With “Julie & Julia” set to open sometime soon, I thought it might be fun to go back to 1992 and writer-director Nora Ephron’s first directorial effort, “This is My Life,” which opened the Sundance Film Festival that year. In anticipation of the festival’s opening night, I interviewed the filmmaker via telephone – she was in New York City.I have to add that talking to her on the phone was like watching one of her movies: delightful. She’s just a great interview, couldn’t have been more relaxed and generous; it doesn’t hurt that she was a journalist, and apparently that she’s just a good human being, too, from all indications.
Anyway, here’s a transcript of most of the phoner.
DP: THE PAST FEW YEARS WE'VE BEEN HEARING MORE AND MORE ABOUT THE LACK OF GOOD ROLES FOR FEMALES IN FILMS. BUT YOUR FILMS SEEM TO ALMOST ALWAYS HAVE STRONG CENTRAL CHARACTERS WHO ARE FEMALES. HAVE YOU EVER HAD TROUBLE SELLING THE NOTION THAT FEMALES AS THE FOCUS OF MOVIES ARE A REALLY GOOD THING?
NE: “Well, I think one of the reasons I wanted to direct, finally, is that it's unbelievably hard to get a movie made if it's about a woman. Because you see what happens is you write a script and then you have to get someone to direct it. And the most amazing thing about this is that what happens is you go into your agent's office and he says to his assistant, ‘Bring in the directors list.' And the assistant brings in the directors' list and it is A PIECE OF PAPER. It's not even that big a piece of paper -- well, it's 8x14, but it's not FULL. And on it is a list of, I'd say, 80 or 90 names. Out of which, never mind how many are women -- although more this year than last year -- but the point is, out of which you can rule out 90 percent of the people on the list because they don't make movies about women. Or they don't make comedies. So you're left with 10 names, let's say. And some of those names are people we'd all love to make a movie with, but GET IN LINE. Sydney Pollack makes movies about women ...”
