know, like I would get calls from like Stanley Kubrick and Federico Fellini who'd say when, you know, when I was doing publicity in New York, "Well come -- I'd like to meet you. Come. You know, I really like your movie."
Gina: What was that like?
Claudia: Mind-boggling. It was like mind-boggling.
Gina: Yeah. Does it feel like a lifetime ago that you made this movie?
Claudia: It does feel like a lifetime ago.
Gina: Is it boring to keep talking about it?
Claudia: It's not boring. Sometimes I feel a little bit like a one trick pony.
Gina: How so?
Claudia: Well, you know, here we are talking about Girlfriends again and I've done many other things.
Gina: What are some other milestones that you would put up there in terms of your biggest achievements?
Claudia: Well, um . . .
Gina: Professionally or creatively.
Claudia: You know, I don't know that they're . . . I don't think of them necessarily as professional achievements, you know? But things that I created that give me pleasure, that I think are resonant to the culture.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: A film I made before that, a film that takes place in China in 1973. Oh, it was called The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. It was a film I made with Shirley MacLaine and we were invited to be the first American woman's delegation to the People's Republic after Nixon.
(31:45)
We put together a delegation of American women which was supposed to be a cross-section of American women. There was a woman who voted for George Wallace and works for Texaco and there was this African-American woman, Unita Blackwell, who marched with Martin Luther King and who was mayor of her city, Mayersville, Mississippi. And a sexologist and a -- Mayflower, you know, descendant from the Mayflower. It was just a real interesting cross-section. And we just thought we were so unique. I was a woman, camerawoman, you know? Very flacho-macho.
Gina: [Laughs]
Claudia: It's like we thought we were cool and very different one from the other. And the minute we got to China, the mainland that had been closed for almost 25 years, they hadn't seen an afro ever. They hadn't seen anything what we looked like, you know? They were all in Mao jackets, kind of uniform, and they were just -- we all of a sudden felt like bonded like soul sisters.
Gina: The woman who voted for George Wallace . . .
Claudia: Became the best friend of -- of the woman who marched with Martin Luther King because they were both southerners. They knew the story. They knew who each other was. So everything that made us think of ourselves as individuals fell away in contrast to what it meant to be Chinese at that time. But it's a very kind of intimate look at -- with Chinese women speaking very candidly to us somewhat off the record and it's a really interesting document that still lives today. It's screened all the time.
Gina: Great.
Claudia: You know, that -- that was a film. It's My Turn, a film I made with Michael Douglas and Charles Groden, Jill Clayburgh.
Gina: That was your next feature after Girlfriends?
Claudia: That was my next feature. You know, lots of plays. Lots of TV shows. I worked on 30 Something for a few years. I worked on most of My So Called Life. These were all kind of life-changing shows. They were all new at the time. I worked on Girls. Each one of them represented an ethos of its time.
Gina: Crucial in its moment.
Claudia: Crucial in its moment and culture-shaping in its moment, or reflecting.
Gina: Sesame Street, My So Called Life, Girls.
Claudia: Right.
Gina: I mean particularly for women in our audience whether or not they've seen Girlfriends shows that changed their lives.
(34:15)
Claudia: Right. Well Girls— when Lena saw it, she said "Oh my god, I feel like I saw this film but I haven't seen it."
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: "It's what my series is based on."
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: I've directed tons of plays, done a lot of teaching. So there's many, many aspects, you know?
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: To my professional life that go beyond Girlfriends. But that's not to say I don't appreciate the fact that people still love it and it still works.
Gina: Definitely. What are you really jazzed about now? What are you excited about? Because I think of you as an artist.
Claudia: Mm-hmm.
Gina: I know that you grew up surrounded by art. You're a very talented painter as well. So does that director/producer bucket that I think film people want to put you in, does that feel like it doesn't fit? How do you think of yourself and what are you excited about creatively?
Claudia: I think of myself more as a storyteller and I don't really care what the medium is. You know, all my life I've moved between film, theatre, and television and painting I guess. And they're all ways of telling a story. I'm not attached to any one medium. And there's a great pleasure and relief moving from medium to medium.
For instance if you're working on a play each word, each comma is gospel. You can't change any text without the writer as king or queen. It's a piece of publishable work. Whereas on a screenplay screenwriters aren't treated that well and it becomes much more -- the director becomes the auteur of the film more. I don't think that's necessarily right. I think screenwriters should get equal billing but that's the way it's been.
(36:08)
In television your executive producer is often a writer, the person who conceived of the idea and who brought it to a network and got it launched and then hired all the other writers and everybody else. That person is the big honcho. And . . .
Gina: The Shonda Rhimes. Yeah, the show runner, yeah.
Claudia: The Shonda Rhimes or -- the directors are much less important. You know, they're 22 episodes per season. There's dozens of directors. We're the last people hired, the first people fired. Even the camera person, the actors, the makeup, wardrobe, all those are hired by the year whereas directors are just hired by the episode.
Gina: And yet any of us who's as obsessed with TV as me knows in a beloved series which are the good episodes and not are so frequently made by the director who had that one or two -- those moments, right?
Claudia: Right, exactly. But you're more sophisticated. I mean a normal audience would not recognize a single TV director's name.
Gina: What about theatre? Is that kind of where your creative mind is right now?
Claudia: I'm doing a lot of theatre. I love doing theatre. I've been working with playwrights, young playwrights, mostly as a mentor or helping shape/produce their work, trying to help them figure out what they're trying to say and saying it. And eventually if we get something working well enough it gets produced.
Gina: When you were growing up did you think that -- was being an artist a viable career path?
Claudia: No, my god, my parents were horrified.
Gina: Really?
Claudia: Right.
Gina: They're such lovers of the arts though, or they were.
Claudia: Oh, no. They were like -- they would not put a penny in the movie. They thought I was really going down the wrong path. I would never find a husband doing this and in fact it did take me a long time. But no, they were not supportive.
(38:00)
Gina: How did that change over time?
Claudia: I think once the New York Times started reviewing me favorably they became supportive.
Gina: You have to be serious.
Claudia: I don't know about serious. It's kind of . . .
Gina: Successful.
Claudia: They were worried for me that I would never get married and find a husband and that was what a girl was supposed to do.
Gina: That's almost inconceivable to me now.
Claudia: Yeah. No, that -- they were very scared. They were very horrified. Both my sisters were -- got married in their 20s. I was 38 when I met my -- Walter, and 39 when I married him, 40 when I had Sam. So it was like, you know, as far as they were concerned they would've been thrilled if it'd been the Hare Krishna. You know?
Gina: And one of your sisters is a Buddhist monk now.
Claudia: Yes she is. [Laughs]
Gina: Are both your sisters still married like you are?
Claudia: Neither. Neither are married.
Gina: And so it was just sort of that sense of this is the social progression? This is what you do.
Claudia: Right, yeah. This is what you do. I mean what else are you supposed to do with your life?
Gina: You had other ideas?
Claudia: I didn't. I just -- it's not like I had other ideas. I wasn't like "I don't need to be married, I'm a . . ." It was not ideological.
Gina: What was it?
Claudia: It was just my experience.
Gina: Following your own path, your own desire?
Claudia: Well I mean I didn't meet anybody I wanted to marry. You know, I had nothing against marriage and I knew I wanted to have children but there wasn't anybody came close that I could imagine spending the rest of my life with. It was just like whoa, how do people do that? And then one film led to another and it was like -- it's hard to jump off that train.
Gina: Yes, you're in hyperdrive.
Claudia: Yeah, you know? And it's like so exciting and it's moving and you're . . . you want to move so you're moving. And it wasn't until things slowed down a bit that I was able to appreciate -- meet and appreciate somebody. I mean maybe I could've sooner, I don't know, it just didn't happen sooner.
Gina: Who is one of your best friends?
(40:18)
Claudia: Well Lucy Fisher who's a girlfriend that I've known since college and whose three magnificent daughters that you must know. Tessa, Julia, and Sarah who are all doing amazing things changing the world. Marsha Norman who's a playwright and a friend in New York. She wrote Night Mother if you ever saw that. You know, feisty dames.
Gina: I would expect.
Claudia: Yeah.
Gina: How challenging has it been to kind of hang on to those relationships over the years? And with those life phase changes happening.
Claudia: Well I don't have a special talent for friendship.
Gina: Is there?
Claudia: Yes, I think -- like Sam has a real talent for friendship.
Gina: Your older son who was my best friend in high school, yeah.
Claudia: Yeah. I mean I think some people have more of a talent or desire and I tend to get pretty reclusive. Which is not, you know, necessarily good. It's okay sometimes. It's just my temperament, I'm more of an introvert. Although, you know, I have a well-developed persona so you can think I was an extrovert.
Gina: I read an essay recently that was from the perspective of writer -- of a writer of what it takes to maintain friendships with your friends who are artists, that there are people who need to go away and work and come back.
Claudia: Right, right.
Gina: Does that resonate with your personality? Or do you think it's just . .
Claudia: Yes. Sometimes you have to go away and work and then come back and check back in. I think that's true to do your work and come back. You know, I'm very . . . when I'm doing my work I'm hyper-focused. I can't like have dinner, you know? Or meet somebody for lunch when I'm working. It's like the head is occupied.
Gina: Any other female filmmakers you want to shout out? Who we should be watching for.
Claudia: Eliza Hittman. I don't know if you saw her Beach Rats.
Gina: Oh I heard about it. I didn't see it.
Claudia: A really good movie. And her first -- I'm trying to remember the title of her first film. Yeah, It Felt Like Love.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Gorgeous movie from a young woman's point-of-view.
Gina: Mm-hmm.
Claudia: Like 14, 15. Coming into her own sexuality and not understanding the sexuality coming at her. Just gorgeous movie.
Gina: That's awesome.
Claudia: A really talented filmmaker. She was my student at Cal Arts and has become a colleague. There are many excellent women directors now.
Gina: Yeah.
Claudia: Not enough but many.
Gina: And I would like to see more DPs too.
Claudia: Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great.
Gina: Everything. By the . . .
Claudia: Everything on every level.
Gina: Anyone who has money listening to this podcast, more women behind the scenes, behind the camera.
Claudia: Do it. Yeah.
Gina: Claudia Weill thank you so much for being on Call Your Girlfriend.
Claudia: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Gina: It was wonderful.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Ugh! Gina, she should do this all the time.
Ann: Claudia, Gina, icons.
Aminatou: Icon. Love it. See you at the beach, boo-boo.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf where Sophie Carter-Kahn does all of our social. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.