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Girls school rules | page 1, 2
What were some things you were thinking about while you worked on the screenplay? Maybe it will seem didactic to some people, but I really wanted to get a certain message across about the value of girls schools and the fact that a lot of women have not supported the things that are there to empower them. And, frankly, I think that extends to my experiences with the film. The fact that I've had trouble for 10 years getting it onto one screen, and then the struggle beyond its opening to keep it open, proves my point. You've said that, in general, you're on a "personal mission to change the landscape of women's roles." What do you view to be that landscape currently, and what changes do you want to make? Well, an example would be "Sommersby," where I was called in to do something to Jodie Foster's character, which at the time was a fainting little magnolia who would have needed a lot of help. I turned her into the kind of woman who would have survived the Civil War, because the character as written never would have. My M.O. preceded me; I think people know that there's no point in calling me in if you want the other kind of women characters: a featureless "help me" character, or the saint, the whore -- you know, any of the archetypes. I don't think all women are powerful, intelligent, any of those things. I just require that female characters be very real, that they have all the dimensions that the male characters do. Your documentary, "Marjoe," won an Oscar for best documentary in 1973. What's it about? There was this holy-roller-type evangelist who was leading a double life. He lived six months out of the year as a hippie, and then when he ran out of money, he went back on the preaching circuit [laughs], preaching against dope addiction and Satan and so forth. His name was Marjoe Gortner. He's quite well known in L.A.; he's become a rather famous celebrity-event organizer. He had a brief career as an actor as well. If you ever see the movie "Earthquake," he was in that. Later, you co-wrote "9 1/2 Weeks." What was it like to work on that? I don't like the film very much, and I don't think it represents my sensibility. It was valuable to get my first screen credit as a screenwriter, and I enjoyed working with the director very much, but basically I just came in at the end and did his revisions. I had no say on the subject matter or how it was treated. I just did what was necessary in order to get the film made. And then there was "Impromptu" [an intellectual comedy with characterizations of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and George Sand], which is much more of what I understand as your style. I think it's maybe the best thing that I will ever do. It was total pleasure, so much fun to write that I was very sorry when it was over. I just felt like I was at my peak. And it convinced me that I should take time off every now and then just to write something for myself. It was actually my proving ground before doing "The Hairy Bird" -- oh, I guess I should call it "All I Wanna Do." Because it was the first time that I just closed the door on the system and stopped taking studio jobs. I saw a glossary of slang on the Web site for "All I Wanna Do." Did anyone actually say "bald cruller" [defined on the site as a hairless penis] in the film? A lot of those had to be cut, by request of various producers. I'm sorry about it. "Bite the bald cruller" was an expression we had. But "snarf the big kielbasa" is still in there. You know, kids are horny and they use off-color language, but we used substitutes because we couldn't get away with actually swearing. It led to inventive slang. "The hairy bird," for example -- "Eat the hairy bird" -- that was an expression particular to boarding schools at that time. It was actually in use? Sure. Some of it I made up for the movie, but that one was real. OK, one last question. You've also said that it was important that the actors in "All I Wanna Do" genuinely like one another. How did you try to foster that? Well, you can't, because frankly, at that age, young women can be very difficult in their relationships with each other, and I think that's covered in the movie as well. You make up and break up and make up, even with your closest friends. I know those things are there; I just didn't want them to be on the set. I wanted them all to be on the same side, pulling for each other. And I did achieve that -- they really were a team.
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