Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1189824
www.postmagazine.com 36 POST NOV/DEC 2019 Oscar BUZZ W riter-director Greta Gerwig may have a slim resume as an auteur, but it's an impressive one. With her first film, Lady Bird, the ac- claimed indie actress stepped be- hind the camera and made an assured and polished directorial debut with a coming-of-age story which went on to score her two Oscar nominations — for Best Directing and Best Original Screenplay, as well as a Best Actress nomination for star Saoirse Ronan. Now she's followed that up with Little Women, her take on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, which unfolds as the author's alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life. In Gerwig's film, the beloved story of the March sisters — four young women each deter- mined to live life on her own terms — is both time- less and timely. Portraying Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth March, the film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh and Eliza Scanlen, with Timothée Chalamet as their neighbor Laurie, Laura Dern as Marmee and Meryl Streep as Aunt March. Here, in an exclusive Post interview, Gerwig talks about making the film, how other directors helped her prepare and why she loves post. This is the eighth film version of the beloved book. Did you write this thinking, 'How can I give this well-known period piece a fresh take'? "First, I'd grown up with this book so completely that it felt like it was part of my life, my story, my sisters — it was part of my DNA. And then when I reread it as an adult, there was so much about it that jumped out at me as completely modern and different, and it felt so pressing. I had to make a film about it, because there's something so utterly modern. And the book has so much messiness and bigness and ambition and strangeness I was inter- ested in, and certain lines just grabbed me, almost as if they were written in neon, like Amy saying, 'I want to be great or nothing!' That's from the book. Or Marmee saying, 'I'm angry almost every day of my life.' And I felt as if I were able to see behind the curtain and what was beneath all that. "Second, I was doing a lot of research about Louisa May Alcott and her life, and I just felt, 'This is now!' The very first scene of the film where Jo is trying to sell a story to Dashwood, and him saying, 'Morals don't sell nowadays, perhaps mention that to your friend,' is straight from the book — and it could be me sitting in front of a studio head won- dering how much I'll have to compromise what I want to make with what they're prepared to finance. And it was that intersection of art, money and wom- en that was so fascinating to me. "Finally, I felt I had to do it because of how much the book and Jo meant to me, and to so many other women in the 150 years it's been in print — including Patti Smith, Simone de Beauvoir and J.K. Rowling. None of us loved Jo because she got married to Professor Bhaer. We loved her because she was a writer and owned it and what she was doing. And the fact that Alcott had her get married, have kids and give up writing — that's not Jo! That's not our girl. And in the research I did, I could see that Alcott never wanted to end the book that way. She felt she had to. And after 150 years, if we can't give her the ending she really wanted, then we've made no progress at all." What sort of film did you want to make? "A vast, cubist, emotional drama. I kept telling everyone, 'I want to deliver on what we love about the book — the sisterhood, the coziness, the family, the emotion,' but then also give it this larger context that's so present in the book and Alcott's life. So I wanted to start when they're all adults with sepa- rate lives and narratives, then make them all yearn for what the audience also yearns for — to have them at home in their childhood. I felt it was like ex- ploding the iconography of Little Women and then putting it back together, so it puts in stark relief what I felt was so modern about it." This is only your second film. How did you prepare for directing it? "Well, I always wanted to be a writer/director, but I didn't go to film school, so all the time I spent on sets as an actress was like my film education, and I did a lot of different things as well as acting, because most of the early films were so low budget. On this I had world-class collaborators, from the actors to my crew, and we did a lot of prep trying to create a world that's vivid and true, but also serving the story. I always watch a lot of movies and talk to a lot of people, and I had people read the script — people who loved Little Women and people who'd never read it. And having other directors and editors read the script was a big part of my process, as they look at how you put it together and actualize it. And they'd suggest different films and reference points. So I used every possible lead and connection." Lile Women GRETA GERWIG GIVES NEW LIFE TO A CLASSIC STORY BASED ON SISTERHOOD, COZINESS, FAMILY & EMOTION BY IAIN BLAIR The film is based on a 150-year old book.