Stacy Codicow decided to start POWER UP. She was really involved with GLAAD (The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), as one of their biggest fundraisers. She’s from an old Hollywood Jewish family. Her dad escaped Auschwitz concentration camp, came to LA and made millions. She’s a business woman, and when she was working for GLAAD, she found it very male. She thought, “I’m really good at raising money. I should start my own lesbian organization. The men mostly rule GLAAD. Why should I give my money to them?” So she contacted a bunch of lesbians that she knew were visible and out and might be able to help her. She contacted me (I’d never met her before), and when she said, “I want to start this group,” I said, “I love the idea. I’ll support you any way I can.” I gave her some money, and basically became part of the board of directors to help guide the group. I kind of equate POWER UP with Women for Change, the group in Itty Bitty, where they have board meetings and pie charts and they’re business people. They’re more business, conservative and organized – women in suits, “power lesbians”. 

Not at all! Well, I do think I have a side like that, but I also have the total radical side that can convince POWER UP to make a movie like Itty Bitty. 

I think she really likes the movie. I think it’s not her cup of tea necessarily. She’s more conservative, and the thing that happens at the end kind of scares her! But she likes the love story and the humour. She gets that young girls like it and she knows there’s a market for it. I think it was scary for her because it’s a pretty radical film. Stacy doesn’t know that much about feminist politics. I mean she’s a lesbian and a business woman, but she doesn’t know about the music or the politics. But she was bold enough to make the movie. I think it’s so totally amazing that she did it. I’ve always given POWER UP so much praise because they’re so brave for having this as their film. I think it’s a great movie for them because it is so feminist and lesbian, but it’s definitely pushing their boundaries.

Yeah, POWER UP is quite prominent. It’s great actually. But the thing about LA is that it’s so consumed with itself. The people look inwards instead of outwards, and are obsessed with the film industry, beauty and being in a bikini. It’s a very specific mindset, so I don’t think people in LA think about the people outside of LA, to tell you the truth. That’s really LA, but it’s not San Francisco. San Francisco is insane in its own way. It’s more like Itty Bitty insane. The people are so political but a little close-minded. They have no tolerance for people who are closeted. Actually it was really interesting screening Itty Bitty in San Francisco. They booed Sadie’s character and they were angry at the end of the film when Sadie and Anna got back together, because Sadie cheats. They were really hard core and booing. People were like, “Why the hell would you let those two be together?” What I said in my Q&A in San Francisco is that my point was they’re not in a relationship, they’re just getting together. And every lesbian I know is still getting together with their ex-girlfriend who’s cheated on her 10 million times. They’re still friends and they’re still getting together but they’re not girlfriends. Lesbians are in “breakup-ships” and they last for like 20 years! I see it in the community so much, and once again I’ve never seen a movie about it. So I wanted to make a movie about that too. No-one wants to see lesbians who aren’t perfect, because it’s so hard to live our day-to-day lives. But then we are human, girls are complicated and they do cheat.

I think there are definitely some lesbians like that for sure. I know for a fact there are lesbians like that, but I don’t think it represents all lesbians, no way. In every L Word relationship there’s cheating and falling apart, which I think is sometimes just dramatic license because it’s more interesting to have conflict. It’s just one person’s point of view and that’s what it really comes down to. I wish there were 50 shows on the air, with 50 different types of lesbians. I’m sure Ilene and all the people who work on The L Word would agree, because it’s unfair to ask one show to represent a community. 

You’re best known for your films But I’m a Cheerleader and Itty Bitty Titty Committee. Although there’s an 8 year gap between then two, they seem to act very much in parallel. 

Yeah. I made Cheerleader when I was a new lesbian, so it’s a lot more about the beginnings of a relationship. It’s about a new relationship between Megan and Graham. The movie ends and basically they’ve just decided to start their new life together. And I think Itty Bitty is more about the continuation of what happens, the reality of “Ok, now I’m a lesbian” and the complication of relationships. I’ve now been in a relationship for over 10 years, so it’s more about how people compromise things, how people love each other but life is more complicated. Also they’re both about similar age groups… Cheerleader is about the late teens, and Itty Bitty is about the early 20s.

How did you develop the story concepts and writing for Cheerleader and Itty Bitty?

I wrote Cheerleader as basically a 10 to 20 page treatment where I wrote every scene and all the plot points of what happens. Then I hired a writer. It was the same with Itty Bitty. Actually Andrea [Sperling] and I wrote that treatment together, we worked on it for 7 or 8 years. We started it right after Cheerleader, but then we did The Quiet in the middle. At first, we were actually working with Guin Turner on developing the writing for Itty Bitty. She came up with title and she helped us a lot with the story. We wanted her to write it, but she didn’t have time because she was working on The L Word. So eventually we just took it back from her and hired 2 writers that we didn’t know. I didn’t know the writer of Cheerleader either, but the script was really good. The Itty Bitty writers were brand new 20 year old girls who liked Cheerleader so that were willing to write it for free because we had no money. We handed them a 30 page outline and asked them to write the scenes. Itty Bitty was a longer process of development. Andrea and I have always loved riot grrrl music. We were into Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Courtney Love and all that music. We were always in the front row of concerts, and we’ve always known the girls in the bands. It’s always been our scene of people. We loved that they were so political, fun, cool and really in-your-face feminists. So, we wanted to make a movie which was the cinematic equivalent of that. Also, I really wanted the most extreme, pure political person to actually be straight, which was Shulamith. I definitely wanted bisexual and straight women in the movie, because Kathleen Hanna, Courtney Love and all the women who were really big in the riot grrrl music scene are all straight. They’ve dabbled in bisexuality but mostly they’re with men. So, Chearleader is about my growing up and the rehab, and Itty Bitty is about my riot grrrl crazy music phase. 

The style and colour of the two films are very different…

Yeah. That‘s because my artistic inspiration for Cheerleader was Barbie! So I handed my production designer the Barbie Dream House. I was so obsessed with the idea that my mom said I couldn’t be a lesbian because I was bad at sports. I always loved Barbie from when I was a kid, so I wanted to make a movie that was all about Barbie. And then Itty Bitty is all about my love of riot grrrl music, and the cinematic equivalent of that is down and dirty, Super 8, fun, crazy, grungy, punk-rock style. It’s less order, more frenzy, less control of colours, more chaos, super-cheap…

How were Cheerleader and Itty Bitty produced?

It was similar for both. But Cheerleader was more expensive. Andrea found an investment banker who was the Vice-president of Prudential Insurance and had just started a film company. It was private money. Andrea’s a really good producer, so we got people together and made the movie. Itty Bitty was a similar thing, where Stacy the POWER UP woman said, “I want to make a movie”, and we said, “Well what about this?” Actual cash money was zero, but it was basically like having a million dollars. A lot of the big businesses give free stuff to POWER UP because they’re a non profit, so we had a free camera package from Panavision, free processing, free editing… free everything. In the end, it was a similar budget for both, except we actually paid people on Cheerleader and on Itty Bitty we couldn’t pay anyone because we didn’t actually have any cash money.

How did you cast the actors for both films?

Well, I was friends with Clea from my neighborhood. I met her at a coffee shop where she used to give me free coffee. She’d been in a short film I directed called Sleeping Beauties, which is actually really similar to Cheerleader. I thought she was really cute and really talented. She was my first choice for Graham, and she was really good friends with Natasha Lyonne. All the other people came in to audition, and I went through the normal channels. Clea actually lived in Tokyo for a couple of months when she was working on The Grudge, and she loved it. So I actually called her when I was coming to Tokyo about what I should do. A lot of the cast of Itty Bitty were friends. They are the characters! I just wanted to pick people from the community, because we had no money, and even though they’d get paid a tiny bit, they’d freak out if they were expecting a lot of big things. I actually hired a lot of people from my TV work, like Carly Pope who plays Shulamith. She was the star of TV show Popular which I worked on for 2 years. I loved her. I knew she had the right attitude. She’s so good, and she’s like that character… well, she’s not a hardcore feminist, but she’s definitely feminist and she’s interested in feminist politics. She‘s open, like she would make out with a girl, it’s just not a big deal, but she’s into boys too. I think she’s such a talented actress and she’s so beautiful. And she’s really easy to work with, very directable and just really nice. I like her and I think she could become a big star. In America, to be successful you need to be super-talented and super-beautiful and I think she’s both. I know the girl who plays Meat [Deak Evgenikos] because she was Guin Turner’s girlfriend and she was in one of Guin Turner’s shorts that I worked on, Hummer. My philosophy is that I help a lot of people on their films. I work on a lot of films still for free, because I always get so much out of it and learn so much. I worked on Guin Turner’s short for free and I found that actress. So, you always get something out of it. It’s the nice thing about the lesbian community in LA, we all know each other, and we all help each other. It’s very supportive, not always, but for the most part. 

In both films, your protagonists undergo a personal transition towards a more substantial and complex personality, as well as a transition in their relationships. Is that how you see people and their relationships?  

I think so. What I actually realized is really similar in the two movies is that the love interest in both films, Sadie and Graham, are both the strong character in the beginning of the film, but they are both revealed to be weaker at the end. The mentor ends up falling, and then the student ends up taking over. It’s the same in both movies. You think Sadie is the political person, but when you get to know her better you realize that she’s a coward. People meet me on the street and they think I’m just a nice girl from Ohio, but they don’t really know what’s lurking inside! I think it’s just the way I was brought up, I don’t know, I’m sure it’s all very related to me. But I don’t purposefully do it, it’s just the way I see the world. Doesn’t everyone hide as a nice girl from Ohio and then blow things up?!

In Itty Bitty, you raise a number of issues, including generation-gap relationships, and the mixing of sex and politics in activism. 

Guin Turner was actually angry because she originally wanted to play Courteney. But my problem with her playing Courteney is that Guin is somewhat older but she is beautiful and looks young. I wanted Sadie to be with someone that it’s obviously not going to work out with, someone too old so it’s like a mother/daughter situation. If it was Guin Turner, you’d be like, “Oh, they’re kind of cute”, and although Guin thinks of herself as older, she is really pretty and looks like she could fit in with that group. And I have seen the “older woman, younger woman” thing. I’ve never seen that in a movie, but I definitely see it in life for sure in LA – the older successful woman and the younger girl. Also I didn’t want to show with Sadie’s character that she was in this relationship and then met Anna who was the only other girl she dated. I wanted her to be the kind of girl who does sleep around a lot. Sadie is emotionally and morally compromised for sure. And, I definitely thought about and still have mixed feelings about the last scene of the movie, because I could easily change it to Anna blowing up the building and then running down the street by herself in this victorious slow-motion moment. And then you just see her getting in the car and throwing the bra. That could be the end, and forget about the last scene with Sadie. But the reason why I wanted to put the scene back in was because I wanted to show that Anna doesn’t want to date Sadie, she wants to teach her. At the beginning Sadie says, “I’ll teach you, you have a lot to learn,” and by the end Anna’s saying, “You know what? You have a lot to learn. You’re a really screwed up person. I didn’t know anything about the politics. But in some ways that’s the easier stuff, the harder stuff is actually the emotional stuff”.

And is the liposuction clinic a comment on LA?

It’s totally LA, it’s so LA… And a lot of women get plastic surgery in LA, so I actually feel somewhat guilty, because I’m not so extreme. If a lesbian wants to get breast implants, I really don’t care. I would date someone who had breast implants! 

You describe 2 different types of activist groups, and expose their strengths and weaknesses. Do radical groups like the C(I)A (Clits in Action) really exist? 

Yes, they do. Not that they do the last thing that happens in the movie – that’s total fantasy. But defacing public property? That’s totally real. And it’s basically based on a number of groups I’ve been in over the years. Some of them are just feminist groups like the Guerilla Girls. There are definitely visibility groups, putting statues and billboards up. I stole all that stuff from groups. I didn’t want to judge anyone. I didn’t want to judge Women for Change or the C(I)A. I wanted to show that they’re all flawed, like I don’t think the C(I)A is very effective, I actually think Women for Change is more effective. They’re all making changes in certain ways, but they’re all ineffective in other ways. Guin Turner came up with the title of the C(I)A. She’s so good! She also came up with the title of The L Word. She’s so talented. But also, Guin was super-involved with all these political groups and sleeping with everyone in them…! I think most of these activist groups are really into Itty Bitty because they’ve never seen a movie about it. Maria Maggenti [director of The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (1995) and Puccini for Beginners (2006)], one of the founders of Act Up [AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power], has really funny stories about the in-fighting that was happening there too. Anyone who’s been in these groups knows everyone’s sleeping with each other, that some people are there for the politics and some people are there to get laid. It’s just par for the course. Itty Bitty is 100% inspired by Born in Flames, the Lizzie Borden movie made in the early 80s, where they blow up the World Trade Center in the end. I also ripped a lot from that film. Lizzie Borden is a straight feminist director who I totally worship and think is so talented. She hasn’t made movies recently, but I loved Born in Flames when I saw it because it was a movie about extreme radical lesbian feminist politics. It’s great and it just came out on DVD. Actually, the reaction of some people in San Francisco to the last action in the movie is, “Do we really need that in America after 9/11?”, but I think that actually it’s more relevant after 9/11. People are really freaked out in the States after 9/11. I feel like extremism is a part of our culture, it affected us in a very deep way, and so let’s examine it.

You also raise the controversial issue of gay marriage in the scene where Shulamith takes a stand. Although treated as almost a side character, she seems very important in projecting the political tone of Itty Bitty. 

The anti-gay marriage theme is actually not American, it’s totally from my friends in Berlin. A lot of my friends in Berlin worked on Itty Bitty. My two best friends are lesbians in Berlin. One was a cinematographer for Itty Bitty, Christine Meier, the other was my first assistant director, Clarissa Thieme. They’re super-political, they’re involved in political lesbian stuff in Berlin, and they’re all against gay marriage. I got into fights with them about it when I first met them. Because I thought for us in the States it’s really all about the law and that we’re not protected. It is a compromise but we want the political advantages. It’s what Sadie’s girlfriend from Women for Change said: “We don’t even have equal rights. Are we going to have anarchy?” But what my German friend told me (and I thought this was an interesting point) is that she’s not judgemental about people who are in group marriages: “Why should the state say it can only be two people, why can’t it be three? Why is the state involved at all? It’s none of anyone’s business.” She’s anti-marriage. And also, “Why should gay people be part of an institution which is a horrible institution?” In theory I’m totally against marriage too. Intellectually, I’m totally against it. But in practice I want the legal rights. Shulamith’s an idealist, she’s shooting for something higher than I am. She’s the center. She was always our key character to talk about the politics. But I also love that she ends up with Calvin who’s not political at all but just loves blowing things up… and she’s hot! She’s as extreme as Shulamith, but she loves the explosives and bombs. There are so many lesbians in the military in the States. A lot of them are just into the day-to-day life of the military which is really rough. They don’t like the war, they don’t like what’s happening, they think it’s stupid and they’re discriminated against, but they like the camaraderie and physicality. It’s like a hardcore family.

How has Itty Bitty been received so far?

It’s been shown at film festivals and it’s had a lot of reviews. The reviews have been pretty mixed, pretty similar to Cheerleader. I thought men would hate it, but actually men really like it. It’s more lesbians who have problems with it, or people who wanted it to be like Cheerleader. I think especially punk-rock men really like it, because they can relate to the rebellion and that phase in their life when they were super-punk-rock. The punk-rock community has been really supportive. I love the punk-rock community so that’s great. A lot of those guys too are feminist. Punk-rock people, boys and girls, have seen a different side of the world because they’ve rejected society. So that’s interesting to me. I knew that it would be mixed and it is, and I’m fine with that. I like the movie so that’s important. Financially, hopefully it will make its money back, I don’t know. I’m so not involved in the money part of it all. I made no money in making it and I didn’t do it to make money, but I hope that POWER UP makes money off it. I think they will because they didn’t invest that much so that helps. It’s being commercially released by POWER UP and I don’t know what’s happening in Europe, and I’m sure they’d love to have a distributor in Japan. Cheerleader got released in France just because a lesbian had her own lesbian distribution company and she released it there. So it just took one person. She did the DVD and actually put my short films on it, did a lesbian party event for it, got it out there and made money.  

You expose the issues of both the lesbian and feminist worlds in Itty Bitty, but you also successfully ensure no negative slant on either. 

That was really important to me, because I am a feminist and a lesbian. I was scared actually. Originally, my biggest fear in making the film was I didn’t want it to be a film that just made fun of feminists and made you feel, “Those bitchy feminists.” I needed to strike the balance between triumph and criticism. And humour helps. I think it’s important to get a balance between getting the issues across and entertaining. I don’t try to be funny, it’s just the way I see the world. 

Do you see yourself in your characters?

I would say I’m very Shulamith in some ways. I’m more Shulamith than Megan and Anna, and more Megan and Anna than I am Graham and Sadie. But there are parts of me that are Graham and Sadie too. I’m in all the characters for sure. I’m not sure if I’m as brave as both my heroines Megan and Anna. I mean I guess I’m brave that I made the films, but I would never be brave enough to cheer at a rehab ceremony and I would never be brave enough to blow up the Washington Monument. When I made Cheerleader, I was too afraid to go to one of those camps for research. I’m more of a coward than my characters. It’s a fantasy of what I could be. That’s what I’d like to be in my imaginary future.

So what are your future projects?

I really want to make a femme fatale movie next, like a film noir movie à la Third Man or Strangers on a Train.

What are your impressions of Japan?

I love Japan, and I love Tokyo because it’s a big city. The people are really nice, polite and have good manners, which I love because I’m also from a small town where you should be generally nice to people. It’s really easy to be a tourist here because people don’t care if you take out your camera at any point, they don’t stare and they’re very polite. I love kitsch, I love Barbie and I love “cute”, and Japan is the capital of all those things. Kiddyland is my favourite store, it’s like heaven on earth for me. I actually really love how intimate the lesbian bars are here, because it’s like going from living room to living room which I think is very cozy. They have a very home-grown non-alienating feel. The thing that’s hard for me in Japan is that it’s very formal. I think it’s harder to connect with Japanese people because they’re very guarded and proper. It’s harder as an outsider to break in. As a tourist who’s here with her best friend, it’s really easy, but if I were living here, I think it’d be hard for me. But then probably once you have friends, those friendships go very deep. Germany’s kind of like that too. As I said, I have very close friends in Berlin, who were not very nice when I first met them! And then I realized that German people are much nicer than Americans when they’re actually your friends. And I’m sure it’s like that in Japan too, but I haven’t really cracked through that part. I’ll definitely be back, for sure. I want to try and convince the film festival to do a retrospective of Andrea’s movies, especially since she works with queer Japanese filmmakers. It would be so cool to show the work of Gregg Araki who made such amazing queer movies. They’re very punk-rock, super-gay and super-Japanese, but they’re totally American too. And Andrea also works with a Hawaiian-Japanese filmmaker who also does really interesting things. So I think they should invite her and her movies, especially so I can come back! 

Do you have a message for the SJ readers?

Anyone who is interested enough to read this interview is probably interested enough in films to make their own. I love movies and I love YouTube. My movie Itty Bitty is really a response to Born in Flames, a movie I saw that was made 20 years ago by a woman for 50 cents. And I hope that my movies inspire anyone to just get out and make anything creative, because I would love to see it and I’m sure other people would too. I just think women need to make more films. Put them on YouTube so I can see them! It would be so interesting if there were more Japanese lesbian films especially, even just short films. I would love to see a short film about a girl who goes on a date in Japan and hangs out at one of those bars. It’s so interesting to everyone in the world. People care. I have a writer friend who works on The L Word, Shareen, who is Rose Troche’s girlfriend. She’s a Palestinian-American lesbian and she just went to the West Bank and made a short film there. And it was so great because it’s feminist, it talks about the martyrs, and it’s a really simple narrative movie about a girl who’s trying to buy a cake for her father’s anniversary for being a martyr and dying. It’s really simple but it’s so political in its way. And it’s so interesting because you rarely see any movies that Palestinians are making because they don’t have access, but she has access. So, it was so great to see it at Sundance. The lesbian film world doesn’t just exist in LA. It’s all over the world.