Interview with Nicole Holofcener

FC: This is about your work inside independent filmmaking and it’s about celebrating what you do.  So, how did you get started as a filmmaker?

NH: I ended up in film school.  Some friends were taking film classes and they looked really easy, frankly, and fun and so I started taking some, and I had worked as a production assistant on some movies.  My family was in the movie business. But it’s not what I thought I was going to go into until I ended up in college taking these classes and then applying to film school and then----I guess that’s how!

FC: What did you think you were going to be before you went to film school?

NH: I thought I was going to be a painter or some kind of fine artist.  Then I got to art school and I looked around me it was like, “oh! I don’t think so”.  I just wasn’t as good as almost everybody, though it was something I love doing.  Then when I got to film school I looked around and kind of thought, “may be I could”, you know, it wasn’t as intimidating to me.

FC: Where did you do your under graduate?

NH: Sonoma State, San Francisco State and NYU.  Yeah, it cost a lot ...

FC: This is about your work inside independent filmmaking and it’s about celebrating what you do.  So, how did you get started as a filmmaker?

NH: I ended up in film school.  Some friends were taking film classes and they looked really easy, frankly, and fun and so I started taking some, and I had worked as a production assistant on some movies.  My family was in the movie business. But it’s not what I thought I was going to go into until I ended up in college taking these classes and then applying to film school and then----I guess that’s how!

FC: What did you think you were going to be before you went to film school?

NH: I thought I was going to be a painter or some kind of fine artist.  Then I got to art school and I looked around me it was like, “oh! I don’t think so”.  I just wasn’t as good as almost everybody, though it was something I love doing.  Then when I got to film school I looked around and kind of thought, “may be I could”, you know, it wasn’t as intimidating to me.

FC: Where did you do your under graduate?

NH: Sonoma State, San Francisco State and NYU.  Yeah, it cost a lot of money to go to college and then I took a couple of years off.  I worked in an editing room and wrote a couple of screenplays that weren’t very good and then my family said, “If you want to go to graduate school we will help you do that”.  So I applied to Columbia Graduate Film Department and I got into that and that’s really where I learned how to do what I am doing.

FC: How important is film school?

NH: For me it was really important.  I think that without it I would have been floundering.  I think I would have settled for a lesser job than director.  I think that I had no idea I wanted to be a director when I started film school.  I thought, maybe an editor maybe a writer; not a producer--I knew that was not in me--but something--even production design.  But once I started directing videos I realized I like doing it so much and I could do it fairly well.  Then I realized, “Oh, maybe I could be a director”. So for me film school was so important I don’t think I would have been able to say those words “I want to be a director”, if I hadn’t gone to film school.

FC: Do you remember the first film you ever saw?

NH: I think I saw “The Nutty Professor”.  It scared me so much so I remember it.  I went with my dad when I was six to see “The Nutty Professor” with Jerry Lewis and when he started turning blue and green and the smoke came up, he had to take me out. Not literally, take me out, you know, like, out of the theater. And then “Mary Poppins”, I watched that a lot, probably around the same time when I was six.

FC: Was there anyone in your family that influenced you toward this career?

NH: Well, yeah, I mean I think that because my step-dad was a movie producer (he produced Woody Allen movies) I was on the set and making movies wasn’t some strange foreign thing that I saw, like you know, Universal Studios tour or something.  It was an accessible thing that I understood.  So I think that certainly planted the seed for me.

FC: And have Woody Allen’s films had an impact on you in filmmaking?

NH: No, none at all.  Woody Allen’s films have absolutely had a huge impact on my filmmaking.  To say that they haven’t would be crazy.  And not because I was on the set as a PA.--I was at the bagels and cream cheese.  I was not anywhere near what was going on.  His movies have inspired me or had an impact on me because of watching them just like everybody else and loving them and being moved by them.  And, you know, probably being a New York Jew, I think they instantly spoke to me in many ways.

FC:   How did you get your first film “Walking and Talking” off the ground?

NH: “Walking and Talking” took six years to get off the ground.  It was a really frustrating process.  I wrote it out of film school and gave it to Ted Hope.  He liked it.  He said, “Let’s rewrite it for about six years and maybe we’ll get some financing.”  As I was rewriting for six years, you know, we just kept giving it to everybody and got money, lost money, got a cast, lost a cast.  Eventually hooked up with another production company and producers who got five foreign distributors to give us financing for “Walking and Talking”.  And then we sold it at Sundance to Miramax for US distribution.  So that was how.  It was hard, but worth it!

FC: Do things get easier for you as a filmmaker as you go along?

NH: Things definitely get easier as I go along in every way.  I mean, I don’t have to wait six years again, I hope, to get financing.  Directing is easier just because I have more experience.  It’s never easy, but just with more experience and being an older person, you know, things get easier, less angst ridden, more in perspective.  I think the more movies that I make the easier it is to get the cast I want.  So it’s definitely not getting harder.  If it was getting harder, I’d do something else.  That would be a bad sign.

FC: Have you developed a team from project to project?

NH: You know there are a lot of people that I have worked with again and again.  My producers I have worked with on every movie and I plan to make more movies with them.  Anthony Bregman---I am now making another movie with him.  And there have been some key crew people that I have tried to bring along but are not always available, because I make movies like, you know, ten years apart. And I worked with different DP’s on each movie for a variety of reasons.  So, I don’t have a troop, and I don’t know if I will.  I hope so.  I think that would be nice to have.

FC: How about on the casting side?

NH: Well I have a troop in Catherine Keener.  Although the day is going to come, and we both know it, that I am probably going to make a movie without her.  I think she knows it.  It’s inevitable.  But I worked with her on all three movies and I have loved every minute.  I feel privileged to be able to get her, let alone have the experience of working with her.  So, that’s been wonderful!  I think she is the only person that I have worked with more than once.  Romy Rosemont was in “Lovely and Amazing” and “Friends with Money”.

FC: There are budget limitations to independent filmmaking.  How is that a liability and how might that be an asset?

NH: Well the budget limitations can be an asset in terms of, well, it’s funny, I mean, a lot of directors want more days and more days and more days and I actually do want more days but not that many more days because of my family.  I don’t want to shoot for 60 days.  I would prefer to shoot 29 days instead of 24 days next time.  I need more time, but, if a studio threw a lot of money at me they would wonder why I didn’t want 80 days to shoot the thing.  And also I think there is just too much waiting around.  I think I would be bored if I was shooting two pages a day - at least on the kind of movies that I make – but there are more bad things about limitations.  I can’t choose the locations I want or necessarily hire everybody I want, or get rehearsal time or enough editing time, or the songs I want to buy.  You know, its nice to have more money, really, but I guess the whole point would be that the lower the budget the more control I have and the more freedom I have, and that’s ultimately the most important thing to me.  So I would rather keep that and have less money.

FC: Is there anything more that you want to say about “Good Machine”?

NH: Sure. “Good Machine”, I don’t know where I would be without “Good Machine”. Seriously, I mean, you don’t know what path you would take or whom I would have worked with or what experiences I might have had.  Ted Hope believed in me right off the bat and I was, I felt, very fortunate.  And it was before they formed “Good Machine”.  And I met Anthony and Anne Carey and they are very supportive, talented producers.  So I feel very grateful to them.

FC: Within your feature filmmaking career what challenges and opportunities do you face directing your own script versus directing the scripts of other people, which I know you had the opportunity to do in television?

NH: You know that the television shows that I directed stylistically, thematically were so similar to my movies that it wasn’t a big challenge to go from “Walking and Talking” to “Sex and the City”, except that I really wanted to please the creators of the show.  I would constantly be turning around going, “Is that okay? Can I move on?”.  Whereas, when I make my own movies I don’t.  I have to do that---I didn’t want to disappoint them because I think they are really talented.   Same with when I did “Six Feet Under”.  To not want to please them would be crazy and yet I wanted to put some kind of imprint of my own on it.  So, you know, having chosen those shows it was a great experience and not that different from directing a picture.  Although I think they had more money than my movies did - certainly “Sex in the City” did.  Lots of crane shots and stuff.

FC: What do you think your imprint is on television shows?

NH: I don’t think I have an imprint on the television shows. I tried to make an imprint, but really you are trying just to not make an imprint.  I mean I certainly have to say something when the actors could do it better or differently or that the tone is off, or they are not focused or really listening to somebody.  Or I will help them--I will direct them--but basically I want to just let the directing be invisible and let the show be itself.  So, if I did that, which I think I did, then I have done my job.

FC: Is there a word for that --- something you could put to your own style of feature filmmaking?

NH: Yeah.  Some word like ‘non-style’! I think I have a style in spite of myself almost.  I don’t focus on the style of the movie.  I mean I have a feeling of how I want the whole movie to look or I guess it’s a style with each film, but inevitably it becomes much more about the performances and the characters than about the style of the film.  And it’s funny, because when I write a script I think I am going to do something different each time, and I just inevitably end up with a very recognizable style, so that I think at some point I should stop fighting, because it’s natural to me.  I mean I do want to try different genres and different kinds of movies and different styles would go with that, but while I am writing this kind of thing, you know, a contemporary ensemble, I think the styles are going to work somewhat similarly.

FC: I heard it said that some of the most vital work today is on television. What do you think about that?

NH: Yeah, well you know I don’t watch lot of TV, but I have seen “The Office” lately, which is really funny and great and certainly better than half the movies out there.  And the shows like “Six Feet Under”---I miss it dearly.  I wish it was on TV, so there are some things on television I think are great, absolutely!

FC:  What do you think of the term “chick flick”?

NH: Oh! I love that term.  The term “chick flick” is just a stereotype, it’s just a label.  It’s stupid, I guess.  Is there a male equivalent? A “buddy movie” but even a “female buddy movie” would be called a “chick flick”, so I think that it’s insulting.  I will take it if someone is going to go see it.  If someone says, “I want to see that chick flick” I will take it.  If they say, “I don’t want to see that chick flick” I don’t like it.  How is that?

FC:  Do you see yourself as a woman’s filmmaker?

NH:  I don’t see myself as a woman’s filmmaker.  I think you have to be like a woman’s clothing designer because you make clothes for women but a woman’s filmmaker, I don’t know what that is.  I mean, I understand if more women are drawn to my material because women are in my movies more than men, but I just don’t even know what that is.  I am just telling the stories.

FC:  Are there women filmmakers who have inspired you? Or perhaps even mentored you?

NH:  I have never had a female mentor.  I have never really had any mentors.  With the film school teachers that I have had---I had Martin Scorsese for a short period of time, which was thrilling, but he is not a woman in any way.  I think that Jane Campion inspired me.  I mean certainly I saw this movie “Sweetie” before I was doing anything myself.  And I love that movie.  And I met her, and I was thrilled and it made me think, “Oh, may be I could do that”. At the same time, “Oh, I could never do that”.  Which is really always the best kind of inspiration; those conflicting feelings.

FC:  What more would you like to say about “Sweetie”?

NH:  Well I loved the lead character in “Sweetie”.  I mean she was unglamorous.  She was chubby and endearing and she was not very likable, but I loved her. I just remembered, and the way the movie was shot I thought was really unique and brave.  I haven’t seen it in a long time, but again, it was one of those movies that made me feel like I could do this, or not that - and certainly not as well, but it made me want to do it anyway.

FC: What’s it like being a filmmaker and also a mom?

NH: Oh, it’s hard; it’s very hard to be a filmmaker and a mom.  I think that it shaped my career in ways that if I wasn’t a mother, it would be shaped differently.  I certainly would be willing to leave Los Angeles to make a movie and not have to pass on things.  Not millions of things; but if someone says, “Oh! There is this great script that takes place in Paris”, I won’t even want to see it, because I wouldn’t disrupt my children’s lives like that.  And being a mother is more important to me actually than anything.  So filmmaking takes a back seat and I want to get home when I am making a movie.  I want to make a good movie but I also want to get home.  So it keeps things in perspective.  It’s hard; but its cool too, because my kids are interested in what I am doing, especially one of them, and as they get older I can bring them around more and have them learn from what’s going on.

FC:  Put yourself forward in time.  Even your kids are now adults.  What would you like to look back on, you know, now looking back at this time and your body of work, would you say there would be a through line to your career?

NH:  Well---a through line, you probably know, retrospectively things look like they have a pattern, or a through line, and certainly already, my movies are similar to one another.  If that’s what you mean by a through line to my career there is probably some sort of order that I will look back on and see.  I certainly am lucky enough to be able to choose what I want to work on, which is really great, so I don’t have a lot of things that I am embarrassed about.  I certainly have some things that I don’t necessarily want to put on my resume, but I hope that the through line will be that I got to work on things that I was happy to work on.

FC:  How important is the character in the film to you?

NH:  Well, in certain films character is everything.  In certain films probably character is less.  You know, some movies can get away with a slimmer character, less developed person, which is fine, but for me its pretty much everything.  If I don’t know who someone is in my movies, and that’s happened, I kind of find out who they are as we go along.  That’s messier, certainly.  Character is what’s so interesting, and the relationships between the people in the movie are what’s so interesting to me.

FC:  Can you say that what’s an independent film today?  Each of the studios has independent visions.  Do you consider that as independent filmmaking?

NH: Yeah, independent film - it’s kind of become more vague.  You know, I don’t even really know that “Friends with Money” was an independent film until it was nominated for a Spirit Award.  It was like, ‘Oh! Okay, good’! You know, it was $6 million. It was financed by a studio, it had the unions”, so I am not really sure anymore what an independent film is.  Certainly one that takes six years and with five different foreign distributors, I would call that an independent film.  I work independently in that I haven’t had any studios telling me how to do things, which has been great, so I am really not sure what that is anymore.

FC: Let’s talk about Hal Hartley; one of the films you list is his “Trust”.

NH: Yeah, I loved “Trust”, and again it was one of those movies that I saw that made a great impression on me.  I love Martin Donovan and Adrienne Shelly and…. it was so moving, I remember crying, and it looked easy in its filmmaking.  It didn’t intimidate me like, you know, “Lawrence of Arabia”.  But in terms of character and story it was so touching to me, and you know you asked what movies were inspiring or my favorite independent films and it was really weird because this page fell out of my diary the other day that I had written about “Trust” and I thought I would read it to you which is so strange, but it’s like a perfect….shall I do this?

FC:  Yeah.

NH:  It’s a perfect example of how you see a movie that inspires you but its still fucks you up.  Can you say fuck on filmcatcher?

FC:  I think so.

NH:  It still messes you up, all right.  “I just watched “Trust” (I think right after I made “Walking and Talking) . . .  I just watched “Trust” and loved it again.  I cried at the end and I feel useless and untalented, so much pressure.  The movie touches me so much and I feel like I could never make anything like it.  It has its faults but the hero and heroine are so heroic and I don’t know if I could make something like that up for myself.  I feel like I have lost my passion.  I am cut off from my feelings and I don’t take my work seriously enough to let myself feel inspired.  How can I fix this?”  So it’s like I see a movie that I love, and then all this crap goes on in my head, you know, and it was just interesting that I found that right after I had said that “Trust” was--you know---as you see it, it’s like, “I want to do that, I can’t do that, I love it, I hate myself, I am going to do it, I swear - and so that was my experience with that movie.

FC:  In my experiences it’s easy for me to criticize my own creative work.  I find that’s a little bit in what I know of you.  It’s easy for you to criticize your work. Are you comfortable saying good things about your work?

NH: Yeah, I am really proud of my work.  There are certain scenes and moments and performances that I am just thrilled exist in my work.  I think, “God! That really worked” and the music and the actress and the words and sometimes I think I do a good job.  It’s easier to find the faults and my limitations certainly but I feel very lucky and proud that I can do this good enough, I guess.

FC:  Okay, the term “auteur filmmaking” and it sometimes it’s referred to as writer and director.  Does that word have any relevance to you?

NH: I use auteur all day long.  I just say I am an auteur like when I am at the grocery store and when I go shopping. “I am an auteur, shopping at the grocery store”.  Now, obviously----as to be so pretentious.  Other people are allowed to call someone else an auteur but to call yourself an auteur is, kind of repellant---I think for me.

FC: Is there somebody that you would call an auteur?

NH: It’s too weird, I don’t know, it’s just it’s like, well, I am not French, it’s not 1950, and you know it just doesn’t apply.  I’m a writer-director.  You know Hal Hartley is great writer-director.  I just wouldn’t use that word.  Sorry Hal, you know?

FC:  Do you see yourself as having a societal role, a role in society?

NH:  I think anybody who makes a movie that anybody sees has a role in society in terms of a cultural impact.  A role---I don’t feel like it’s my obligation.  I don’t feel like I am changing anybody’s path in life, but I think that all of our movies have an impact on society.  Obviously, really violent ones or really misogynistic ones or really disgusting ones, unfortunately there is violence and then there is disgusting, I think.  Certainly there is a place for violence in movies, I think if it’s done by somebody really talented, but I don’t know, I am in there I am in the mix somewhere, just cool.

FC:  You listed ALS as a cause that is important to you.  Is there anything you want to say about ALS?

NH:  Umm, yeah, well, I wrote about the disease in “Friends with Money”. It’s just, it was the first horrible disease that popped into my head to reference in the movie and I did work with some people from project ALS when we were making the movie, and I met some people whose family members had it and then it affected me and moved me, and I think it would be great to find a cure for that.

FC:  Let’s talk about some of the other films that have had an impact on you.  “Sex, Lies and Videotape”.  What would you say about that?

NH:  I remember seeing “Sex, Lies and Videotape” in New York and I just didn’t get up.  I sat through it again. I don’t think I have ever done that.  I just was, “Oh! I hope they’ll let me.  I have to pay”.  I didn’t have to pay again, and I just sat there again and it was really inspiring.  It looked easy but of course it wasn’t.  It looked easy in terms of---these are people that I know and you just set the camera down in front of them---and it didn’t look so tricky.  And it really made me feel like maybe my little stories about messed up people could be interesting to somebody.  Mostly I was just enthralled with it.  I think everybody was.  I think that’s why it had such a huge impact.  That’s great!

FC:  Why are your stories about messed up people important to you?

NH:  Stories about messed up people are the interesting ones.  Aren’t all stories about generally messed up people?  I guess its because I am so not messed up that I really like to look at other messed up people, because I am so together.  Larry, come on, yes, I mean it.

FC:  But you know, part of it I am taking for real.  I mean you do seem really grounded.

NH:  Yeah, sure part of me is really grounded; part of me isn’t messed up. Certainly, I have a terrific life and I don’t think I could have created what I have created if I was a complete mess, absolutely not.  But certainly I love seeing movies about people who are just in wrecks, and I like making movies about people who are wrecks.  That’s what affects us, right?

FC:  I was devastated watching your films.

NH:  By those wrecks?

FC:  Your films, it’s like, I mean, at the end of “Lovely and Amazing” I think this is like….

NH: The little girl?

FC:  I see what’s coming in the second part and I’m literally going like this.

NH:  But not the ending, ending or you mean when she gets the…  

FC: Yeah.

NH: Yeah. Oh, Good! God I want to do that, whatever that is.  Good.

FC:  Stranger than Paradise.

NH:  Yeah, it’s not a very original pick, so it’s something that inspired me.

FC:  So many loved that movie.

NH:  Did they?  They were just wrong.  Those people were wrong if they loved ‘Stranger in Paradise’, that’s hard to say.  Yeah, I was amazed by it.  I mean those people were so stupid and so annoying and funny looking and the way it looked and the grandmother and the, it was just brilliant and really brave and, just one of the most unique movies I ever saw and again made me feel like I could never do this and boy, do I want to do this.

FC:  While in New York did you collaborate at all with filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Sara Driver or the others?

NH:  I met Jim Jarmusch, I think it was during “Mystery Train” at the New York film festival and I was volunteering there.  And I was in the green room and I said, “I am going to film school and do you have any advice”?  And he was like, “don’t give up”, and I said, “I thought, “Oh! He is so nice, he is so brilliant”, and now, if I say that to someone, I feel like I am really short changing them.  But when you are twenty and you are meeting one of your idols---it really meant something to me.  He was very kind.  That was my hanging out with him that was the extent of it.  I actually now have more director friends than I did before.  I kind of had none.  I don’t know why but I think I have made a bunch recently through television.  And Catherine Keener has introduced me to some of her crowd.  It’s nice to be able to talk to some directors who do what I do.  It’s really nice.

FC:  So, what if you are in a green room, at the back of the New York film festival, and I am a twenty-year-old film student coming to you with, “I love your films!”…. What advice would you have for me?

NH: I would say, “bug off”!  I would say, “don’t give up!”.  I do give advice; I take on the role of mentor, sadly, to some people.  But you know the advice that I probably got, or I don’t know if I ever got, but the advice that I would give would be to write about things or to direct things, make things that are emotionally important to you.  Don’t do crap.  Do the crap after.  Let somebody see what you do first, and then you can do the crap to make money.  We all have to do that and that’s okay but to find your own voice, trust what you do, don’t follow some ridiculous screen writing book that tells you that you have to have something happen on a certain page.  I mean none of those things worked for me, and you know certainly my audience is limited because of that I am sure.  But that’s okay, not everybody has to stay awake during my films.  That’s life.  So that’s what I generally tell people and if I see a student who is making something or writing a script that I can tell is just bullshit or whatever, I say, “What does this matter? Do something that matters to you”.  And not to give up, because my first film did take forever and I am glad I didn’t give up and I was going to many times.  I thought, “I will just do this or I will just go back to school and I will become a shrink”.  I didn’t have to do this, but I am glad that I do.

FC:  What was the last film you saw that knocked your socks off?

NH:  I love “Little Miss Sunshine”.  I loved the “The Lives of Others”---thinking of the screeners in my house that I finally got around watching, because I never go to the movies.  I am sure I always go blank when asked this.  I was recently watching, I guess on TV, “Defending Your Life”, by Albert Brooks.  It’s just so good.  His movies----Ah! I wish I had the time to watch, re-watch all these movies---his movies knock my socks off—their so funny.  But the newer ones---I guess I saw recently and I liked, “The Dead Girl” a lot.

FC:  Do you take your kids to the movies?

NH:  Yeah, those are the only movies I see. You know, “Shrek” and “The Last Mimzy” and “Meet the Robinsons” I go to the movies, see?  At noon, these are the only ones.

FC:  And what’s next for you?

NH:  I just wrote a new movie and I hope I will be making it sooner than later.  It’s---I swear, I was going to write a movie with just one male lead.  That was good for about a day.  I just kind of fell back into the story I wanted to tell which turned out to be about a bunch of people in New York.  It’s a small ensemble about a bunch of people in New York and right now I think the movie is about guilt.  Let’s see how that manifests, but I am excited to make it.

FC:  I am at the end of my questions.

NH:  Cool. Good, because I have a few for you.

FC:  Oh! Can you roll again? Okay, let’s talk.

NH: Oh see that’s where the good stuff comes, right.  You got it already then…that, yeah, ‘Harold and Maude’ and ‘Coming Home’ are directed by Hal Ashby.  He is brilliant and I wish he wasn’t dead, because I would love to I met him once and I just embarrassed myself, sadly, but he was brilliant and both of those movies were great.  Well ‘Harold and Maude’, I mean, I have seen it probably twenty times and I never tire of seeing it.  It’s just so funny and I love the macabre nature of it---so dark and funny, and the music--it is just a perfect thing that exists.  And “Coming Home”’ again, I have seen it so many times the performances are brilliant.  I cry, I, it terrifies me.  It’s not dated at all.  It’s a really important movie, I think.  It makes me shake watching it.  It’s just great, and he was so brilliant.  But I also love “The Heartbreak Kid”, directed by Elaine May.  It’s one of my all time favorite movies.  It’s just hard to pick when someone says five favorite movies, but I do have you know a few, like ‘Raging Bull’--completely different, but who doesn’t love that movie, and watch it over and over?  Okay, I am done and I don’t have anything else to say ever thank you.

FC: You are welcome, thank you.