It’s frustratingly common to see director roundtables and panels with zero women participants — discussions where female filmmakers literally don’t have a voice. Fortunately that’s not the case for The Hollywood Reporter’s recent Director Roundtable. THR assembled six awards contenders, and three of them are women: Angelina Jolie, Patty Jenkins, and Greta Gerwig.
Jolie is repping “First They Killed My Father,” her adaptation of Cambodian human rights activist Loung Ung’s book, Jenkins is there for “Wonder Woman,” which tells the origin story of the iconic super hero, and Gerwig is present on account of “Lady Bird,” her coming-of-age story about a Sacramento teen desperate to attend college in New York City.
We’ve assembled some of the highlights from the roundtable below. To watch clips of the discussion, head over to THR.
Gerwig on what she would shoot if she could put a camera anywhere, at any time in history: “[Socrates] had these dialogues with Diotima, a prostitute in ancient Greece — I would have loved to hear what those women had to say.”
Jolie on if directing affects her emotionally: “Yes. In Cambodia, [the Pol Pot regime] is subject matter that has been debated. [But] this history is not known internationally and it made me upset when I was in that country,” she said. “I have seen how it affects the people, and I have a son [Maddox, born in Cambodia] who deserves to know his history, and I want him to know what his birth parents went through. But did I feel I had the right to be the one doing that? It was hard every day to know if I was good enough or the right person to do it. Every day I woke up feeling, ‘Am I good enough?’”
Jenkins on if Warner Bros. welcomed her when she made “Wonder Woman”: “I was. I mean, to get in there was a long story. I had first talked to them about it in 2005, and there were so many different chapters when they were and weren’t going to make it. These tentpole movies, I feel it’s more like dating than it is [like], ‘Hey, just buy my pitch.’ It’s a serious commitment,” she observed. “I had almost done other big movies and had seen very little disagreements [derail a project]. So I was extremely circumspect when I came in to [talk about] doing ‘Wonder Woman.’ I was really cautious. And when I first was meeting with them, they wanted to do something different, and I was like, ‘Ah, it’s a shame. I don’t think we are the right match.’ By the time they came back and realized they wanted to do something very similar to what I had been saying, it was a much different conversation. So I was extremely welcomed. I was very supported. And it’s the biggest advice I ever give young filmmakers: Pick the right projects, because you don’t want to end up in a bad marriage.”
Gerwig on what she learned from directing her first film: “I learned that I could do it. I don’t think you quite know until you are on the other end of something like that. You take the leap and hope there is a parachute attached,” she explained. “But part of learning how to direct was being on film sets as an actor and, in particular, early films I made. I knew from having been on different films that when things came up that were problems or difficulties or something went awry, that was not a deviation from the path; that was the path.”
Jolie on her evolving attitude as a director: “When I started, I wanted everybody to feel this is the greatest experience. And then I realized, there can be days they don’t like me. I would rather them not like me and be proud of the end result.”
Jenkins on if she’s ever lost her resolve: “All the time. I never decided to be a director,” she revealed. “I was at painting school, and my first love was music, and it finally came together when I took an experimental film course and I was like, ‘That’s it.’ But I definitely had many moments where I was like, ‘Ugh, you could just restore antiques or something.’ There was a period of time, not long before I made ‘Wonder Woman,’ when everything [didn’t work]. I had made ‘Monster’ [2003], then I had a movie not go, then I had my son — so I purposefully just did pilots for a while. And when I came back, the bottom had fallen out of the indie film market. The films that I had ready to go, nobody wanted to make. They didn’t even want to read them. I was like, ‘I just want to leave Hollywood.’ It’s ironic that I turned around and made ‘Wonder Woman.’”
