'Audrey's Children' director Ami Canaan Mann on the timelessness of the gender gap
Our conversation with 'Audrey's Children' director Ami Canaan Mann takes us on a journey that explores not just the film itself, but the essence of storytelling, particularly the responsibility inherent in portraying real lives.
The film, rooted in the historical context of 1969, serves as a mirror reflecting contemporary societal issues, especially the subtle sexism that women like Audrey faced in male-dominated fields. Ami walks us through the nuances of her directorial approach while showcasing the tenacity required to bring such a meaningful story to life.
(Photo: Courtesy of Blue Harbor Entertainment)
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast, and this is our conversation with Amy Kanan Mann, director of Audrey's Children.
Speaker B:I wanted to talk about the sexism as kind of the wallpaper in the room rather than the event itself.
Speaker B:The responsibility is to sort of do a lot of thinking about the essence of this person and how they kind of moved through the world in.
Speaker B:And try to convey that in the most authentic way possible.
Speaker A:The film Audrey's Children is based on Julia Fisher Farman's interview profile of Dr.
Speaker A:Audrey Evans, and Julia was the one who adapted it for screen as well.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I'm curious, what did this.
Speaker A:I mean, the extent of Julia's involvement in the project mean for your working relationship and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:The entire collaboration?
Speaker B:Well, certainly in terms of the inception of the story and the notion to turn Audrey Evans's life into a film, which I think was.
Speaker B:Was a great one and an important one.
Speaker B:The other aspect of Julia's involvement is that she raised all the money herself and not through the traditional independent film routes of bank loans and gap financing and that sort of thing.
Speaker B:She raised it from, you know, donations and friends and family and I think Even some Ronald McDonald houses donated, like, $2,000 here and $1,000 there.
Speaker B:It is a truly authentically independent film from inception to its release.
Speaker B:And that's all due to Julia's tenacity.
Speaker A:And to address the.
Speaker A:At least for me, or to my understanding, the general challenge of biographical cinema, how did you go about staying true to Dr.
Speaker A:Evans's and the story's in its entirety, authentic voice, while, of course, crafting an engaging narrative for.
Speaker A:For audiences.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think it's tricky, isn't it?
Speaker B:I mean, it's so vast.
Speaker B:It can be so broad.
Speaker B:It's easy to get in Wieldy.
Speaker B:When you're doing a biographical piece.
Speaker B:The focus here, My intention here directorially, was to focus on this one event, this one central event of her developing the staging system for neuroblastoma, for pediatric neuroblastoma, and have that be the sort of focal point of the narrative turn.
Speaker B:And then really, I think that the beautiful utility of doing a historical film is that you can use it as an analogy for contemporary times.
Speaker B:And it's a little bit.
Speaker B:You know, there's a little bit of critical distance.
Speaker B:It doesn't really feel like we're necessarily.
Speaker B:We could be talking about ourselves right now.
Speaker B:We could not.
Speaker B:You know, it's sort of the audience.
Speaker B:It's up to the audience to kind of decide how they want to Take in the information.
Speaker B:So to.
Speaker B:To that end, I really felt like her story was an opportunity to also have a little bit of a commentary on the times we're living in now, in that she was working.
Speaker B: The story takes place in: Speaker B:It was a time of a split society.
Speaker B:It was a time of a government that was.
Speaker B:Had its own issues and was going through its own kind of identity crisis.
Speaker B:And that felt parallel to me.
Speaker B:So I felt like it was an opportunity to tell a story about a person can see the wider world around them and the sort of disassembling of the wider world around them and the vast change of the wider world around them.
Speaker B:And while she has an instinct to fix, she can't fix that wider world.
Speaker B:But she can focus on the one thing she can do, and she does it as a character.
Speaker B:It's a sort of a character asset and a character flaw with unrelenting tenacity.
Speaker B:I mean, she's a very flawed character as much as she's also a hero.
Speaker B:You know, these things tend to go hand in hand.
Speaker B:So while she can't kind of fix everything, she can focus on one thing.
Speaker B:And for Audrey, that was trying to turn the tables on neuroblastoma for children and in so doing, create a change.
Speaker B:And I feel like that, to me right now, just as a person in the world felt like a significant thing to talk about right now.
Speaker A:Yeah, now that we are talking parallels while watching the film, particularly during a scene, for example, where Audrey is the only woman in rooms full of male colleagues.
Speaker A:And this just led my mind, twisted mind to the idea and the thought of, for example, the underrepresentation of female directors in the industry today, which is just.
Speaker A:It has always been timely and still is.
Speaker A:And I'm just curious, was this something that ever popped into your head and do parallels like these influence your approach to the material?
Speaker A:Or are you just more trying to stay as focused as possible?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker B:I mean, it absolutely influences my approach to the material.
Speaker B:There's a scene in the movie where she's sitting in the conference room and she's the only woman in the conference room.
Speaker B:It's her first day on the job, and the men around her aren't acknowledging her, saying they're treating her differently in a super subconscious way than they would had she been a man.
Speaker B:That wasn't in the script.
Speaker B:That was something that I came up with on the day, you know, So I feel like I wanted to talk about the sexism as kind of the wallpaper in the room rather than the event itself.
Speaker B:Because, you know, it just sort of establishes tone and context.
Speaker B:Because in my experience, I mean, I.
Speaker B:When I went to film school, I was one of two women in the program.
Speaker B:And so in my experience, it's very subtle.
Speaker B:It's not nothing that anyone ever speaks of.
Speaker B:And yet it also does influence people's perception of each other and their perception of the work that you're doing.
Speaker B:And in way I don't know that both parties are ever entirely aware of.
Speaker B:So I wanted to try to capture that.
Speaker B:The focus for her, much like I think most women who are women in a traditionally male dominated field, is the work itself.
Speaker B:I mean, that was certainly my case.
Speaker B:I was just interested in making movies like, you know.
Speaker B:But nevertheless, the contextual environment that you're working in does influence the relational dynamics between the people that you're working with.
Speaker B:When the genders are so unbalanced as.
Speaker A:For, once again, the weight of the story.
Speaker A:The film opens with a familiar face based on a true story.
Speaker A:What specific responsibilities did this place on you as a director?
Speaker B:Yeah, really beautiful and big responsibilities, you know, I mean, it's quite an honor to.
Speaker B:I mean, to be in a position to tell any story.
Speaker B:I feel like I have a lot of gratitude for having the privilege to be able to tell stories generally and then also to be able to tell stories about people's lives.
Speaker B:And then particularly somebody like Audrey, whose life was so impactful and so modest at the same time.
Speaker B:The responsibility is to sort of do a lot of thinking about the essence of this person and how they kind of moved through the world and try to convey that in the most authentic way possible.
Speaker B:Part of that for me was making sure that the environment that this character moved through was as accurate as possible.
Speaker B:So, you know, we shot Philadelphia for Philadelphia.
Speaker B: It's set in: Speaker B:The visual look for me was an ectochrome kind of look.
Speaker B:I wanted to make sure that it kind of felt like that era there.
Speaker B:A lot of.
Speaker B:Lot of references, a lot of photography references, a lot of research into production design and wardrobe to make sure that as an audience member, you really felt like you were being kind of seduced into the.
Speaker B:Into a very specific visual time frame and world.
Speaker B:And then in so doing, you would then kind of be sneakily told this story about children with cancer, which isn't, you know, which is a tough topic.
Speaker B:So it's the responsibility, I suppose, directorially of attempting to make sure that the world is as thorough and inviting as possible so that your audience wants to be there and wants to hear the true story of this woman who the story's about.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And regarding your collaboration with the lead, Nathan Disormor, because her portrayal of Audrey had to capture such determination and optimism, despite the obviously so overwhelming circumstances.
Speaker A:How do you approach a situation like this as a director with her specifically and the cast?
Speaker A:Do you prefer more hands on direction or rather giving actors considerable freedom?
Speaker B:You know, it's so funny being a director because you don't really know how other directors direct, you know, so it's always a funny question because I have had the great privilege of.
Speaker B:I was an intern assistant for Robert Redford on River Runs through it, and then I worked on Heat.
Speaker B:So I got incredibly lucky having those two experiences to kind of be distant enough because I was, you know, not in the thick of it, but to be able to really observe.
Speaker B: was a theater director in the: Speaker B:So I kind of.
Speaker B:What I do is I do a lot of intense prep on my own using Meisner, breaking down the story from a story arc perspective, a sequencing perspective, scene perspective, and sometimes a line by line perspective to try to.
Speaker B:To discern what it is that the characters.
Speaker B:Just the sort of Meisner work, the basic Meisner work of character analysis.
Speaker B:And then I have that on hand always and depending on the actor.
Speaker B:In my experience, every actor has their own language.
Speaker B:And the job of a director is to kind of discern what their language is.
Speaker B:And sometimes it has to do with how they were trained, and sometimes it has to do with just them as people.
Speaker B:But I've had experiences where I've worked with actors who really just sort of had very little theater training.
Speaker B:And they grew up in tv and.
Speaker B:Brilliant, you know, brilliant.
Speaker B:But they kind of came up in tv, so that's a different kind of language.
Speaker B:I've had actors where they have actually studied Meisner.
Speaker B:So they're like, oh, what's my action verb?
Speaker B:I'm like, it's this.
Speaker B:So we're like, great, let's go.
Speaker B:So for Natalie, who's brilliant, and Jimmy and Clancy, Brandon, Juliana, just all really brilliant and dedicated, it was really about just sort of talking about what the essence of their characters wants and needs and doing that sort of basic Meisner breakdown analysis with them.
Speaker B:I do that very intently in prep and then on set.
Speaker B:I have found in my experience that when you do that in prep, you're really in a good position when you're shooting.
Speaker B:And on independent film, you have to be as efficient as possible.
Speaker B:So then there's very little on set examination analysis, because we've already done that.
Speaker B:It's more like at the end of our conversations and I'm generalizing here, they're looking to me and I'm looking to them to be like, did we get the thing that we knew we wanted to get four weeks ago, five weeks ago when we were talking about it?
Speaker B:And then ideally, there's enough of a trust between myself and the actors where they can look at me and say, did we get that thing?
Speaker B:And I can go, yes, we did, or no, we didn't.
Speaker B:Try this angle a little bit shifted a little bit this way.
Speaker B:But the bulk of the building of the character work has been done already in prep.
Speaker A:Fascinating.
Speaker A:And now that we are talking, the on set relationships and techniques within the cast and crew when filming such emotionally challenging material, once again, as the director, what is it that you can do to ensure that your cast and crew feel supported?
Speaker A:And on the other hand, what is it that they can do to do the same for you?
Speaker B:I love that question because it's actually something that's really important to me.
Speaker B:I feel like as a director.
Speaker B:My feeling as a director is that it's critical that the cast feel safe, to give everything they can and be vulnerable.
Speaker B:I mean, I've taken acting lessons to be a better director, not, God help me, to be an actor, but just to sort of, you know, and I am in awe of what actors do.
Speaker B:There's no way I can do it.
Speaker B:You know, I just like to be.
Speaker B:To sort of.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, it's just.
Speaker B:It's unbelievable what we're asking them to do it just to be completely raw and vulnerable at 3 o'clock in the morning in front of 100 people watching in some weird, you know, rat infested warehouse, probably, you know, over and over and over again, and then do it again for different cam angles.
Speaker B:I mean, it's really, if you think about it, it's a really incredible task that we're asking them to do.
Speaker B:So I very much adhere to a kind of philosophy which I share with my crew, that our job, myself and the crew's job is, is to make them feel safe and comfortable.
Speaker B:And particularly when working with children, I love working with kids.
Speaker B:And so before they come on set.
Speaker B:I mean, I explain that to the crew, like, even in prep.
Speaker B:Like, look, this is the deal.
Speaker B:Like, we are here to be quiet and efficient, and they shouldn't see any of our drama.
Speaker B:If you.
Speaker B:If we have anything that we need to, we take it off set.
Speaker B:We don't let the actor see.
Speaker B:Like, we very sort of, like, front of the house, back of the house.
Speaker B:And then with children, like, on the day of, I will gather the crew and say, listen, you know, we have a bunch of kids here.
Speaker B:They're like, you know, they're not professionalized.
Speaker B:They're literally six and seven years old.
Speaker B:They're pretending to be dying of cancer.
Speaker B:So, you know, we need to.
Speaker B:Let's all just sort of remind our.
Speaker B:Like, be aware and remind ourselves.
Speaker B:And it's incredible.
Speaker B:Like, I have never had a situation where the crew has balked at that or not done that.
Speaker B:They've been.
Speaker B:This crew in particular, were really beautifully aware of what.
Speaker B:What I was asking them to do in terms of making sure that the.
Speaker A:Actors felt safe and to talk some about post.
Speaker A:There is some thoughtful integration of archival footage and narration commentary throughout the film.
Speaker A:Were these scripted or rather added by you?
Speaker B:They were added by me.
Speaker B:There was material that myself and my editor, Matt Ramsey, who's great, who I've worked with a couple times.
Speaker B:The Super 8 footage that you see at the beginning of the film, that's footage I shot on set, not really knowing what I was going to do with it.
Speaker B:I just sort of wanted it.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:This instinct, it's like, I think just in case.
Speaker B:Just in case.
Speaker B:Yeah, I got this.
Speaker B:I love Super 8.
Speaker B:I just love Super 8.
Speaker B:And I love the look of it.
Speaker B:It felt very period to me.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so I just shot and ended up working really nicely with the.
Speaker B:With the footage that Matt and I found, just to sort of give context of the world and also to remind people where we were in terms of research just 50 years ago.
Speaker B:It was a completely different world.
Speaker B:And because of the sort of.
Speaker B:Because of the incre.
Speaker B:Vanguardian research that the scientific community has done, we're just in a completely different place now.
Speaker B:But just to sort of take us back there so we could remember the historical context of the story we were telling.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I mean, for me, just the thought of archival footage, it makes sense.
Speaker A:But at the same time, it's so risky, as in, what was the thought process there?
Speaker A:And your conversations, like, with your editor about weaving these historical elements into the narrative structure.
Speaker B:Well, you know, we.
Speaker B:We were sort of just poking around, you know, we weren't really.
Speaker B:It wasn't actually like a plan to be.
Speaker B:You know, it was sort of one of those.
Speaker B:Who is it?
Speaker B:Was it Truffaut?
Speaker B:Some amazing French New Wave director said that you should always leave a door on set open because you never know what's going to walk in.
Speaker B:And I just.
Speaker B:That's always sort of stuck with me.
Speaker B:And this was definitely one of those events.
Speaker B:We were just.
Speaker B:We were poking around, looking at things.
Speaker B:In the beginning, there's footage of a family and there's this kid in.
Speaker B:In this crazy striped pants who's talking about, you know, a cancer patient at Children's Hospital.
Speaker B:And it just really struck a nerve.
Speaker B:I was like, we need to build a kind of montage sequence so that we are kind of aligned with Audrey in that it's her first day on the job, that's the start of the film, and that we feel like we're with her and walking alongside her into a world that is both, you know, that is both foreign and.
Speaker B:And new.
Speaker B:I mean, she's British.
Speaker B:She's coming to this American hospital and she's trying to get her bearings in terms of the mechanics of the hospital itself.
Speaker B:Let the audience be with her, trying to get their bearings in terms of the fight that she's about to engage in.
Speaker B:This is where we are with cancer research.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Farber was super famous and actually, in real life, Audrey Evans worked with him for a second.
Speaker B:So that this is the world that when we're kind of aligned with her, we're being introduced to the world with her in order to kind of mechanically get the audience to align with her at the beginning of the journey.
Speaker A:To conclude, I'd like to return and circle back to our first topic of discussion.
Speaker A:The script, while the story was likely compelling from your first encounter with it and was calling for you.
Speaker A:How has your relationship with the film in general, this narrative, and, yeah, the weight of it evolved through production, post production, and now sharing it with audiences.
Speaker B:I mean, all films are our babies, you know, they're all our babies.
Speaker B:This one, I think, is unique and anomalous in that I had an opportunity to meet Audrey.
Speaker B:She passed away a couple weeks before we wrapped.
Speaker B:And Julia, the producer, writer, knew Audrey since she was a child.
Speaker B:Natalie spent time with Audrey.
Speaker B:So the three of us, Julia, Natalie and I are really kind of.
Speaker B:And we were at the time kind of bonded around, helping to tell.
Speaker B:Wanting to try to help tell this woman that we were so impressed and influenced by telling her story and in terms of evolution, that's only in grown, which is unusual.
Speaker B:You know, usually, you know, you kind of can you make your film.
Speaker B:It has a life, it goes out in the world.
Speaker B:You kind of say, okay, good luck, film.
Speaker B:And then you move on to the next one, this one.
Speaker B:The desire to be bonded as a kind of troika.
Speaker B:Julia, Natalie and I, to try to help tell the story in the world has only kind of grown in intensity, even though it's been, you know, years.
Speaker B:And I think that's because the world around us is changing so quickly, and the story seems to have more potential.
Speaker B:It could have potentially more impact than even when we first made it.
Speaker B: , it was a different world in: Speaker B:And we couldn't have conceived of when we were making the movie that the very institutions that were helping to fund cancer research would be in any way endangered.
Speaker B:And so it's seems to have met its time.
Speaker B:The impact that we feel in terms of being attached to the film has only kind of grown and had more meaning.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:It just feels so, I don't know, paradox or controversial how you care about a project so much.
Speaker A:You put so much into it, and yet as time passes, you wish it weren't so timely as it is.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:It's a great way to put it.
Speaker B:That's exactly right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, Amy, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:This was a lovely conversation.
Speaker A:And thank you for the film because it's more than important.
Speaker B:Oh, Aaron, thank you so much.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker B:Appreciate it.
