Jamie Babbit, Director of Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007)

I’m 36 and I was born in Shaker Heights which is a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.  I grew up in a wealthy suburb, and my mother was an activist during the civil rights movement – she was registering black voters in the South.  She was in the Peace Corps, and was very active in liberal causes from her 20s through to her 60s.  At the end of her life, she got involved in trying to liberalize the Christian church to accept gays and lesbians, so she was actually arrested.  She died this year, but was arrested within the last year or two of her life.  She never stopped.  It’s funny because I’ve never been arrested for gay causes, but my mother has!  She worked in Ohio as a therapist/psychiatrist.  For the first 10 years of my life she was in private practice as a therapist mostly for children under 16.  And then, when I was 10, she started a multi-million dollar non-profit organization that was a drug rehab basically for kids called New Directions, which is kind of what But I’m a Cheerleader is about. 

She was very cool, totally liberal and supportive, but she was also very organized and a little militaristic as far as running her rehab.  She was a very powerful woman, so she was really good at ordering people around, which was great for me with directing because I learned from a young age how to be in charge and how to manage people.  It just comes so naturally to me because my mother was like that.  But it was hard too, because as a kid I wasn’t in rehab – I was living at home, and my mum basically had the same rules at our house as she had for her rehab kids.  So, although she was very liberal in her views, life at home was very “orderly”, which I always rebelled against.  We had a typed list of all the rules of the house.  One of the rules was “You have to make your bed every day, and every 15 minutes that your bed is not made you get a $1 fine,” and we had to sign the list to make sure that we understood all the directions.  Also, I had a contract for my grades in school saying, “You must get As and Bs.  Sign this contract.”  It was crazy.  So, I basically grew up like that, and when I was making Cheerleader, I really wanted to make a movie that was about that kind of regimented thinking, but was also a comedy and about being gay.  It was everything I’m about, basically. 

I have two brothers – one older, one younger.  We were all close, we still are.  They were like me.  We realized that my mum was a little crazy, but we also appreciated that she was so supportive, and we’re all fairly successful in our careers I think because my mother taught us that that was important.  My older brother’s a producer for television and used to work at CBS news in New York City.  And my younger brother is actually so cute.  He was always the shy, quiet one that I beat up!  He‘s a house husband and takes care of the kids, and his wife is a really high-powered intellectual professor from Ecuador.  He speaks 4 languages and is super-educated, but he’s a stay-at-home dad.  My dad’s like my younger brother, he’s just very quiet, supportive and nice but also has a very funny sense of humor.  He was more into taking care of the kids.

Ovarian cancer.  She went to Japan, and when she came home she thought she was jet-lagged because she wasn’t feeling well.  Then she went to the doctor and they said, “You have stage 4 ovarian cancer and you have 3 months to live,” so it was really quick.  It was hard for me because I was making my second movie The Quiet in Texas and I had just had a baby.  My baby was 2 weeks old, I was directing a movie, and my girlfriend was producing it.  And then I got a phone-call from my mother saying, “I have terminal cancer and I’m dying in 3 months.”  She was never sick, she was always fine.  It was quick, about a year.  In some ways, it was a horrible thing that happened, but I also felt when I die I hope it’s like that too, where you have a really vibrant life and then you die quickly.  We were all there, she was only in the hospital for 2 days, and she was herself.  Also, she had time to say goodbye too.  So it was kind of the best of both things in a terrible situation.  It was funny because I thought maybe I should quit the movie, because I have a baby and my mother is dying, but my mum said, “It will kill me inside if you quit the movie.  You can’t.  You have to do it.”  Actually her goal was to live till the Toronto Film Festival where it premiered.  She said, “I really want to be at the premiere,”  and she was.  She was just such a big personality. 

I was 16 when I realized that I was having sexual fantasies about all my friends and so probably had some tendencies.  I never had boyfriends until I went to university.  My first week in New York, I met a boy who became my best friend and we started dating.  He was my first serious boyfriend.  I told him when I met him that I was bisexual, and although I’d had no experiences with women or men, I was attracted to both.  He was probably the first person I told.  I also needed to tell him because I thought, “Look, I’m trying to date you.  But I just want you to know that I’m also attracted to women.  So, if you’re freaked out by that, then forget it.  I can be intimate with you, but just know that this is something that I’m dealing with.”  So he was fine with that, and we dated all through college.  And basically, after college I told him, “I really need to explore being with women.  I love you, you’re my friend, I’m sexually attracted to you, but I need to be with women too.  I don’t know what that’s like and I just need to know.”  Basically, I was living with him and started to date women at the same time.  I was honest with everyone, and he knew.  But in the end, I think it was super-hurtful.  I think it was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it.  It was really hurtful to him because he was so supportive, but in the end it was really hard, because I did leave him of course… with a girl that I had used his car to go on dates with!  He’s fine, we’re still really good friends.  He’s actually a filmmaker, and my girlfriend’s now producing his first feature.  It’s very incestuous!  Anyway, the girl I started dating was my girlfriend that I’ve been with for 11 years.  So I had a 6 year relationship with him, and then 11 years with her.  In some ways, they’re both very similar personality types.

Guinevere Turner.  I saw Go Fish, and of course I loved it.  I saw it when I graduated from college in 1993.  That was the first lesbian movie I saw.  It was super-political, funny and arty.  I loved it.  But I also really related to Guin’s character because I had never really seen femme lesbians.  Of course I knew some femme lesbians from college, but for the most part my big hang up was that I felt like lesbians never hit on me because they never believed I was gay, and I was really bitter about that.  So, then I thought, “Do I make myself more butch?  Will that help?”  But I’m not really butch at all, so it was kind of a sham.  So, I really related to Guin because she was a very visible femme.  And actually the first gay bar I ever went to in New York was a place called the Clit Club, with Rose Troche, the director of Go Fish.  That was right after university.  I came out when I was 22, which was late for me.  Now I think about it I wish I’d come out when I was 16, I could have cleaned up.

I always kind of told them but I do remember my brother reacting, “Oh, you’re really serious about this.”  I’d always said that I’m bisexual but they were like, “Yeah, yeah, but do you have any proof of that?” and I would say, “Well, no… but in my heart…”  They finally believed me.  They were totally supportive.  I mean my mum cried of course when I told her, even though she was so liberal, mostly because she was worried I’d never have kids.  But when I said, “Mum, I’m having kids,” she was fine.  She was so happy when I decided to have a baby.  My mum also said, “But you were never good at sports!”  She was shocked and confused, because she did have lesbian friends but they were butch women.  She said, “I look at you and you’re so not that.”  But I knew she would get over it quickly, I knew I wouldn’t be rejected and I knew I didn’t have that fear.

I definitely identify as a lesbian, because I’ve been in a lesbian relationship for 11 years and I live as a lesbian.  Deep down I do consider myself bisexual, but I feel it’s dishonest to claim myself as that because I don’t live as a bisexual.  I think it’s complicated, and that’s the problem with labels.  I understand people who don’t want to be labeled, because it’s limiting. But I also understand the power of labeling yourself, because it’s important to be a role-model.  So I try to label myself as a lesbian and to be out, because I live my life every day as a lesbian, and my daughter lives her life as the daughter of lesbians. 

I think it’s important to have “lesbian culture” for sure, as opposed to “LGBT culture.”  Because the problem with LGBT culture is that it usually means “women at the bottom”.  The problem is that (and this is where it comes down to feminism) the gay community is in some ways more sexist than the straight community, because at least in the straight community men have to deal with women because they’re attracted to them, but there are really, really sexist gay men.  I feel like it happens all over the world.  If you have lesbian and gay events, the men just take them over.  Or if you have a lesbian bar and gay men start going there, eventually it’s a gay male bar.  You have to protect your space.  It’s about ego, but mostly money and privilege.  Men have privilege, they have better access to better jobs, better encouragement, better everything, and then they have more money because of that.  And so, women just always get pushed aside.  So, I think it’s very important to have a “lesbian culture” and also a “feminist culture.”

Sundance.  She was producing a Gregg Araki movie that was screened at Sundance, and I was actually there with a short film.  It’s funny… We make a movie together every 2 or 3 years.  Now she’s working with my ex-boyfriend on his movie.  She’s actually so good at her job that it makes me more attracted to her, to see her do what she does because she’s so good at it.  I’ve never worked with anyone better than her.  She produces movies, but since movies are few and far between, she does 1 or 2 movies a year, whereas I do up to 10 TV shows a year.  So she works a lot less.  She mostly works from home and has a home office, so she has more time.  I really like working with her.  That’s part of how I fell in love with her.  It’s part of the relationship.  We complement each other because we’re doing different things.  Her forte is taking care of people’s needs, and my forte is being demanding about what I want.  So, it’s perfect!  If we were both like me, it’d be a nightmare!  We have a good balance and we’re 100% different.  You’ve never met anyone more different than me and her.

It’s really hard.  I have live-in help, someone who lives with me who is basically both of our wives or mothers!  She’s 21 and from Sweden.  It’s very common in LA to have someone live with you and help you.  Also my girlfriend works less than I do.  I’m so lucky, I see my straight friends and it’s hell for them.  The nice thing about being in a lesbian relationship is that my girlfriend helps a lot more.  She’s actually more the primary mother and I’m more the primary money-maker.  It just naturally happened that way.  I’m actually fine with it because I basically grew up that way, where for the most part my mother was working and my dad was at home.  My girlfriend is more like my dad for sure.  It’s interesting, because of course I had all the resentments that any daughter has towards whichever parent is working more.  And now I am that parent!  I had no interest in giving birth, but my girlfriend went to the doctor and found out she couldn’t.  We considered surrogacy where you hire someone to have your baby for you, but it costs 100,000 dollars.  So I thought, “I can be pregnant.  It’s not that hard!”

I went to public school (free school), because my parents were liberals and didn’t want me to be a snob and go to private school.  I grew up in a wealthy suburb which was very conservative and preppy, so I wanted to go to the big city and get away from it all.  I only applied to one university in New York City and I got in.  I went to Barnard College, Columbia University for 4 years, and it was a great school with a lot of outreach to New York City filmmakers.  I knew I wanted to get into movies and that the best way was to get to know people.  I found out about jobs through the university.  From my first year of university I worked for the producer of Dead Poets Society and for Martin Scorsese, and in my third year I worked on the Age of Innocence.  It was great because when I finally graduated from school, I had already worked for 2 filmmakers.  So I was getting more ideas about what the jobs were and what I might like to do. 

At first, I thought I wanted to be a producer because I was always really organized.  I learned that type of stuff from my mum who was already working with me on my resume when I was 11!  But after I worked for the Dead Poets Society producer for 3 years, I realized I really didn’t want to be a producer, because it was all the organizing stuff but none of the creative stuff.  I had always been really interested in acting, and had done a lot of acting since I was a kid, but I knew I never wanted to be an actor.  I was too much of a control freak to really become an actor, because you have no control, you’re just at other people’s mercy.  So I started realizing that I really wanted to become a director.  But it was hard to say it.  I think for a woman, it’s a big thing to say.  I knew that once I said, “I want to be a film director,” I had to do it, and I knew it was really hard.  I spent 10 years working my way up, working on set and also as a script supervisor which is basically a stage manager.  I started when I was 19 in my first year in school and made my first movie when I was 29.  I worked with so many directors before I became one myself.

It is.  It’s hard because no-one is really going to help you and it’s such a highly coveted job that you have to really claim it as your own and just make it happen.  It’s so much about being confident and not being afraid, but when you haven’t done anything, that’s the hardest time to be confident.  Because the only thing you have is knowledge that someday you’ll create something interesting, but how do you know because you haven’t done it before.  It’s especially hard for women, because we don’t get as much encouragement, and also we’re not taught to be arrogant assholes who think we’re the best!  If a woman pushes her actors around on set, she’s just a bitch.  It was hard because my mum was kind of a bitch, so it does come somewhat naturally to me, but I really don’t want to be like that.

I majored in Foreign Studies, because I’ve always loved travelling and I went to school in Ghana.  But I always knew I wanted to do film.  The thing about the film business is you don’t need to have any degree, most people have no degree.  I didn’t go to film school.  I think it’s harder to do it without film school, because you don’t have all the resources you have at film school.  But I always thought the best thing would be to study for 4 years at university and just learn about everything, because it informs you as a smart person who is then going to make more interesting films because you’re not just thinking about film all the time.  I thought about going to grad school for 2 or 3 years just to study film, but it’s so expensive in the US.  And once I worked on a bunch of movies, I thought I’d learn more by working on films, then I could actually get paid and use that money to make my films.  So that’s the way I worked it.

One of my best friends Angela Robinson (director of popular lesbian cult film D.E.B.S.) went to film school.  She went to regular undergrad university for 4 years, then to NYU grad film school.  I think it’s great to go to film school if you don’t have to take out major loans, because it is just so expensive (around $100,000) and you can’t be confident you’re going to make any money in film for a number of years.  I think it’s the way I was raised that I was very focused and so always had a plan.  My plan was, “I’m gonna work on movies, learn as much as I can about filmmaking (the technical part of it) by watching other people.  But then I always need to make my own art on the side.”  So, I didn’t buy a nice car with the money I was making, I made a film.  I was really disciplined about my goals.  And I think what happens is that a lot of people start working on films, start making money and then basically give up what they really want to do.  I see it all the time.  They start defining themselves by that job rather than what they want to do.  So, I always thought, “I need to make my films.”  Because I always figured even if my films were bad, eventually they would be good.  If I made 10 bad films, that was fine.  I gave myself permission, as long as I made them, because I thought, out of 10, there was probably going to be one that’s good.  And it’s true!  The others might suck but who cares?  You learn and you move on.  I’ve definitely made bad films, but I always thought, “I don’t care if it’s bad.  I’m just gonna keep going because I have to.”  I was very focused for 10 years.  And I’m not a perfectionist either, because when you’re a perfectionist it debilitates you.  I learned to think, “Go, go, keep going!  If it’s not good, just keep going.  Eventually it will be good…”

Popular lesbian cult film D.E.B.S., directed by Jamie’s friend Angela Robinson and produced by partner Andrea Sperling  “They’re crime-fighting hotties with killer bodies”

Basically, I started working in independent film, and realized that everyone I knew had no money.  I felt, “I’m a lesbian, I want to have kids and I want money.  I need money.”  I looked around me and saw how poor successful people were in the independent film industry.  So, I thought, “I don’t want to be like that.  I’m not gonna be able to marry someone who’s gonna support me.  I’ll probably marry a girl who has no money like all the other girls I know!”  I realized that I wanted to balance my life by either making commercials or directing television, and also by not losing sight of making films that I really care about.  I see people who, once they get into TV directing, that’s all they do and they forget about their own art.  Me, I’ll always balance it out, because they’re both so important to me.  I really need to make money to support my family, but I also need to make independent films that I really care about, because that’s why I’m directing TV.  So, the only place in the country that I could make a living as a director was LA, so that’s why I live there.  Now I have a successful TV directing career.  Most of the people who do that job are 50 year old men, so I’m really a freak show in that job. 

I just kept persisting and persisting, and it finally worked.  I got one job.  I did a really great job, and I just kept going from there.  And I hope [knocks on table] I keep going.  I made But I’m a Cheerleader first, and then with that film I was able to get an agent.  I always knew that once you make an independent film that gets a big release, people see that you can do something. 

Do you define yourself as a “lesbian” filmmaker rather than just a filmmaker or TV director?  What themes are you focused on?

Sometimes I definitely see myself as a lesbian filmmaker, but it depends.  I’m sure the themes I’m interested in will change over my lifetime.  I’m really interested in extreme politics, not that I have extreme politics, but I’ve always been really fascinated by extreme people, political or otherwise.  Also, the ways that people are extremes within one person.  I’m interested in queer stuff, feminism, female relationships and the ways that women differ from men, like the way women become friends through trading secrets and the complexities of those relationships.

I’m also interested in domestic violence in lesbian relationships, which is why I made the film Stuck.  My grandmother’s sister was a lesbian.  She was with her girlfriend for 40 years, and from what I hear they had a terrible, super-closeted relationship.  They lived in such a closeted society in a 1940s farm town.  My great-aunt was a femme and her girlfriend was a butch who was just horrible and would abuse her.  They also had a daughter.  I think that all families have queer people in them, but it’s just whether you can figure it out or not.  What’s weird is that my dad never defined her as gay.  He just said she lived with her best friend.  Then I asked him, “Have you ever thought that maybe she’s gay?”  He said that my grandmother would never let the girlfriend come over to her house.  My grandmother’s sister had a one-night with someone going to fight in the war and then he never came back.  Then she got this girlfriend.  I thought they definitely must be gay because why wouldn’t my grandmother ever let the “friend” come over if she was really just her friend?  So I went to visit my grandmother, and her sister lived down the block with her “friend”.  I met them and it just all made sense, because the girlfriend was so butch!  She was 80 but she was so butch.  I went home and I said, “Dad, you have got to be kidding me!”  And he said, “It’s so weird, but I’ve never thought about it.”  The whole family never thought about it.  And so then my dad told his siblings, “Well, Jamie thinks she’s gay.”  And all the siblings were like, “Ugh, I don’t want to think about that, it’s disgusting…” in the sense that, “I’ve known this couple forever, and I’ve never thought about them in a sexual way.”  It’s totally homophobic.  I went to her funeral.  They both died within a couple of months of each other recently, and I was hysterically crying at the funeral because their one daughter was in charge of the funeral and the girlfriend was never mentioned.  I have no idea where the girlfriend was buried, and no-one mentioned the girlfriend, including my dad.  And they had lived together since they were 20 years old.  It’s so screwed up. 

So I’m interested in weird secrets.  When it’s a really closeted society, domestic violence is really easy to get away with.  And you feel trapped so you can’t reach out.  Also the last movie I did, The Quiet, was all about sexual abuse and families.  It was a father-daughter sexual abuse situation.  I’m interested in that too, because I just feel like that’s also such a common thing that women deal with but just never talk about.  It’s been an issue for many women I’ve dated, and women that I know. 

I think so.  I think ultimately the things I really care the most about are feminist issues, and I’m not ever going to make a lesbian movie that doesn’t have some political context.  I also really love using comedy to mask my extreme political viewpoints, because I feel like nobody really cares about my extreme political viewpoints.  I make them laugh and enjoy it, and then I slip my viewpoints in, like a Trojan horse, I sneak them in there.  I also think I see the world in a funny way.  I like irony and extreme things.  In Itty Bitty Titty Committee, I love that they have trust funds or they’re using someone, because I do think a lot of political activists can be so independent and devote their lives to politics because they’re getting their money from someone.  Someone’s making a compromise, and I like exploring that because it is more complicated.  Poor people can’t really devote themselves to politics full time.  So, like in Sadie’s case, she’s in a relationship where she’s being provided for.  She’s making serious compromises personally in order to make no compromises politically.

This year I did the The L Word, and I’m doing a bunch of new shows for the major TV channels.  I’m doing a show in New York called Gossip Girl, a new show by the people who created The OC, but it’s about rich kids in New York City instead of rich kids in Orange County, LA.  So that will be really fun.  And then I’m doing a show that stars one of the main guys from Six Feet Under which is a big show in the States.  The way it works in TV is that once a year there’s a 2 week period in July where you interview for TV shows.  Big network TV shows in the States have 22 episodes.  The L Word is a cable show which has 12 episodes.  And they have a different director for every episode, so it’s a lot of work.  Basically, in this 2 week period, you schedule your whole year.  I had 5 interviews a day.  I have a really good resume because I’ve worked a lot, so people know who I am and know I’m experienced.  The interviewers are the creators of the show, like Ilene Chaiken.  You’re convincing them that you get their vision, you love their vision, you’re really excited to direct it, and that you will be completely their slave to their vision.  You’re really the taskmaster for the creator of the show.  So, basically, I know my whole schedule for the next year.  That’s why I scheduled out my pregnancy.  I’m giving myself 2 months off. 

Jamie Babbit is best known for romantic coming-of-age classic But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) “A comedy of sexual disorientation,” and political love tragi-comedy Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007) “Every generation needs a new revolution”

You’re best known for your films But I’m a Cheerleader and Itty Bitty Titty Committee.  With an 8 year gap between the two, they are quite different films.  However, they also share some common elements, so it’s interesting to look at them 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.  They’re both about similar age groups… but 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 Guinevere 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 they 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 Codikow from POWER UP (Professional Organization of Women in Film Reaching Up, an American non-profit production company) 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.

Read more on SJ →  Itty Bitty Titty Committee Report

Read more on SJ →  POWER UP Report

How did you get involved with POWER UP who produced Itty Bitty as their first feature-length film?

Stacy Codikow 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.  POWER UP is quite prominent now in the LA lesbian filmmaking scene.  It’s great actually.  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.”  I’m not a “power lesbian” 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. 

What does Stacy think of the movie?

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.

How did you cast the actors for Cheerleader and Itty Bitty?

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. 

One common theme in both films is that your protagonists undergo a personal transition as well as a transition in their romantic 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 Courtney, Sadie’s girlfriend.  But my problem with her playing Courtney 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 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.”

Cheerleader: Megan overcomes her fears and fights for Graham.  By taking the lead, their journey begins…

Itty Bitty: The cracks deepen in Sadie’s relationship with older woman Courtney (Melanie Mayron, left) when she seduces Anna (right).  Anna learns the hard way but comes out on top

And is the plastic surgery 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! 

So, how accurate is Itty Bitty’s portrayal of lesbians in LA and San Francisco?

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.  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.

You have also directed episodes of the popular lesbian TV drama The L Word.  How realistic do you find its portrayal of the LA lesbian scene?

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.  Ilene Chaiken is the creator of the show, so The L Word is really her vision.  That world is more her world than mine, but I like to work on The L Word too because I certainly know that world and it fascinates me!

Jamie Babbit has also directed episodes from Seasons 4 and 5 of the lesbian TV drama The L Word

In Itty Bitty, you expose the issues of both the lesbian and feminist worlds, 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. 

The film focuses on 2 different types of activist groups, Women for Change and and C(I)A, and you expose the strengths and weaknesses of both.  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 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.

Radical feminist artist group the Guerilla Girls formed in New York in 1985 with the aim of fighting widespread sexism and racism in the arts and politics

GG activism has expanded to include giving presentations overseas, publishing books and printing posters and billboards.  Especially critical of the notoriously male-dominated mainstream film industry (no woman has ever won the Best Director Oscar), their trademark gorilla masks (sometimes worn with fishnets and mini-skirts) are designed to protect anonymity and shatter female stereotypes through shock and humour

Read more  →  Guerilla Girls official website

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 is 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.  

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

You are in Tokyo this year as a guest at the Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.  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.