Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
10 DGA QUARTERLY FOCUS PHOTO: A24 FOCUS » Gerwig, right, connected with her leading lady, Saoirse Ronan, when the actress was playing in The Crucible on Broadway. humor was grounded in reality. "I've been incredibly lucky to meet [directors] who are generous with their time, feedback, insights and guidance," she tells DGA Quarterly. "Filmmaking is a craft, and apprenticeship is how I learned what I've learned. I am so honored to be included as one of them, and even before I made my fi lms, all of them spoke to me like I was their equal." The list of fi lmmakers who have in- spired her is long and deep, including Rebecca Miller, Spike Jonze, Mia Hansen- Løve, Wes Anderson, Sally Potter, Miranda July, Whit Stillman, Barry Jenkins and the person for whom she's acted as lead player, muse and co-writer, Noah Baumbach. She has been an ardent observer of their work, either from a bird's-eye view as a performer or as a curious follower. "The process of wanting to direct was a long one," she told those gathered earlier this year at a Film Independent symposium, part of its Directors Close-Up series. "I fell in love with movies when I was in college. But they were far away from me. Theater I could understand because the people were in front of me. But movies always seemed like they were handed down from the gods." Dating back to her mumblecore days in the mid-aughts, when she experimented with talents like the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg, with whom she co-wrote and co-directed Nights and Weekends (2008), Gerwig would keep notebooks, querying directors and cinematographers about what's working or not, and why. "The great thing about being an actor is very few people will kick you o a set," she told the Film Independent crowd at the Landmark Theater. "They think you're supposed to be there for some reason." It's important to note that Gerwig—a graduate of Barnard College with a degree in English and philosophy—had theater aspirations, specifi cally playwriting. She considered acting as "this lark" until Yale's graduate school for playwriting would accept her application. "And then Yale was like, 'Nope.'" Working with her micro-budget mum- blecore peers—who emphasized character over plot, and naturalistic acting that was often improvised—was "a good way to learn how [movies] were built," she recalls, and, as part of the process, "improvising was like getting to write while you're acting." Even so, she spent a lot of time reading plays when she was growing up, and the work of playwrights like Caryl Churchill, known for her overlapping dialogue, in- formed Gerwig 's approach to Lady Bird, for which she sought actors who were equally versed in theater, such as Laurie Metcalf and actor-playwright Tracy Letts, who play Lady Bird's parents. When approached with the notion that actors who perform onstage and need to project are distinctly di erent from fi lm actors for whom the tiniest of nuances are writ large by the camera, Gerwig of- fers that "great actors are conduits for truth, and that truth remains the same. If they can access that, they can access it in di erent sizes for di erent audiences... Laurie Metcalf told me really early in the rehearsal process she does mostly theater, and she said, 'I'm terrifi ed of the camera.' And Saoirse (Ronan, who plays Lady Bird) is the opposite. She'd just done a play on Broadway (The Crucible) and she said, 'I miss the camera.' [But] I never needed Laurie to be a di erent actor. "What I love about theater actors is that they tend to be incredibly hardworking, not afraid of going for it, and have absolute respect for the written lines." This is not to say Gerwig believes her writing should be treated like scripture, even if veering from the fi nished blueprint on Lady Bird—a coming-of-age saga whose teenaged title character longs to escape her provincial Sacramento upbringing and attend a prestigious East Coast college— was the exception rather than the norm. "I never want an actor to feel like they need to hit a target that's in my head," she says. "I want them to feel that what they're doing is trying to create as many possi- bilities as there are. Because as an actor, I know the feeling when a scene opens up to you; it's like fi tting a key in a lock and you didn't know there was this entire world on the other side." "I never want an actor to feel like they need to hit a target that's in my head. I want them to feel that what they're doing is trying to create as many possibilities as there are." BREAKTHROUGH PLAYER | CONTINUED