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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Where did Greta come from?
She came from my meeting with [film director] Kathryn Bigelow. But she's not Bigelow. I'm a big fan of Bigelow's. I interviewed her for "Blue Steel." That was in '89, years before I started this book. I think that what Bigelow wants, which is to be a female director of action, is strictly speaking impossible, given Hollywood's gender categories. My heroine is driven crazy by this contradiction. She wants to be Steven Spielberg, she wants to make widescreen adventure movies. Her existential position in Hollywood just fascinated me. How could she do the things she wanted to do? I have felt it myself. It's not just Kathryn Bigelow, it's women who just want to do what they want to do. And there's some reason that the world won't let them. At that time, you know, Bigelow had not made "K-19: The Widowmaker."
Let's talk about "Thelma and Louise" for a moment.
"Thelma and Louise," which I think is a watershed, is the tragic view of the condition of women. You just drive off a cliff and you're dead. Because you've been cornered and there is no hope. You cannot be free. You can drive somewhere and not have a history. You can drive somewhere and start new. Just like the myth of the Wild West. There's a frontier where you can be free. And for women there is no such place. Because wherever you go, you are a vagina. Wherever you go on this planet you are a vagina. And that's what happens, that's the dynamic. That's what starts "Thelma and Louise." Thelma and Louise decide they want to take a vacation from their thankless husbands and boyfriends. So they jump in their car, they're going away for a weekend. The first thing that happens is they go to a bar for some fun and someone gets raped. Or it's attempted. And so someone gets shot. And they're on the run.
I know the movie took a lot of flack for being anti-feminist and anti-woman, that women with guns are just as bad as men with guns. But the dynamic, the thing that's motivating the violence, is purely female. I was very moved by that movie, and I wanted to go on in that vein. What does it mean for a woman to be free?
Has anybody come close to making a movie that touches on that issue since then?
I don't think people have even tried. What's come out of "Thelma and Louise" is this whole kicking-feet genre, like "Charlie's Angels" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" and all the chick-flick stuff. These movies have skipped over the problem of freedom. I have not seen anything like "Thelma and Louise," because it's not explicit. It's talking about its problem in genre language. It's not directly saying what it's saying.
What was the last good movie you saw?
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." [Laughs.] I'd rather watch 15 Harry Potter movies than "The Hours."
Tell me about "The Hours."
I think the basic premise of "The Hours" is that modernism is responsible for AIDS. [Laughs] It's a chain of unhappy women leading to a guy who throws himself out the window, all with the link of "Mrs. Dalloway." Virginia Woolf walking into the river leads to him throwing himself out the window. Any movie that opens with a woman walking into a stream with rocks in her pocket is not my kind of movie. And it all seems to be this morass of psychological opacity and sexual ambiguity and unhappiness. It's the most morose movie I've seen in a long time. Nobody knows anything, everything is lost, everything is despair, everything is unhappiness and water's rushing over your head.
Not that there's not tragedy in life. But if I'm going to watch a tragedy I'll watch David Lean, you know. I'll watch "Doctor Zhivago" if I want to cry. At least that's a clean cry.
What about "Adaptation"?
I didn't hate it, but again it's one of those movies that seems to say that there are only two options for human consciousness. Either completely paralyzed self-consciousness, which is not even the same as self-awareness, or your other option is bloody, low-chakra, base, animal unconsciousness, which is adultery, betrayal, drug addiction, death in the swamp, shotguns and crocodiles and car crashes, and all that. There are other forms of consciousness. There's the spiritual dimension that's completely missing.
Who are your favorite directors?
I don't have any anymore.
