Here is part 2 of my interview with Katherine Dieckmann, director of Motherhood.
Women & Hollywood: The producers on this film are women. Did you seek out female producers for this?
Katherine Dieckmann: I met with a lot of men that I really liked about producing this film but I felt at the end of the day Rachel Cohen in particular (she was the woman who financed this movie) who I have been friends with for a decade and feel intellectually, politically, and spirtitually incredibly aligned with. She took it and found the money and I trusted her and knew she would have my back and she did and was there for me every step of the way. I felt the same about Pam Koffler from Killer Films who I had known for a long time socially and who I had talked to about the script before I had even started to write it. I felt that these women really get me and get why I am doing this and I will be safe.
W&H: You talked a little about the current obsession with the Aptowian comedy films today. How did it become such a fixation?
KD: I love those movies and I hate them at the same time. Politically I hate them, but I love watching them. I think there is a great confusion culturally about mens and womens roles and to me the Judd Apatow movies really reflect that confusion. Women are for all the difficulties that we face are increasingly assured in the world. I really do think that. There is such anxiety in men about how they are supposed to be and so this is a hysterical reaction to it. I think it will be interesting to see how it shakes out in the next few years.
W&H: What is the message you want people to come out of the film with?
KD: The message I am trying to say, and it’s not just a motherhood message, is to challenge yourself and also be accepting. This character is doing neither in the the beginning of the movie. She is neither challenging herself nor accepting the limitations of what her reality is and that has a lot to do with malcontent and nobody likes a malcontented person. Many mothers are malcontented because there are real limitation to the ways you can live your life as a mother, economic, practical. So I think on the one hand some things can be changed, but like I said in the NY Times piece is think it’s really easy to hide behind motherhood and women have to challenge themselves not to do that because it’s kind of easy. If they want to say something or do something to not use motherhood as an excuse to avoid trying to do it.
W&H: Do you think you will get some backlash from some moms?
KD: Maybe. I don’t think I am saying don’t be a stay at home mom or don’t view mothering as a primary impetus in a certain phase of your life, but let’s face it, is a short phase of your life and as your children get older and they won’t need you in that way and they won’t if you’ve done your job right, who are you? Who are you at the end of the day? Who are you apart from mom and I feel that’s the essential question of the movie. This woman doesn’t know who she is apart from mom anymore and I think many women experience that weirdly dissociative state when they become mothers.
W&H: What advice do you have for women filmmakers?
KD: Tenacity and determination. I teach screenwriting at Columbia and I had a wonderful student really succeed with her feature in the last year Cherin Dabis with Amreeka. I taught Cherien (in maybe 2003) and she had such focus and she rewrote that script – I must have read 10 drafts of that script – she worked and worked and worked and was savvy and persistent in the loveliest way and made a really good first film. I think it takes for anyone, but especially women, an unbelievable persistence and really believing I have to say this, I have to get it out there, I will find a way to do it and not giving up on that.
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