Greta Gerwig on Little Women, Ambitious Women and more..
For the history of cinema men have been putting glasses on hot women and saying they’re awkward, so i was like … I can do whatever I want. -Greta Gerwig
Like many, after falling for a newly discovered work of art, I spend much time in the wake or afterglow, rather, scouring the internet to learn all I can about the artist who made this wonderful thing. Because that’s how much Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” has stayed with me. Unsurprisingly the writer-director, who is also an extremely accomplished actor, is as smart and funny and full of heart and art and sass as her movie would suggest. Jo March would be proud.
On why she felt she had to tell this story now:
Amy has a line, ‘The world is hard on ambitious girls’ and I thought, this is … I .. has anyone read this! I feel that often with certain books that get the sheen of a classic you sometimes don’t investigate them again because you think you know what it is and when you do you can’t believe how strange and wonderful it is … I was reading and I kept underlining and seeing things as cinematic …
On casting an attractive French actor to play the “German” professor:
In the book they describe Professor Bhaer … they say he has not a single handsome feature on his face and I thought [scoffs/laughs], It’s the movies; we’re not doing that. I took some liberties, I also felt I was allowed to take some liberties; I feel like for the history of cinema men have been putting glasses on hot women and saying they’re awkward so i was like … I can do whatever I want.
On what everyone gets wrong about the Virginia Woolf line (about needing a room of one’s own to write):
That question of authorship/ownership, women, art money, that’s what I sort of thought was at the centre of the book and underneath the book. It’s the thing that Virginia Woolf wrote about in “A Room of One’s Own” everyone remembers as “To write you need a room of one’s own” and it’s very romantic but what she actually said was you need a room of one’s own and money … she was asked to speak on why are there no great women writers, and she said that’s not the question. The question is not why are there no great women writers, the question is why have women always been poor.
Poetry always depends on intellectual freedom and intellectual freedom depends upon material things. And so .. how are you going to write?
On the kaleidoscopic nature of the thing:
Because it’s adaptation … I truly feel … what’s fascinating to me: there’s Louisa May Alcott and her real life and then there’s Jo March who’s sort of her avatar and there’s all these things that are different between Louisa May Alcott and Jo March. You know, the Alcotts were wretchedly poor; they were not the gentile poor; she never got married, she never had children. Jo March does all this other stuff … There’s that distance. And then you’re adding me and I’m writing her writing her writing her ..
And finally, on chutzpa:
I talked myself into the rooms at Sony and I told them I wanted to write it and I told them I wanted to direct it, but I hadn’t made “Lady Bird” yet so … they were like, who are you?
On the off chance you are as nerdy obsessed as I and want even more Gerwig: all but one of these quotes were taken straight from an amazing 92nd Street Y interview with film historian Annette Insdorf.