Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Katie Couric Media. Hi, everyone, welcome to
Speaker 1: Next Question. I'm Katie Kuric. I can already tell that
Speaker 1: this moment in my life I'll look back on and say,
Speaker 1: what the hell is I think? Greta Gerwig is a
Speaker 1: modern version of a Hollywood triple threat. With films like
Speaker 1: Frances Ha and twenties Century Women, She's proved to be
Speaker 1: a formidable actress, but since she's turned her focus to
Speaker 1: behind the camera, she's become one of the most successful
Speaker 1: writer directors in the business. Her last film, Lady Bird,
Speaker 1: was heralded by critics and audiences alike, including me. Gretta
Speaker 1: once again is exploring the complexities of female relationships and
Speaker 1: ambition with her new adaptations of Little Women, based on
Speaker 1: the Louisa may Alcock classic that so many of us
Speaker 1: remember from our Childhood's Little Women is a love letter
Speaker 1: to all of us who break the shackles of invention
Speaker 1: and write our own stories. So my next question is
Speaker 1: what is gretti Girlwig story? And ken Hollywood handle it?
Speaker 1: You realized you were a great storyteller because of a
Speaker 1: very funny incident in seventh grade. Oh god, yes, wow,
Speaker 1: you really we really did our research gradish, I know,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes, yes, Well I had an incident
Speaker 1: in seventh grade. It was a new school, uh in California,
Speaker 1: you know, Junior High is its own seventh and eighth grade.
Speaker 1: They're like, let's take you at your most awkward two years,
Speaker 1: put you in a group that's much bigger and scarier,
Speaker 1: and then just see how you do. Which I don't
Speaker 1: know why they do that. That's very Darwinian, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. I have this visual memory of walking
Speaker 1: in and knowing my classmates from elementary school, and I
Speaker 1: felt like everyone was just like, spend for yourself, we'll
Speaker 1: see you in high school. Like it was. It was
Speaker 1: definitely the Lord of the Flies. But I was taking
Speaker 1: a math test, a placement test, and I didn't know
Speaker 1: was I allowed to get up? Was I allowed to
Speaker 1: say I had to go the bathroom? And so I
Speaker 1: didn't and I was anyway anyway, I ended up peeing
Speaker 1: my pants during the math test. But actually the true
Speaker 1: thing that happened, which I was the girl next to
Speaker 1: me saw it happen, and she took off her sweatshirt
Speaker 1: and gave it to me, and she was like put
Speaker 1: this around her, raised and go run to the nurse's office,
Speaker 1: like she took care of me. And I loved that girl,
Speaker 1: I know. But isn't it interesting that act of kindness
Speaker 1: but entirely new lends on what might have been a
Speaker 1: soul crushing experience for you? Right yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't my favorite experience. I'm not saying it was, but
Speaker 1: it was. That's the thing I remember, and in in
Speaker 1: so many ways, is that someone just being kind And honestly,
Speaker 1: kids who are thirteen and fourteen, they're not necessarily kind
Speaker 1: and looking out for each other. And I thought that
Speaker 1: that was a moment that UM defined in some ways
Speaker 1: my worldview of people. Kind of you can you can
Speaker 1: be paying your pants in a math test and someone
Speaker 1: will help you. Someone will give you their sweatshirt, like
Speaker 1: I got you. Um. And in fact, you wrote a
Speaker 1: piece of about it. You wrote a paper about it
Speaker 1: a year later, right, well, actually the next year in
Speaker 1: eighth grade, I wrote this like UM kind of essay,
Speaker 1: like this humor essay. It was like a sort of
Speaker 1: piece of creative writing, and and the teacher liked it,
Speaker 1: so she put it up on the bulletin board. Um,
Speaker 1: and then everyone read it, and then they anyone who
Speaker 1: didn't know that this had happened, was all of a
Speaker 1: sudden like I thought that was just a rumor that
Speaker 1: you really did that, And I was like, no, I was,
Speaker 1: but I had a sense that it was funny anyway.
Speaker 1: I you it was funny. I knew it was. It
Speaker 1: was like a humiliation that was actually quite funny. You're
Speaker 1: pretty brave to put yourself out there because a lot
Speaker 1: of people would never want to think about that incident again,
Speaker 1: and yet you write a paper. So the people, as
Speaker 1: you said, who didn't know all now I know they
Speaker 1: all knew. No, I think, Um, I think that's the
Speaker 1: way I've found to deal with most things is to
Speaker 1: make it into art somehow, whether it's you know, in
Speaker 1: the eighth grade writing a little humor essay or now
Speaker 1: I think I am always turning the thing that happens
Speaker 1: into um into story, into into a movie, into a character,
Speaker 1: because it's it's my coping mechanism, but also into an
Speaker 1: almost universal experience. Right you You almost want to, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say necessarily normalize something like that, but you want
Speaker 1: to expose it because it shows everyone how vulnerable we
Speaker 1: all are. I mean, we all could have been that
Speaker 1: seventh grader MP during the math test, right, it is yes,
Speaker 1: And I think it is that kind of I think
Speaker 1: it's funny because sometimes you can feel like, am I
Speaker 1: screaming into a void? Does anyone hear this? And that
Speaker 1: she says, yeah, everyone knows. Everyone knows, And I think
Speaker 1: that that's um when I go to the movies, when
Speaker 1: I go to theater, when I read a book. It's
Speaker 1: amazing to me still that art is the thing that
Speaker 1: can reach out and uh and touch you. But in
Speaker 1: this way that you say, or I always say to myself,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, somebody knows. They know, like
Speaker 1: like some part of yourself you thought was wrong or
Speaker 1: weird or just embarrassing or anything, and then you see
Speaker 1: it reflected back at you and you thought it's there.
Speaker 1: It's there in the world, and someone else knows about
Speaker 1: this and you recognize yourself and the story. And that's
Speaker 1: very much the case I think GETA when it comes
Speaker 1: to Ladybird. In some ways, you grew up in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: not unlike Ladybird. Were you a big movie person growing up?
Speaker 1: Do you remember seeing movies and thinking, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: one day. You know, actually, for me it was theater.
Speaker 1: It wasn't movies. I didn't really movies seemed not they
Speaker 1: weren't my medium. I didn't. I didn't really understand how
Speaker 1: they were made. Um. They felt like they were handed
Speaker 1: down from God's They didn't seem like they had been
Speaker 1: made by people. So UM. I loved theater because you
Speaker 1: could see the people who made it right in front
Speaker 1: of you, and you know, you could read. You know,
Speaker 1: my favorite playwright when I was in high school was
Speaker 1: Tom Stoppard, and I love Tom Stoppard plays. And I
Speaker 1: could get one of my friends together and we could
Speaker 1: memorize it all and put it on like which we did,
Speaker 1: which was extremely weird because no one was asking for
Speaker 1: it and we were doing Rosencrants and Guildenstern are Dead.
Speaker 1: But the all female version that was an unsanctioned, like
Speaker 1: class productive, like no, what he said, why don't you
Speaker 1: go do this? Um? But it felt like theater was
Speaker 1: something I could just make. I didn't need that much
Speaker 1: to make it. UM. And film I didn't. I did,
Speaker 1: We didn't watch TV. I didn't go to the movies
Speaker 1: that much. UM, and it was not something I really
Speaker 1: related to until college. And then I went to college
Speaker 1: in New York. And because I went to college here,
Speaker 1: I started going to Film Forum Downtown, which had a
Speaker 1: great repertory program of older movies and new Arthouse movies, UM,
Speaker 1: the Museum of Moving Image, UM Anthology, Film Archives, the
Speaker 1: r I P. Lincoln Lincoln Center Theater. The best UM was,
Speaker 1: which was New Arthouse movies, and and I slowly started
Speaker 1: becoming a cinephile, but it was late relatively. It was
Speaker 1: you know, when I was eighteen or nineteen. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't when I was a kid. And this was
Speaker 1: when you were a Barnard majoring in philosophy and English.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like movies, well, movies on the side, definitely.
Speaker 1: I know. I took film studies classes there, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have a film because it was it's not a
Speaker 1: b f A, so it wasn't a film practice. It
Speaker 1: was like it was a film series, film UM, film history. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you were. You wanted to get your m
Speaker 1: f A y Yale. They rejected. Okay, can I just
Speaker 1: say I can relate to that. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: to Smith College, where my two older sisters went by
Speaker 1: Beta cap of the whole nine yards Smith Loved sisters
Speaker 1: not even waitlisted. Didn't even get the waitlisted, not even waitlisted.
Speaker 1: I got one of those envelopes back in the day.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. I mean, they must have really not wanted. Now,
Speaker 1: when I run into the president of Smith, you know what,
Speaker 1: I say, big mistake, just like Julia Robertson exactly, big digue, huge. No,
Speaker 1: that's that makes me so happy that you didn't get
Speaker 1: into Smith. Also because your sisters went it, that makes
Speaker 1: it so much worse. You must have fe like there's
Speaker 1: really something wrong with me. Oh yes, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a whole other podcast. That's such a wonderful thing to know.
Speaker 1: I think, I think claiming moments of disappointment and not
Speaker 1: working out it's so important because I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to look and say, well that
Speaker 1: she always knew, she always had all the things, everybody thought,
Speaker 1: she was great and smart, and she just sailed her
Speaker 1: way through life, and you're like, no, let's face it,
Speaker 1: it's a series of disappointments. Yeah. I mean, even when
Speaker 1: things are going well, it's a it's a given A take.
Speaker 1: Was it crushing for you when you didn't get into Yale,
Speaker 1: or were you just like they don't deserve me? It
Speaker 1: was all through. I was Yale, Juilliard, and n YU
Speaker 1: for playwriting, and I got rejected from all three. Um so,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly, I think that the thought crosses your mind,
Speaker 1: perhaps I should not do this anymore, like the world
Speaker 1: seems to be telling me I'm not very good at this.
Speaker 1: But I I just I just I couldn't. I loved
Speaker 1: it too much, I thought, you know, um, even if
Speaker 1: even if I'm terrible at this, I want to do
Speaker 1: it because I love it so much. And you started
Speaker 1: doing it after Burnett. I know, you got into the
Speaker 1: indie world of filmmaking something called mumble core. One of
Speaker 1: your earliest films that falls into that category, I think
Speaker 1: is Hannah Takes the Stairs, which also start Mark Duplas.
Speaker 1: You know. I didn't tell you this today yet, but
Speaker 1: you look really beautiful on that mask. Yeah, you really,
Speaker 1: just you look so gorgeous. Thank you? Do you look
Speaker 1: beautiful in your mask. I didn't really know much about
Speaker 1: mumble core until I was preparing for this interview. It
Speaker 1: is a term that has been used to describe the
Speaker 1: set of films. But it was never a thing where
Speaker 1: we said we're making mumblecore movies and here's what they are.
Speaker 1: It's that there were just all these different filmmakers at
Speaker 1: this particular moment kind of between two thousand and five
Speaker 1: and two thousand and eight ish where they started making
Speaker 1: movies for not a lot of money with not professional actors,
Speaker 1: where it was about a feeling of people behaving more,
Speaker 1: how people behave less like you know, waking up with um,
Speaker 1: you know, perfectly lit makeup and all this stuff. It
Speaker 1: was the feeling of like, this is not how people
Speaker 1: live like about films. It was like that's not I
Speaker 1: don't recognize people here. It was also heavily relied on
Speaker 1: not all of them because there's a kind of a
Speaker 1: catch all phrase. But there's a lot of improvisation that
Speaker 1: went on which was very useful. Um and and and
Speaker 1: the sort of all hands on debt quality was very
Speaker 1: full because I learned how to make movies by making movies.
Speaker 1: And there was no boom operator. I held the boom,
Speaker 1: there was no editor. We all sat around it and
Speaker 1: edited it at night. It was this very collaborative process,
Speaker 1: and I think I learned quickly how movies work what
Speaker 1: is interesting on camera, and we weren't making them as
Speaker 1: calling cards to another movie. That was the movie. We
Speaker 1: were taking it seriously and it ended up being like
Speaker 1: my graduate school. Was there anyone in particular he felt
Speaker 1: like you really learned from There's a filmmaker. We still
Speaker 1: love his work. Um Andrew Buljoski, who I think last
Speaker 1: year he made this wonderful film Support the Girls, UM,
Speaker 1: which if you haven't seen it, go see it. It's great.
Speaker 1: And he even though it seemed like his dialog was improvised,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It was very tightly scripted and very precise.
Speaker 1: And I really loved the way he shot films and
Speaker 1: thought about films, and UM, I looked up to him
Speaker 1: a great deal, and um he's continued to make great movies.
Speaker 1: But it was that kind of um, very precise cinematic
Speaker 1: writing that sounds like conversation, which is then became the
Speaker 1: thing I was chasing. So I moved away entirely from
Speaker 1: improvisation because I started trying to get that sense of
Speaker 1: the language mattering, UM, which was really in line with
Speaker 1: what I was interested in as a play, right, which
Speaker 1: is about writing, but also I imagine about cadence. You know,
Speaker 1: the way people talk over each other, the way they interrupt,
Speaker 1: the way that natural conversation occurs. It is very um
Speaker 1: appealing to me, natural sounding conversation that's been sculpted. It's
Speaker 1: it's my preference. It's my favorite. It's my favorite one.
Speaker 1: It it's seems like it's not written, and people say, oh,
Speaker 1: it was it improvised? No, of course not. It's every
Speaker 1: word I like it said exactly how I wrote it.
Speaker 1: So you moved Greta from acting initially to to writing
Speaker 1: and directing. I'm curious why why you decided you wanted
Speaker 1: to be more behind the scenes. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: my hands on it however I could in terms of uh,
Speaker 1: theater and film and um. I loved acting because that
Speaker 1: was the way I could interact with it. But I
Speaker 1: didn't really realize I could write. It was a professor
Speaker 1: who said because I kept writing monologues and stuff for
Speaker 1: other people, and they're like, do you want to take
Speaker 1: a playwriting class? And I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: other people do that, and like, you keep doing it,
Speaker 1: so maybe you'd like to do this. And this was
Speaker 1: in college. I was in college, but I had written,
Speaker 1: I had been writing the whole time. When I was
Speaker 1: in high school. Whenever there was a like an assembly
Speaker 1: and they needed a sketch, I would always write the sketches.
Speaker 1: That always. But I never thought of myself as a
Speaker 1: writer because, to be totally honest, I thought it was
Speaker 1: I thought someone who was much smarter than me, and
Speaker 1: probably a man would be would be doing the writing.
Speaker 1: I thought it was. I didn't know any female playwrights.
Speaker 1: I didn't know any female writer directors. I just didn't
Speaker 1: And and then I I got educated about them, but
Speaker 1: it was something that had not occurred to me on
Speaker 1: some deep level even though I was doing it, and
Speaker 1: I had to be very literally told, this is an
Speaker 1: option for you. Um. And then I started doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was writing, I was producing, I was directing, but
Speaker 1: I was also UM. I was a stage manager, I
Speaker 1: worked in lights and sound. I did a lot of
Speaker 1: different things because I wanted to be part of the
Speaker 1: world so much, and I figured if I could do
Speaker 1: lots of things, they'd have to let me in somewhere.
Speaker 1: And that was really smart of you, So, you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: because you became an apprentice and all these different um,
Speaker 1: you know, disciplines and and then of course you learned
Speaker 1: how to be the conductor because you understood what everybody
Speaker 1: did and probably honestly respected it too. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: definitely how I hope I took all that experience, because
Speaker 1: filmmaking is the most collaborative art form, so getting to
Speaker 1: operate in all the different areas of constructing a movie
Speaker 1: is incredibly useful. And I'm I'm dead in the water
Speaker 1: without the people around me, And every single person who's
Speaker 1: working on a film is to me, they are the
Speaker 1: filmmaker for the thing that they're doing. You tell the
Speaker 1: story in so many ways, and I need every single
Speaker 1: person on set to to tell it with me otherwise
Speaker 1: I guess what am I doing. Of course, Lady Bird,
Speaker 1: which your big, big breakthrough, and it so much about relationships.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you just say pick up your face? You're
Speaker 1: so infurious not yelling? Oh it's perfect? What was it
Speaker 1: about that film that made it resonate so much? Everyone?
Speaker 1: Everyone has a family, everybody understands, everybody comes from somewhere.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows what it is to love and what it
Speaker 1: is to lose. Everyone there's no pre what requisites for
Speaker 1: understanding a story, and I think that with lady bird.
Speaker 1: It's that thing of you. You don't come from a
Speaker 1: generalized place. You come from a specific place. And my
Speaker 1: specific place that I could speak to was Sacramento. But
Speaker 1: I think that that connects. I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: more specific you get, the more universal it can be
Speaker 1: because it connects back to everyone. And then you think
Speaker 1: of the specific house you grew up in and what
Speaker 1: your specific relationship with all those people were, and and
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I had lots of men tell me
Speaker 1: they like, I know it's about a teenage girl, but
Speaker 1: I am. I feel like I'm ladybird. I was like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, you're six year old man, and I totally
Speaker 1: support you in that. I think that that's right, your ladybird.
Speaker 1: I loved her relationship with her mom. Course, I worship
Speaker 1: luring that calf and I mean, she was just so
Speaker 1: phenomenal in it. Um. And I think again, that sort
Speaker 1: of goes back to your mumble core days. Don't you
Speaker 1: think you were heavily influenced by the reality of their relationship.
Speaker 1: People are like, yeah, I remember going through clothes with
Speaker 1: my mom. I mean, taking these very typical scenes and
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh, yeah, I did that with my mom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom drove me crazy about this. I remember saying
Speaker 1: this at the time. If you stop any woman on
Speaker 1: the street and ask how's your relationship with your mom,
Speaker 1: It's never going to be a one word answer. It's
Speaker 1: never gonna be like good, like that's just not people
Speaker 1: don't that's not true. And I felt like the whole
Speaker 1: time when we were making it, I kept saying, I
Speaker 1: can't believe no one's made this yet, like this seems like,
Speaker 1: so why wouldn't you make this movie? Speaking of that
Speaker 1: sitting there, how did your parents feel about that movie?
Speaker 1: And how is your relationship with your mom? How long
Speaker 1: do you have? No, I'm getting they sound super normal
Speaker 1: by the way, wonderful. Yes, and then it sounds like
Speaker 1: they're they're um that you might be sort of the
Speaker 1: quirky one in the group. Am I right? Yes? I am.
Speaker 1: I mean what I will say, and this is not
Speaker 1: there really good people. They're good people, and and they're
Speaker 1: good in in a in a sense that I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think in some ways actually with with
Speaker 1: Little Women, I felt like I was able to tap
Speaker 1: into that as well. It feel very personal to me
Speaker 1: in that way. But there, um, they have a sense
Speaker 1: of civic responsibility, moral responsibility, responsibility to their city and
Speaker 1: their family and their community. And it's a very like
Speaker 1: It reminds me when I go back home that you
Speaker 1: can be a good citizen and a good person and
Speaker 1: you can take care of each other. And I think that,
Speaker 1: um uh, you know every and also everyone who meets
Speaker 1: my mom is like your mom is wonderful. OK. I know,
Speaker 1: I know are lucky. Yes, I am very lucky. Coming up,
Speaker 1: Gretta talks about her latest movie, Little Women, and how
Speaker 1: she made the Louisa may Alcock classic her own. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Little Women. You've assembled a dream team in
Speaker 1: this latest movie. You have Sir Sha Ronan, who I've
Speaker 1: got such a girl crush on, Emma Watson, Laura Dern
Speaker 1: also a girl crush on Meryl Street, Eliza Scamblin, and
Speaker 1: Florence Pugh who are the newer, newer, young, obviously incredibly
Speaker 1: talented actors. Um. Before we talk about the film, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the book. Were you a big fan of
Speaker 1: the book growing up? Yes? I was that the book
Speaker 1: was It was one of my favorite books. I read
Speaker 1: it over and over and over. I mean I was
Speaker 1: a rereader as a child. I think maybe it's something
Speaker 1: children do that the adults stopped doing, of watching the
Speaker 1: same movie as or reading the same books over and
Speaker 1: over again, like it becomes part of you somehow. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also sort of comforting. It's very comforting, and it's
Speaker 1: that ritualistic, uh revisiting of characters. It's another reason why
Speaker 1: like the structures of I'm a huge Law and Order fan,
Speaker 1: but like, I know, it's my favorite, but there's a
Speaker 1: deep relaxation in me that occurs because I know the
Speaker 1: beats of the show. And I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why people love it is because Okay, well
Speaker 1: it's only minute twenties, so that's not the guy. We're
Speaker 1: gonna wait to get him till minute forty five. I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know you just no, Um, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to pay do a little matchmaking between you and Marishka.
Speaker 1: I love her, I mean I love her, do you know? Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't want to meet her because I love her
Speaker 1: so much. No, you're gonna love her in person. Most comforting,
Speaker 1: you know, like in meditation when they say, like go
Speaker 1: think of a beach or something that makes you feel safe,
Speaker 1: And I was thinking of Mashka his face because I
Speaker 1: feel like she's so compassionate and it really just comes
Speaker 1: through on the screen. I feel like she's so wonderful
Speaker 1: and I don't know anything about her really in her life,
Speaker 1: but I think that the person she is shines through,
Speaker 1: like she makes you feel so unjudged. I'm gonna send
Speaker 1: I'm going to send that to her and get her reaction.
Speaker 1: What a nice compliment, I love. I mean, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: It's so funny, it's wonderful. All this is the sixth,
Speaker 1: sixth film adaptation of Little Women, so I think it's
Speaker 1: a seventh, is it? Yeah? Yeah, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: fire Mirace and two animes shows to animal and a
Speaker 1: musical and an opera. Oh my god, all right, did
Speaker 1: you watch all the movies, Bretta? No? You know what
Speaker 1: I did was I have have seen all the movies
Speaker 1: at different points. I didn't look at any of the
Speaker 1: movies because I wanted it because with Little Women, obviously
Speaker 1: the books put around for a hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 1: But I feel that the iconography of Little Women, the
Speaker 1: kind of collective memory of what it is is that
Speaker 1: it's the error text. It's the text writ large and
Speaker 1: I think as a filmmaker, when I wanted to do
Speaker 1: was to take that collective memory that we have of
Speaker 1: what Little Women is. Whether it's you know, Marmie and
Speaker 1: the girls sitting around by the fire, or Amy burning
Speaker 1: the book or the dance. You know, there's all these
Speaker 1: things that we have in our minds of what Little
Speaker 1: Women is. That I felt like I could take that
Speaker 1: and kind of create something that was to be honest,
Speaker 1: like a cute cubist piece of out it because I
Speaker 1: wanted to look at it from another side, which is
Speaker 1: I started the movie when they're adults, and then they
Speaker 1: go back to childhood as a kind of a yearning
Speaker 1: and uh and uh, this snow globe housy on days
Speaker 1: of something that's gone and they can't recapture. I want
Speaker 1: to be an artist in Rome and be the best
Speaker 1: painter in the worlds. What do you want to isn't
Speaker 1: it Joey to be a famous right? Yes? It sounds
Speaker 1: so crass when she says, my girls have a way
Speaker 1: of getting into mischief. You know you, in fact, do
Speaker 1: I think to such an interesting spin on on Little Women? Um?
Speaker 1: And I think you intertwine. Louisa Mett May Alcott's journal
Speaker 1: entries and letters, so it's almost a mash up between
Speaker 1: her life story and the story that she wrote in
Speaker 1: the book. So tell us a little bit about that process,
Speaker 1: and also, Greta, how you sort of did it in
Speaker 1: a very different way in terms of the time framed. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: Louise May Alcott was as I researched her, because I
Speaker 1: didn't really know anything about her when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: I loved Joe March, but I didn't know who Louise
Speaker 1: May Alcott was. And when I was researching Louisa, I
Speaker 1: found that she she is the heroine behind the heroine,
Speaker 1: like she is the woman that I had unconsciously been
Speaker 1: drawn to. And um of the many extraordinary things about
Speaker 1: her was that, you know, she never got married, she
Speaker 1: never had children, and she kept the copyright of her book,
Speaker 1: which I thought, that's incredible that a woman in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century knew to keep the copyright to her book.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I have to put this
Speaker 1: in the movie. And then I so I started to
Speaker 1: I started to weave who Louise may Alcott was into
Speaker 1: who Joe is, and I start in her you know,
Speaker 1: mid twenties, her adulthood. And I did that with time
Speaker 1: because I wanted to introduce this idea of fiction and
Speaker 1: writing and authorships, so that the past isn't just the past,
Speaker 1: it's also fiction. It's also the thing that you wrote
Speaker 1: out of your life. And um, I think as a
Speaker 1: writer myself, that distance between what happened versus what did
Speaker 1: you write is something that's inherently emotional to me. And
Speaker 1: I put all kinds of details about who Louisa was
Speaker 1: in the movie, things like she was ambidextrous. She taught
Speaker 1: herself how to write with her left hand because I
Speaker 1: noticed that her hand would cramp, her hand would cramp
Speaker 1: her I noticed that in the film because you didn't
Speaker 1: actually talk about it. I just noticed it. I thought
Speaker 1: it was cinematic and kind of beautiful to have her
Speaker 1: right with both hands, and that that was that was Louisa.
Speaker 1: Because the Outcot family unlike the March family. The March
Speaker 1: family are like the genteel poor. They were like the
Speaker 1: Bennetts or something from Pride and Prejudice. The Alcoots were
Speaker 1: wretchedly poor. They moved something like thirty times in four
Speaker 1: years because I could never pay the rent. And Louisa
Speaker 1: and her sisters went out to work when they were teenagers,
Speaker 1: and she worked, she sewed, and so she would sew
Speaker 1: all day and then she would come home and she'd
Speaker 1: write her stories at night, which she had been composing
Speaker 1: in her head to sell for not a lot of
Speaker 1: money because it was for penny dreadful papers. And she
Speaker 1: would write with her right hand and then it would
Speaker 1: cramp and bleed, and she taught herself how to write
Speaker 1: with her left hand so she could keep writing. And
Speaker 1: that kind of physical act of what it means to
Speaker 1: write and to produce something. Um, it just felt heroic
Speaker 1: to me that that that determination to keep to keep
Speaker 1: putting it on paper. And there were other ways that
Speaker 1: you intertwined the two stories, right, and you know, was it?
Speaker 1: Is it commonly believed that Louisa that Joe was Louisa,
Speaker 1: Louisa was. Yes, that's the feeling. Also, Louisa and Joe
Speaker 1: both have three sisters. Um, they both have I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like everyone knows this, but they
Speaker 1: both have loss in their life of one you know,
Speaker 1: specific person and um, but so it's easy to look
Speaker 1: at it and say, oh, I see that's a that's
Speaker 1: that's Louisa. But the differences are emotional and striking, and
Speaker 1: that's why I started the film with the quote, Um,
Speaker 1: I've had lots of troubles, so I write Jolly Tails
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, that just kills me. You know
Speaker 1: so much. First story, Greta is about dealing with men
Speaker 1: in charge, men controlling her art, and um, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been surprised, but against the backdrop of the modern woman,
Speaker 1: it is still It was still jarring for me to
Speaker 1: watch women with so much spirit and so little agency. Yes,
Speaker 1: I believe we have some power over who we love.
Speaker 1: It isn't something that just happened to a person. I
Speaker 1: think the poets might disagree. Well, I'm not a poet.
Speaker 1: I'm just a woman. And as a woman, there's no
Speaker 1: way for me to make my own money, not enough
Speaker 1: to earn a living or to support my family. And
Speaker 1: if I had my own money, which I don't, that
Speaker 1: money would belong to my husband the moment we got married,
Speaker 1: and if we had children, they would be his, not mine.
Speaker 1: They would be his property. So don't sit there and
Speaker 1: tell me that marriage isn't an economic proposition, because it is.
Speaker 1: Was that something that you also as a modern American
Speaker 1: woman in a position of power now that you grappled
Speaker 1: with a vent sort of how how limited their options were.
Speaker 1: Where I am, where we are. What's possible now is
Speaker 1: is possible because of all these generations of women who
Speaker 1: have worked so hard to get to where we are.
Speaker 1: And I think, to me, I feel, I feel this
Speaker 1: deep sense of you could draw a straight line from
Speaker 1: Louisa Mayl called to me, and what I'm able to
Speaker 1: do is is indebted to what she did because she
Speaker 1: wrote about the lives of girls and women and that
Speaker 1: people read it and loved it, and it prepared, It
Speaker 1: stayed in print over a hundred and fifty years. It
Speaker 1: was translated into fifty two languages. It became important because
Speaker 1: there was an audience for which nobody recognized, which was
Speaker 1: girls and women. And now what I think, and I
Speaker 1: have them have this discussion in the film is um
Speaker 1: I would love those to not be uh works that
Speaker 1: have asterix next to them. I would love them not
Speaker 1: to be you know, women's literature, women's stories, or women's
Speaker 1: chick flicks. I don't think that they should be, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that they are. I think that they're
Speaker 1: human stories. And something Meryl Streep said to me. She said,
Speaker 1: we have lots of practice as women imagining ourselves in
Speaker 1: male narratives. We've done it our whole lives because we're
Speaker 1: always reading books and going into films and looking at
Speaker 1: men and projecting ourselves into their stories. And I actually
Speaker 1: think that they have huge capacities to do the same.
Speaker 1: Men have a capacity to go to films or read
Speaker 1: novels and to feel themselves within a female character like
Speaker 1: that man said, I'm lady bird, right, Bird, that's right.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's a fear that maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know where it comes from, but
Speaker 1: maybe there's a fear that it diminishes their masculinity somehow.
Speaker 1: But I only think it makes the expression of who
Speaker 1: you are deeper if you can see yourself as as
Speaker 1: as multiple, as many as not just um in your
Speaker 1: narrow category. And so I think for me it's there's
Speaker 1: many possibilities now, But still it feels like we say
Speaker 1: they're niche. And also because i'm you know, movies are
Speaker 1: you make them and you hope people will go see them, um,
Speaker 1: and they're there. You need a lot of people, you
Speaker 1: need money, they're expensive, so you do have these discussions
Speaker 1: about and who's the audience, And um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: very classic thing in Hollywood, that's say, girls will go
Speaker 1: to boys movies and boys will not go to girls movies.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's changing, Grata? I think it is changing,
Speaker 1: and I think it's changing so quickly that we haven't
Speaker 1: registered the change yet. And um, but I think it's
Speaker 1: it's transforming right now. It's called empathy, after all. That's
Speaker 1: I always say that movies are emphathy machines. That's what
Speaker 1: they do, and so that that is, that is the thing.
Speaker 1: And I found myself in the movie theater many times
Speaker 1: feeling like I've lived through something that I haven't because
Speaker 1: of the way the movie makes me feel, and places
Speaker 1: and people and experiences that just connect back to to
Speaker 1: who you are. I do think you imbue a lot
Speaker 1: of modern uh sensibilities into this movie. For example, I
Speaker 1: think the exploration of Joe's character is much otter and
Speaker 1: more profound, given how we're reevaluating not only gender roles,
Speaker 1: but gender identity, sexual orientation. And it seems to me
Speaker 1: that perhaps Louisa may Alcott today, if she were here today,
Speaker 1: might might not be a straight woman. Yeah, well, there's
Speaker 1: actually really interesting um right writing that she did I
Speaker 1: mean to start with Joe, she says, I mean, she
Speaker 1: really does say the whole book. She wants to be
Speaker 1: a boy, she says, the whole time. And it's hard
Speaker 1: to look at that with the century lens, because the
Speaker 1: truth is Joe wanting to be a boy. It can
Speaker 1: be interpreted in lots of ways. One way is just well,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't she want to be a boy? They were
Speaker 1: they got to do options. She had none, and so
Speaker 1: you don't always want to ascribe some category that she
Speaker 1: didn't have. But I do, definitely I think that there
Speaker 1: there was something going on. I mean the Louisa has
Speaker 1: Um some of the letters she wrote this um she wrote,
Speaker 1: I sometimes I believe I'm a man in a woman's body,
Speaker 1: for I've fallen in love in love with a dozen
Speaker 1: pretty girls, and I've never once felt that way from him.
Speaker 1: Do you think, oh my god, we might have something
Speaker 1: for you. But but it's you know, it's also difficult. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to become didactic, and I didn't want
Speaker 1: to give her something. I didn't want to give it.
Speaker 1: I did again. I didn't want to assign her something
Speaker 1: or label her as something but I did want to
Speaker 1: allow the mess of just the raw feeling to come through.
Speaker 1: Talk about raw feelings. You also gave her permission to
Speaker 1: be angry. I get in a passion, I get so savage,
Speaker 1: I could hurt anyone and I'd enjoyed it. You remind
Speaker 1: me of my myself. But you are never angry. I'm
Speaker 1: angry nearly every day of my life. One of the
Speaker 1: lines that stood out to me, and I thought it
Speaker 1: has this always been in the book was um Marmy's
Speaker 1: saying to Joe, I'm angry almost every single day of
Speaker 1: my life, which I said, That's not what I think
Speaker 1: of when I think of Marmy, but it's it's right there,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know it's actually talking about it.
Speaker 1: I I I get uncomfortable talking about anger, UM or
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, feeling upset about things, because because
Speaker 1: I still I grew up in this culture. I know
Speaker 1: you don't want to be the angry the angry girl UM.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think I have been given a
Speaker 1: lot more permission to be so by by people who
Speaker 1: are writing and thinking and doing. And I think UM,
Speaker 1: for me, one of the the beautiful things about UM
Speaker 1: writing fiction and UM and and having characters say things.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I can allow my characters to go farther
Speaker 1: than I feel comfortable going because I can, I can
Speaker 1: give them all of my thoughts and feelings and and
Speaker 1: let them let them let it rip. Yeah, what makes
Speaker 1: you angry right now? Oh? Are you? Are you fitel?
Speaker 1: What's your sort of dominant emotion emotional state right now?
Speaker 1: My dominant emotional well, actually, my dominant emotional state right
Speaker 1: now is is um, some sort of like frantic euphoria
Speaker 1: of because I have a baby and also so it's yeah,
Speaker 1: but so so it's kind of like you know, a
Speaker 1: tiny baby head where you're like babies and then you're
Speaker 1: running around and doing all this stuff. So they're so
Speaker 1: pure and everything else is so dirty. Well it's that babies.
Speaker 1: Babies are one different thing, um, which is which is nice.
Speaker 1: But yes, I feel I feel like, um, I can
Speaker 1: already tell that this this moment in my life I'll
Speaker 1: look back on and say, what the hell was I thinking?
Speaker 1: How did how did any of that come to that?
Speaker 1: I feel like everything in my life is half done
Speaker 1: and I'm always eating something as I'm running to another thing. So, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know, for tiredness when we
Speaker 1: come back, our women finally getting the recognition they deserve
Speaker 1: or not. And in the wake of Me Too and
Speaker 1: Time's Up, has Hollywood really changed? You talked about you
Speaker 1: hope that boys will want to see movies about girls,
Speaker 1: but what about the structure of the systematic uh, sort
Speaker 1: of misogyny that seems to be pervasive and almost every
Speaker 1: area of American culture, but particularly Hollywood. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like that is starting to change? You know, when Frances
Speaker 1: McDormand talked about inclusion writers and there has been this
Speaker 1: reckoning with Me Too and Times Up? But but do
Speaker 1: you I mean you're on the inside, Gretta, you know,
Speaker 1: is there a reason to hope? Or yes? There's yes,
Speaker 1: it was first of all, this year was the Annenberg
Speaker 1: study that they do every year came out and and
Speaker 1: it's it's this year in terms of the top grossing films.
Speaker 1: It's it's better. I mean, it's not there, it's not
Speaker 1: there women UM, women of color. Uh. Still there's a
Speaker 1: long way to go in terms of UM authorship and
Speaker 1: ownership and a diversity of storytellers. But it's it is
Speaker 1: getting better. And I do think studios are pushing themselves
Speaker 1: and to to hire to hire women, to hire different
Speaker 1: kinds of stories, tillers, to to put women in charge
Speaker 1: of projects. I actually, I actually think this is changing substantively,
Speaker 1: which is what is so hopeful. And then I also
Speaker 1: think it's changing in terms of you know, the women
Speaker 1: who drove Times up. What was so meaningful about that
Speaker 1: was it was this this coming together and this organizing
Speaker 1: and this funding to help other women in all industries,
Speaker 1: and how and how that mobilized into something that that
Speaker 1: kind of community, I think is what's um what's so
Speaker 1: powerful and what is continuing UM And it can't change overnight.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does take time, but you feel like
Speaker 1: that was the kick in the pants the industry needed.
Speaker 1: You know, It's so interesting because I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was, But I also think, um, this has been
Speaker 1: growing in terms of hiring more female directors for a while,
Speaker 1: that this had been growing, and then it just you know,
Speaker 1: kicked it kicked it to a new level. And yet
Speaker 1: the Golden Globes were announced, not one female director was nominated,
Speaker 1: and that's so aggravating to so many of us. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it was such a banner year for female
Speaker 1: filmmakers and UM, but I think I think actually every
Speaker 1: year has has been a has a banner year, and
Speaker 1: every year I see lots of female directed films that
Speaker 1: I think are just as worthy and just as important
Speaker 1: to hold up. And I mean I was very happy
Speaker 1: that in Foreign Film Portrait of Lady on Fire and
Speaker 1: UM and The Farewell both were acknowledged in Foreign Film.
Speaker 1: But come on, and no, no, no, I mean that,
Speaker 1: but that's that's good. That's good, that's that's important. But
Speaker 1: certainly I think acknowledgement of UM the the tremendous work
Speaker 1: being done this year, and I mean about last year too.
Speaker 1: It happened last year. I mean, it did happen last year,
Speaker 1: and it happened actually the year before that. So I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what the thing that I I keep going
Speaker 1: to is, but we're still making them, and we're still
Speaker 1: we still keep making these strides and the and and
Speaker 1: it is still happening. So PS, you're making remarkable movies
Speaker 1: that are doing really well and really resonating. And PS,
Speaker 1: we still don't know about the Academy Awards. Hope. The
Speaker 1: thing that I see is like, you know, I see Lulu,
Speaker 1: I see I see Mari who did direct the Farewell,
Speaker 1: who directed Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I see Molina
Speaker 1: who directed Queen and Slim, and that's just a few.
Speaker 1: This is happening, and I feel like it's also um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's gathering steam, it's gathering energy. I love movies,
Speaker 1: I love filmmakers. I think everyone who's up there deserves
Speaker 1: to be up there. I just want, I want. I
Speaker 1: want these women recognized. I want to sell collectively recognized
Speaker 1: because there's so much good work. Oh and Loreen Scafaria,
Speaker 1: who did Hustle. I mean, there's so many. I feel
Speaker 1: like every time I hesitate even I need my list
Speaker 1: of names just that I can go to. But it's
Speaker 1: just um, and that's a real step forward, right that
Speaker 1: you actually have a list of names. I have a
Speaker 1: list of names every year. I really do. I have
Speaker 1: a list of names every year. And and I think
Speaker 1: when we're just going to keep making and and I
Speaker 1: think people want to see it. You're such a huge talent, Greta.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy for your success, and you're gonna be
Speaker 1: inspiring so many young women for your work. The same
Speaker 1: with Lena and all the other women that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: So you're just opening up so many possibilities for them
Speaker 1: because you know, listen, you're how old thirty four? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm thirty sixty six. Sorry, but you know, isn't it
Speaker 1: crazy that a thirty six year old woman didn't really
Speaker 1: have anybody when you were in college to say, oh, look,
Speaker 1: that could be met. It is interesting. There was a
Speaker 1: group of them, and I don't want to downplay because
Speaker 1: now now that now I know more, but there was
Speaker 1: I learned about Jim Campion and right, and then Sofia
Speaker 1: Coppola happened while I was in school. But it was
Speaker 1: just sort of at the beginning. It was at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and um, um, I learned about Lena vert Muller, who
Speaker 1: I had the privilege of giving an award to, I mean,
Speaker 1: Catherine Bigelow. But it was it was a small group
Speaker 1: and now it feels like it's getting a much bigger
Speaker 1: and that's um, that's good. It's a better band. Well,
Speaker 1: it sure is, and we're so glad you're in it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks Greta, Thanks everyone so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed hearing from Greta as much as
Speaker 1: I did. And by the way, if you're overwhelmed, by
Speaker 1: the tsunami of information exploding on your iPhone every single day.
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Speaker 1: Katie Couric Later. Next Question with Katie Couric is a
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Speaker 1: executive producers are Katie Kuric, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and Tyler Klang. Our show producers are Bethan Macalouoso and
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Speaker 1: are Emily Pinto and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagin,
Speaker 1: Derek Clements, and Lowell Berlante. Our researcher is Barbara Keene.
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