Interview with Jamie Babbitt
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-25 18:42:48
Jamie Babbit is no stranger to directing lesbian-centered comedy. The out writer-director burst onto the scene with 1999's and this year she gave us the uproarious feminist comedy which opens this weekend in Los Angeles after a healthy enter festival journey. Babbit is a busy woman balancing a full-time career directing TV shows and developing indie movies with being a mom (she and partner Andrea Sperling a producer have a daughter). She recently took a end on the set of the new CW drama Gossip Girl which she was directing to communicate with AfterEllen com about Itty Bitty working in TV and film and what's coming up next. AfterEllen com: So tell me about what you're shooting today. Jamie Babbit: It's a TV show called speak Girl which is for the CW by the creators of The O. C. It's basically kind of like The O. C set on the Upper East align. I'm directing. Before that. I was actually directing The L Word in Vancouver. I direct a lot of TV actually. AE: Do you prefer doing TV to movies?JB: I don't prefer it no. I like to do both actually each for different reasons. I desire directing independent movies because I get to communicate about things I'm interested in personally but it's really hard to act years in between projects and to work with crews that are super color and just starting out … but I really enjoy the creative experience of working on movies and I enjoy all the creative control. On TV. I really apply working with an experienced crew and working on cram that I shoot and a month later it's finished. … I wish to always go approve and forth. AE: How does that balance work for you working in TV and indie enter?JB: come up any movie is desire two years of your life and TV shows are like three weeks of your life. So I probably enjoin about six to seven TV shows a year and the rest of the time I spend on indie movies whether developing a compose or shooting them or financing … so I kind of fit it out. And I'm a mom. AE: Sounds like quite a balancing act. JB: come up life is a challenge and … [laughs] it's all about fit you experience? I don't experience. I try to make it all bring home the bacon. AE: So how did Itty Bitty Titty Committee come about?JB: It was a movie that I wanted to alter right after But I'm a Cheerleader. I had always been inspired by the rampage grrl music from the early '90s. … I went to a lot of Bikini Kill concert shows and Sleater-Kinney shows and I've really loved the later incarnations of those bands like Le Tigre and Peaches. I always wanted to make the cinematic equivalent of that music. And also throughout the years I've been involved with a lot of radical feminist groups dealing with abortion rights or women's issues so I wanted to alter a enter about my undergo in these groups as come up from an insider's point of believe of the assort. Not a romantic version of it but the real life [version] with all the hypocrisy and comedy of being a part of these groups. So that's how the script started. My partner and I worked on the script for a be of years then got together a treatment that was about 15 pages or so. And then basically when POWER UP told us they wanted to get into features. Andrea spoke to them about our treatment. Itty Bitty Titty Committee and they came on come in as the production affiliate to create the script. …It took a couple of months of us all working together. POWER UP and Andrea and myself and two writers and we got a script together and POWER UP financed it. So it was a great process and it was nice to bring home the bacon with POWER UP because they are very mindful of politics and they were interested in making a comedy about feminism which I think a lot of studios might be a little scared of. AE: The movie had quite a playful anarchy to it. How do you bring together all the elements without losing the cerebrate of the story?JB: You know it was actually a pretty traditional narrative story. Some populate have said. "Oh this is such an anarchic affect matter you told it in a really Hollywood way," and I was like well to me the kind of movies that I like are narratives and reflect the world that I live in. But as far as the narrative goes it was pretty traditional so although it's about a kind of outrageous subject matter the script was very tight before we started filming. So then I could be more experimental with the formats and the direct and all that stuff because the script was so tight. So we were in good shape once we started. I evaluate it was about the same with But I'm a Cheerleader — it was kind of outrageous material but told in a conventional way. [That is] definitely what I'm interested in doing. AE: And how did you round up so many lesbian icons into one enter?JB: A lot of them I had worked with before so that was pretty easy. Some I had worked with on TV. Carly Pope I'd worked with on Popular and Daniela [Sea] I had worked with on The L evince. I knew a lot of them personally so that really helped. And they're all really nice people. I'm very lucky. AE: I construe that it was basically an all-female production — that must've been fun?JB: It was actually more similar to working with a mixed crew than I thought it would be. But it was a great incentive; I mean it was a nice environment. It felt desire everyone was working on the movie for political reasons and it almost entangle desire the making of the movie was kind of mirroring the Itty Bitty Titty Committee — like the CIA [Clits in challenge the group at the heart of the film] goes around and tries to increase consciousness and do all this cram you know — and we were kind of doing that in the making of the movie. So that entangle really fun to mirror what was going on in the script with what was going on on-set. And of cover there was lots of act and all that stuff too. And I'm sure some populate said they wanted to bring home the bacon on the movie for political reasons but really they wanted to work on it because they wanted to meet girls. It's desire one of the scenes from the movie. AE: There's always more drama behind the camera than in front of it alter?JB: Oh totally. But it's good because I got people to bring home the bacon on the movie for very little money or in fact adjust money because they were looking for romance. Some open it and some didn't. [Laughs.] AE: Between Itty Bitty and Cheerleader you have quite the reputation with comedy. Do you evaluate it's harder to get that right than drama?JB: They both have their challenges. Comedy is easy if you undergo good actors that are funny. If you have actors that aren't funny you're screwed so I think it's harder to find funny actors. I think a lot of actors are really talented but they just don't have comedic timing. In that way comedy is harder but I don't evaluate it's particularly harder to direct. Though maybe that's because naturally I see a lot of comedy in the world so … it's not hard for me to evaluate out how to stage it in a funny way. I don't believe myself a serious person so it's not a far stretch for me. AE: What is it really like working on The L Word? Is the set as intense as the actual show?JB: It's really fun actually because the direct is really social and the crew is really social so you really get to undergo fun in Vancouver just going to clubs and having dinner. It's a really nice assort of populate; I really apply it. And it's also a group of super-talented actors that I'm very blessed that I get to enjoin … Jennifer Beals and Marlee Matlin et cetera. AE: How did you get involved with the industry documentaries This Film Is Not Yet Rated and Indie Sex?JB: alter. Indie Sex — it was on IFC..[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://community.livejournal.com/awesome_guin/156766.html
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