From Film Critic to Author: Marya E. Gates on her new book - 'Cinema Her Way'
Marya E. Gates, a film critic turned author, takes us on a cinematic journey through the untold stories of women filmmakers in her debut book, 'Cinema Her Way'. We explore the intricate tapestry of female contributions to cinema, uncovering countless voices and narratives that have often been overshadowed.
Her decade-long quest to spotlight women directors, which began with her project 'Female Filmmakers in Focus', emerged as both a personal challenge and a passionate response to the male-dominated industry that had left her disenchanted with mainstream cinema.
Through extensive interviews and profiles, Gates illuminates the artistic brilliance of filmmakers who have made significant yet underappreciated contributions. From pioneering visionaries to emerging talents, this conversation captures the essence of Marya's mission: to celebrate, recognize, and amplify women's voices in film.
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast and this is our conversation with Maria E.
Speaker A:Gates, writer of the book Cinema Her Way.
Speaker B:It was really looking at women who had that robust career, women who I think have at least one film, if not their entire filmography that I think is important to cinema and history of cinema in general.
Speaker B:Women whose careers have been sort of not highlighted.
Speaker A:To just pretty much jump right into it.
Speaker A:As far as I know, you've written extensively about film for outlet strike roger.com where you have the ongoing Female Filmmakers in Focus interview series, Indiewire playlist.
Speaker A:I could go on a lot of places.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:What led you to the decision to compile insights and interviews like these into a book?
Speaker B: years ago with: Speaker B:About a two year lead up to when I decided I just wanted to focus on film directed by women.
Speaker B:And it was partly sort of a social protest to show that you could like have a robust year and only watch films directed by women, partly out of sort of dissatisfaction with like, my viewing.
Speaker B:I'm someone who watches movies from every era and new movies, old movies, doesn't matter.
Speaker B:And I was just find myself like, falling out of love with movies, which was shocking and so sort of a way to jumpstart that again.
Speaker B:And then, you know, then I discovered like so many great filmmakers and I was like, oh, I'm never going to.
Speaker B:Never going to be bored again, never going to not feel enthusiastic about film again.
Speaker B:And so I always wanted to take that project and turn it into a book.
Speaker B:But because of my various day jobs, which I no longer have a day job, I am a full time freelancer.
Speaker B:But for a while I had multiple marketing jobs and they are kind of soul crushing.
Speaker B:And no matter what the company is, marketing job ends up eventually soul crushing.
Speaker B:And I just ran out of like, energy to try to work on it, turn it into a book.
Speaker B:Then when I quit my last job and just sort of focused on writing full time, that like, the universe was like, it's time.
Speaker B:And so my agent, her name's Nikki, found me on Twitter and she really liked my writing and my interviews and was just, you know, really interested in my voice as a writer and contributor to sort of the discussion around film and was like, do you have a book idea?
Speaker B:Like, actually I do.
Speaker B:So that's how it ended up becoming.
Speaker A:A book and the rest is history.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And yeah, having established the aforementioned Female Filmmakers in focus is this interconnected approach how you prefer to think of and structure your interviews and works.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I really like looking both at every filmmaker, sort of whether it's a first time filmmaker or future filmmaker or someone who's made a lot of films.
Speaker B:I really like looking at sort of how their current work connects to everything they've done, whether they've, you know, pivoted.
Speaker B:You know, some filmmakers I talked to started in documentary and then moved to narrative or, or what have you for the, the column, I mean, and some started with shorts and some had backgrounds in photography and then decided they wanted to be filmmakers.
Speaker B:And because my, my original field of study was comparative literature, which really looks at the way that all these cultural factors ladder into a body of work.
Speaker B:That's sort of how I've always liked to look at things.
Speaker B:And that's how I approach most of my interviews is sort of coming.
Speaker B:Coming from that perspective.
Speaker B:Although, you know, sometimes their interviews are a little more specific to just the film.
Speaker B:It really depends on what filmator I'm talking to and sort of how much information about them is actually available outside of like the press notes.
Speaker B:Especially if it's a brand new filmmaker, sometimes it's hard to find.
Speaker B:But you know, one that was fun.
Speaker B:A couple years ago I talked to this Italian director, Carolina Cavalli.
Speaker B:I think it's Cavalli.
Speaker B:She directed a film called Amanda.
Speaker B:But it turned out that I saw Toronto International Film Festival, I loved it, it was so funny.
Speaker B:And then it turned out she had co written another film I saw a couple months later called Fremont.
Speaker B:And then it turned out that like her and the filmmaker of Fremont, he edited her film and there was this whole world that they created.
Speaker B:And then it turned out that she studied comparative literature, that was her background.
Speaker B:And I was like, ah.
Speaker B:So it made a lot of sense on sort of why I was drawn to her film.
Speaker B:And she's got another film coming out, I think she just wrapped with Chris Pine.
Speaker B:I'm really excited to see what she does next.
Speaker B:But it's always fun to sort of try to look at the background of somebody and see how it might form who they become as an artist.
Speaker B:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker A: e time frame as it spans from: Speaker A:Depth of filmographies and yeah, maybe just the most obvious number of filmmakers to include.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So when it originally, when I had written the book proposal, it was going to be a hundred Profiles, like, you know, one or two paragraphs each sort of profiles.
Speaker B:And that was deemed unsellable, so by pretty much everybody.
Speaker B:So we landed with Rizzoldi because I think they really liked the.
Speaker B:The vibe I had described.
Speaker B:It was very specific about the kind of person I wanted to buy this book.
Speaker B:And I think it resonated with the kind of people who buy Rizzoli books are the kind of books that they put out, which is, you know, just really beautiful visual, like books.
Speaker B:And they said, you know, why don't we pivot to interviews, since that's what you're known for anyways.
Speaker B:I'm like that.
Speaker B:I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker B:So that's when it got whittled down.
Speaker B:Because originally it was 20 to 25 was the goal, because that seems doable.
Speaker B:But as the interviews were happening, and they were pretty long because it's career spanning, 20 seemed like a more doable goal.
Speaker B:It ended up being 19, because the last filmmaker I was supposed to have talked to was going to be Lynne Ramsey.
Speaker B:And she had said yes, and I was very excited.
Speaker B:And then she got inspiration and she went up to the Highlands to, like, work on a script and did not come back down before my deadline.
Speaker B:And she's unreachable when she goes up there.
Speaker B:So on one hand, it's not the film she's working on now.
Speaker B:It's, I think, the film she's going to make after the one that she's editing now.
Speaker B:So on one hand, it's nice to know, you know, she's got inspiration and isn't getting, like, too many movies.
Speaker B:But on the other hand, I was kind of bummed we ended up at 19.
Speaker B:But the choice of filmmakers, I really wanted to look at people who'd made three feature films, even if the feature films had been television films, like Julie Dash has one theatrically released feature film, but several television films, same with Shell Dunye.
Speaker B:But I wanted someone who had made at least three feature films so that they had a breadth to look at, that we could focus on women who had these robust filmographies to sort of show the different kinds of women who do have robust filmographies, partly because I think it's more interesting to talk about somebody who has multiple entry points into their work or an attempt to look at thematics that run through multiple films.
Speaker B:But also because I think there's still sort of a lot of misconceptions that women get to make one film and then they're done.
Speaker B:And you could be theoretically lump Julie Dash in that she made one feature film, so she's done.
Speaker B:But that's not the actual reality of her career.
Speaker B:She has a really rich almost 40 year career at this point.
Speaker B:It is 40 years, 45 year career of shorts before the feature television work, like lots of stuff.
Speaker B:And it should be.
Speaker B:She has a career that should be looked at in a, in a grand survey like that.
Speaker B:But because it's, I think, easier, I guess to sell.
Speaker B:Like she's a one and done filmmaker or talk about one and done filmmakers.
Speaker B:You know, you can really mark market that, I guess, but it's a lot harder to actually like look at various women, some of whom are Oscar winners, like, you know, Gene Campion, but then other women like Kat Shea, who has a really rich career that has been kind of neglected even when she came back and started making films again after 20 years.
Speaker B:Her films aren't really, still aren't really talked about in a way that I think her filmography deserves.
Speaker B:So it was really looking at women who had that robust career, women who I think have at least one film, if not their entire filmography that I think is important to just cinema and history of cinema in general.
Speaker B:Women whose careers have been sort of not highlighted as well as they could.
Speaker B:Like Sally Potter, I think most people have seen Orlando, but she has seen like 12 features or something, nine features, like a lot of features that are all interesting.
Speaker B:She's always doing like no one of her films is the same in terms of theme, format, whatever.
Speaker B:She's always really pushing like what can cinema be as an art?
Speaker B:And yet I think most people have only seen Orlando.
Speaker B:And that's, that's a disappointment.
Speaker B:And then I wanted to make sure that I highlighted some pioneering women like Martha Coolidge and Gillian Armstrong, and then some women who are sort of new but should be looked at as sort of major contributors to contemporary cinema, like Marielle Heller and Jesse Decker and Isabel Fannoval.
Speaker B:Those are filmmakers who are just starting and you know, they've been making films for about 10 years, but have already proven that they are major talents and should be discussed as such.
Speaker A:It's funny that you mentioned visuals or a book because in essence, when you're writing about film, you're bringing one of the most, if not the most visual art form.
Speaker A:Yeah, that usually starts on the page, back onto paper.
Speaker A:And I'm curious, through conversations with visionary directors like Jane Campion, the aforementioned Isabella Sandoval, Gina Prince, B, all by the way, who also write their own scripts.
Speaker A:What did you learn about writing?
Speaker B:Oh, I Think I learned for almost everyone who writes that it's difficult.
Speaker B:And I think this is something most writers know.
Speaker B:Like any writer who's like, it's so easy is either a lie for themselves or like a genius.
Speaker B:Because I think writing is, is really hard.
Speaker B:You're sitting with yourself.
Speaker B:You have to.
Speaker B:I think some, some people are able to really let go of themselves.
Speaker B:Like, I think that's why David lynch is so interesting.
Speaker B:Is he, he never, he, you know, he didn't self block himself.
Speaker B:He just.
Speaker B:If it came, it came, he wrote it.
Speaker B:But I think most writers, you get the idea and maybe you're afraid of it or you're afraid of yourself or you're, you want it to be.
Speaker B:You're too precious.
Speaker B:I think like the main thing I learned like from Gina is like biting nails for her.
Speaker B:But she just pushes herself because she's an athlete.
Speaker B:And so she has that drive to just like, you know, if you're an athlete, you suck at first, until you're.
Speaker B:Until it's like breathing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And that's how it is with her writing.
Speaker B:She writes and writes and writes and writes and writes and writes and writes so many drafts until it is perfect, like doing the lapse of writing.
Speaker B:And I don't, I don't know how I have not written a script that has been finished.
Speaker B:Like, I've written scripts and they're garbage, you know, like, I get to that point where I'm just like, oh, I don't know if I can keep working on this.
Speaker B:So I'm always really impressed by anybody who gets the script, like so goodly.
Speaker B:That's really what I learned.
Speaker B:And then some of them, like, Isabel's interesting you mentioned her because she talks about herself as an editor.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So she has it in her head.
Speaker B:Whole film is in her head.
Speaker B:But she has to write it in order to show that to her crew.
Speaker B:And then she has to, as a director, direct to get that image, like the crew on the same page, you know, literal page for the image so that she has the images she wants in the editing bay.
Speaker B:And that's fascinating.
Speaker B:That's a.
Speaker B:You know, she's someone I feel like could also have been a painter, if you're thinking of it that way.
Speaker B:I actually don't know if she paints, but I mean, same thing with like, Mary Lambert is a painter and she does the same thing.
Speaker B:She starts out thinking very visually and then sometimes she paints, sometimes she just goes straight to the filmmaking.
Speaker B:I think Jane Campion is someone who starts with those images.
Speaker B:That's why she storyboards both Kusama and Gina once they have the images, do do either lookbooks or storyboarding also.
Speaker B:And I love a lookbook.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm more of a, like a lookbook type person myself, where I don't know if I could describe what I want in a.
Speaker B:With writing, but I know I could, like, create a lookbook where I'm like, here's what I want this to look like, which is kind of the.
Speaker B:The vibe of.
Speaker B:Of the book.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I mean, I guess I was able to write what I wanted because it was text only when I turned that it in.
Speaker B:But when I got it to the designer, I gave her like, a kind of a lookbook style of, like, here's the vibe.
Speaker B:I'm going for this book.
Speaker B:And some of it was book inspirations, and some of it was just other things that I think had the vibe that I was hoping for.
Speaker B:But, I mean, that's a long way of saying writing is hard.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker B:I think everyone agrees it's hard.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:And as we just talked about it, Cinema Harvey showcases an impressive lineup of filmmakers with extraordinary bodies of work to date and hopefully like that in the future.
Speaker A:And yet, understandably so you.
Speaker A:Your spotlight on them serves dual purposes, celebrating their artistic achievements, while also obviously so addressing the historical lack of recognition they received.
Speaker A:Were there moments during your interviews with them where this tension between deserved recognition and historical oversight became apparent?
Speaker B:Yeah, I do think several of the women less about historical, you know, because I think most artists don't think of themselves in the same perspective that historians and critics do, where sort of we're looking at their art from above, they're in it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Especially when they're making it.
Speaker B:And I think several of these women, just being as they were in it, I think have felt that tension.
Speaker B:Have felt, you know, like.
Speaker B:Gillian Armstrong shares several stories about being the first woman to make a film in Australia and decades, and the way she was treated by the press, by Hollywood, when she came to Hollywood after it was a success by her, her peers who went to film school with her that were part of the Australian new wave.
Speaker B:Not that they treated her poorly, but that they didn't quite have a grasp that, like, if Philip Noyce made a bad movie, Philip Noyce made a bad movie, but if Jillian Armstrong made a bad, bad movie, all women made a bad movie.
Speaker B:Like, they didn't.
Speaker B:They didn't understand the sort of extra weight that she carried as.
Speaker B:As a.
Speaker B:Like she wasn't intending to be a pioneer, but she's unintentional pioneer.
Speaker B:Someone like, who was it?
Speaker B:Cat Shea.
Speaker B:You know, she worked on budget with Roger Corman for years, made was, had a reputation as being like this great economic filmmaker who made these artists films that are so artistically singular that she had a retrospective at MoMA like after, after her first, you know, five Roger Corman films and then spent the next 25, 30 years of her career like either being a replacement director like for Rage Carry 2, or just not even being considered for films for four decades.
Speaker B:So she's somebody who definitely, you know, doesn't understand what happened.
Speaker B:And I don't know, honestly, I don't understand what happened because you look at her early films and you're like, I don't know why she wouldn't keep getting hired.
Speaker B:Someone like Betty, not Betty Gordon.
Speaker B:Lizzie Gordon obviously tangled with Weinstein and has sort of.
Speaker B:That's pretty much the answer.
Speaker B:Why didn't Lizzie Gordon keep making movies?
Speaker B:Oh, you know, same reason a lot of people dropped out in the 90s.
Speaker B:She's also made.
Speaker B:She has a very specific feminist point of view of filmmaking that doesn't necessarily fit with like Hollywood style filmmaking.
Speaker B:And she's been trying to make this movie about an abortionist historical film for 30 years.
Speaker B:And she won't, you know, bud from what she wants the film to be, which I very much respect.
Speaker B:But she also can't get the money because it's too, I think, probably too honest of a movie.
Speaker B:It may be a little scary.
Speaker B:I don't know, someone like Julie Dash, like continued to work in television.
Speaker B:You know, she made all these television films, many of which had interference from, you know, the suits.
Speaker B:And she fought back over and over and over again.
Speaker B:And I think now is in the middle of completing her second like, quote, theatrical feature film.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But she, you know, she has that entire body of work that is, you know, for random things like hbo, Showtime, bet, you name it, she made it.
Speaker B:And you would think that in that system she wouldn't like her voice wouldn't be there.
Speaker B:But you watch those films and then they're very clearly Juby Dash films.
Speaker B:Regardless of also having like the aesthetics of the, of a BET movie, you know, I think that's amazing.
Speaker B:So I, you know, I think it's less knowing that historically have been sort of left out and more just saying like, I'm going to persevere regardless.
Speaker B:I think is the main, one of the main things that connects a lot of these, a lot of these women and then, you know, you have pioneers like Martha Coolidge, who was the first female president of the dga.
Speaker B:And she did a lot internally within the system to try to open doors for more women consistently throughout her entire career.
Speaker B:And I think that's something that also should be heralded.
Speaker B:Like she made these amazing films and she worked in every genre and television and like the episode, tv, movies, like, you name it.
Speaker B:She's done everything and took the time to open the doors and make the system slightly less hostile.
Speaker B:I'm not going to say she made it a friendlier place, but she made it slightly less hostile for the women who came after her, which I think is an equally important logistic achievement, as you know, on top of her artistic achievements.
Speaker A: the idea of writing a book in: Speaker A:To brief reviews at least.
Speaker A:I'm no shade at all.
Speaker A:I'm an avid user of letterboxd.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love, I love letterboxd.
Speaker A:And yet your book takes of course a different approach with in depth interviews with filmmakers who aren't in any shape or form creating for short form platforms like, I don't know, TikTok.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Although Miranda July is.
Speaker B:Miranda July absolutely creates.
Speaker B:Yeah, she creates.
Speaker B:I don't take time.
Speaker B:She creates art for, for YouTube, for Instagram.
Speaker B:She has a substack where she posts stuff.
Speaker B:I think Miranda in particular is somebody who will do art on any, any way that she can put herself into creating something visual.
Speaker B:She's, she's there because she's always an early adopter.
Speaker B:I'm surprised.
Speaker B:I don't think she actually has a TikTok, but I think she would do well on TikTok.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:But what I'd like to ask is as a first time author, as a critic, it's a big question, I know, but what's your perspective on attention spans in today's media landscape?
Speaker A:And yeah.
Speaker A:How, how did you approach or even think about catering to these different types of readers?
Speaker A:While something you've mentioned is you had a very specific type of reader in mind.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So obviously I think my PS Is a very specific type of reader.
Speaker B:My, my thought was I wanted to create a book that like film scholars, film cinephile people would love and want to buy, but also like random, random cool girls might buy it and accidentally have it on their paper table.
Speaker B:Like that was the goal.
Speaker B:Because I do think certain people may not be cinephiles, but they, most people like a film or two.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And a lot of people like to just seem.
Speaker B:Seem hip, you know.
Speaker B:And so I was hoping that I could like, get the hip people into films that I think are really unique and interesting.
Speaker B:So that was sort of the goal there with the aesthetics of the book.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And then, you know, there's like really in depth, I think interviews in here that.
Speaker B:Not what you expect for like a picture book, but younger people.
Speaker B:I know it's.
Speaker B:I feel like in my opinion, having been sort of a me nut for this point, 30, like five years, I feel like it's the nut kinds, the kinds that use Letterboxd, the kinds that go to film festivals have always kind of been a smaller group.
Speaker B:It's just that with the younger generation, it's more obvious because we're, because we're more connected, we're able to see how, how big other groups are.
Speaker B:That makes sense.
Speaker B:And so I think just like the nature of the interconnectivity of the Internet and global, you know, online communities, we can see now just how small the cinephile community is.
Speaker B:And I think, I don't think it's any smaller than it ever was.
Speaker B:What I do think is smaller is the average moviegoer.
Speaker B:So like the war quad kind of stuff that has dwindled.
Speaker B:But in terms of like people who are going to watch a Miranda July movie, people who are going to watch like an obscure Sally Potter, I think that number, those numbers are about equal.
Speaker B:And to your point about Letterbox, now that discoverability, like Letterbox has sort of come in and created a global platform that mirrors the discoverability of old school movie video rental stores.
Speaker B:So like, Letterbox is for like Gen Z.
Speaker B:I think what small mom and pop video stores were to Gen X and to some extent older millennials.
Speaker B: w, in the early two, that mid: Speaker B:Like that I think was a wasteland of like, difficult discoverability.
Speaker B:Although Tumblr kind of came in a little bit and was helpful with that.
Speaker B:I discovered a lot of films Tumblr.
Speaker B:But I think we're in a place now where the Discover Letterbox helps with discoverability in a way that is sort of unparalleled, but closest to the height of video store days, but also gives you a broader amount of people who are recommending because, you know, like a video store was really dependent on like the five guys that work there or whatever, right?
Speaker B:And you would go in and you would look at all these movies.
Speaker B:But if you, you know, didn't know what anything was about, you ask the video store guy.
Speaker B:He might not know.
Speaker B:They might not know.
Speaker B:My video store was all Almost all Men but Linda Box, you can start finding people who like similar films to you, and then your watch list ends up growing exponentially.
Speaker B:I think my watch list is like fifty, fifteen, hundred, maybe something.
Speaker B:I will never get to my whole watch list, but I will try.
Speaker B:So I would hope that a book like this that physically has a checkbox, so.
Speaker B:So people, if they want to check it on the book, the back of the book is like a checklist.
Speaker B:But you can recreate that or I've recreated it for you.
Speaker B:I made the whole.
Speaker B:Not with the television shows, but every movie or short film that's in the book I made on a letterbox list.
Speaker B:And we hope the people who are already using letterbox would use it as a guide, because the list is there.
Speaker A:I cloned it.
Speaker B:Oh, good.
Speaker B:You know, and then you get the background.
Speaker B:And so what I would hope the book would be.
Speaker B:Because you can read it, you know, start to finish if you wanted to, and it works that way.
Speaker B:Or you can read it independently.
Speaker B:When you're.
Speaker B:If you're doing, like, say you want to do a month of Marielle Heller movies, you know, like one a week or something, you could watch each movie and then read a bit about the movies or, you know, watch each movie, read the chapter.
Speaker B:You know, like, it could be sort of the reading material for college quarter class seminar thing.
Speaker B:You know, I would hope the goal, you know, the goal in my head was that there's multiple ways to use the book.
Speaker B:Or if you're doing like a term paper and you want to look up the, you know, the background for Isabel Lingua Franca, now you've got, you know, like, straight from her, stuff you can use in your term paper.
Speaker B:Hoping the book can be sort of whatever your relationship is to film.
Speaker B:Whether you're just a viewer who likes to discover or you're a scholar who wants direct information or casual viewer that's just hoping to slowly work your way into the deep end of being a cinephile.
Speaker B:A helpful book allows all of those different entry points.
Speaker A:Maria, thank you so, so much for your time.
Speaker A:This was.
Speaker B:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:This was a lot of fun.
Speaker A:And, yeah, I'm hoping for all the best for you and hopefully the script come to life one day.
Speaker B:Oh, you know what?
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I just have to.
Speaker B:I have to have that Gina Tenacity and just, like, keep working at it, and I just don't.
Speaker B:I've never been a great athlete.
Speaker B:And that is exactly why, you know.
