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Nicole Holofcener
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Tuesday, 14 March 2006
Nicole Holofcener's FRIENDS WITH MONEY opened Sundance this year and has its theatrical release beginning April 7th.
Simultaneously sensitive and wry, Nicole Holofcener's brand of comedy
is as redeeming as it is dark, poking fun at magnificently flawed
characters who endure pointed indignities that almost force us to laugh
with them - as much as it may hurt.
Vibrant and incisive FRIENDS WITH MONEY is riddled with challenges and dares to grapple with issues like self-respect and unhealthy relationships, without sugarcoating or glamorizing. The film accomplishes what independent film was once thought to accomplish: it creates an emotional realism that's rooted in the everyday. It makes the mundane marvelous.
Sara Schieron: The women in this film are deliberately depicted unglamorously: they're mothers, their makeup is worn off, they freak out in Old Navy, with the exception of that dirty business with the maid's costume, they are the antithesis of objectification. What motivation did you have to do this?
Nicole Holofcener: I just wanted them to look like us. I'm just so tired of seeing mothers in four-inch heels and I know they're out there but I don't want to know them. Personally, they're not my friends. It's different when they're working but I want to see people who I can recognize. I get tired of seeing characters all glammed up in clothes they can't afford - because I happen to recognize a designer. I know those are Prada shoes, you can't pretend you're the maid with the Prada shoes. I felt that with all of my movies I really just want a sense of realism. It's hard for costume designers to go with that because they really just want to make the actors look as good as they can and I think for actors, there's a struggle there too. They don't want to look awful.
SS: In some cases, even looking normal is not so great on screen.
NH: Even when they just look themselves, people say, "oh they're so brave to let themselves be seen like that on film" but no, it's not brave. That's what they look like, what choice do they have? I didn't give them their wrinkles! And, unless we put on the Doris Day lens, we're going to see them.
SS: In all of your films - LOVELY AND AMAZING and WALKING AND TALKING included, your protagonists are women struggling with sense of being issues. Why are insecurity and self-esteem important in your films? And if so, do you like being identified as the "female Woody Allen"?
NH: I took that as a compliment. Allen's made some incredible films that have influenced me tremendously. And you know - people need to label you.
SS: But why center on self-esteem - of all the issues women could be grappling with?
NH: You know, I draw from my own sad, little life and you can see what issues I have by watching my movies. I don't feel that I have to keep that private and obviously those feelings are universal because a lot of women are feeling the same way. All of my friends, myself included, are so critical about ourselves - the way we look, our bodies - less so getting older. As we get older we're getting more confident. So that's good news, but in our 20's and 30's it's a plague. I see it everywhere and I think some women are ashamed to let it be known. Some women are really successful but at the same time they're really successful, they're worrying about their hair and they're worrying about their butt and how big it looks - probably a lot more than we know and a lot more than they want to admit. It's a sad waste of time and a real rite of passage to get over that stuff. In LOVELY& AMAZING I was very specifically dealing with those issues. But self-esteem is everywhere, it's in everything, it's all of us. I think we wrestle with it - men too.
SS: And it's not a super convenient plot point, self-esteem is so messy, it's hard to deal with in films. It can't be fixed in the context of 90 minutes -
NH: And it doesn't lend itself to action sequences. Also, what does self-esteem, or lack of it, look like? I'm trying to create interesting characters that have those issues but neither put you to sleep nor inspire hate.
SS: The use of comedy really saves them.
NH: It always does. So much would just be horrible melodrama if we couldn't laugh at ourselves...and cry at ourselves.
SS: Your film involves discussion of money really explicitly and it seemed that in the process, money became like a motive or a reason for issues that would otherwise be unrelated. Frannie and Matt are kind of the example, where they have this great life with great kids and great sex and Aaron says at one point, "I'd be that happy if I had that much money". It begins to look like the reason for happiness or sadness.
NH: I'm not trying to say it's the reason for happiness or sadness; it's just these particular people and their particular situations. Yes, the rich couple does happen to have a really good marriage and either "ouch, that hurts" we're all jealous, or it makes us feel inadequate. I think the four women are in the same class. They're all educated. Their parents' were educated. They just kind of are where they landed. When adulthood kind of shakes you down, where do you fall? And I think not everyone lands in the same arena. Olivia, Jennifer Aniston's character, she's falling behind. If she was a schoolteacher, making less than she was making as a maid, I think it would make a lot of people more comfortable because she's doing something that -
SS: Appears intellectual?
NH: Exactly. She's using her mind. I'd be the first person to say that too - working as a maid is degrading or blah blah blah. That's what most people feel. I think for Olivia it is, but it doesn't have to be that way.
SS: And she plays with the dignity and indignity of it.
NH: Yeah, she does. And I'm trying with the maid's uniform to tip the scales. That's when you see her and say she's going to far here. And where is the line drawn? Does that answer your question?
SS: It both answers my question and brings one up. You just made me realize that one of the reasons this is a challenging film is that we don't frequently interface with films that present a female perspective. That's sounds exploitative and tacky, I know, but I honestly believe that female perspective is different from male perspective. You can say there's no difference but look at the process we engage in when we interpret films that are not made in the "masculine" pattern we're used to. You said, these characters aren't allegorical models, they're specific subjective entities.
NH: If I wrote allegorical models I'd put myself to sleep. That's a job for a critic or a theoretician. If I end up doing that, fine but I have to come to it as a writer from an emotional place. I don't think of my characters theoretically. I love them, I want them to fall and get back up again. But it is absolutely a female perspective - it's my perspective and you knowd if a man directed this movie, it'd be such a different film.
I was watching IN HER SHOES, and you know, Curtis Hansen is a good director and when I knew he had directed the film I thought "Oh, I wish I'd directed it", and I wished I had gotten my hands on that - I mean, I didn't even read the book, I just sort of knew what it was about. And sure enough, every time you see Cameron Diaz she's in her underpants.
SS: Well, I mean, that's her natural state, right?
NH: I know, it's what we're wearing right now (laugh) - but the story I would have told about these sisters and their grandmother would be so incredibly different. Jennifer Aniston could just as soon have been cleaning houses in boxer shorts and tank tops and I very specifically did not want her to.
SS: I have to gush a little. The issues Frances McDormand's character brought up were so massive to me. It's the foreshadowing of a great fear. We work to create this dream life for ourselves and when we get there it turns out to just not be enough. To me, it suggested she was lacking in the ability to enjoy life and she'd never worked on that part of herself. Not that I know you well, but that does not sound like you. How did you come to that?
NH: I guess, as a kid, I had this fantasy about what adulthood would be like - as we all do - and how fabulous it is and how incredible it would be to be a "grownup". I fantasized about the things I'd do and the children and the marriage and traveling and my job, but as I got older, I was always very conscious of looking and listening to older people and realizing that life is not something that you get to or arrive at, as you might thing when you're a child. It's a process and you never really know when you've gotten there. For me, I didn't arrive at middle age with a big shock but Fran's character did and she doesn't know how to enjoy the things that she's got and she probably will learn. I think it's really easy to go through your life unconsciously until that one day it hits and you realize it's half over and the rest of it's pretty much gonna be just like this: more of the same. I think she's learning more of the same is okay and she likes what she has. But the shock of her mortality is what's burying her when we meet her.
SS: I want to ask you about the ending. I felt it was challenging.
NH: Oh yeah? Does that mean you don't like it?
SS: No, I mean it was challenging, insofar as I can't make a decision about it. On the one hand it seems as though everything has been laid out for the characters and like you said, they haven't been plopped in the same place in adulthood. So when it comes to the part where the relationship becomes apparent for Olivia and that relationship will plop her, it appears, in the same situation the other are in, it was not predictable, it just did not feel like a route to her salvation. Can you talk about the decision to end on that note?
NH: I think, as I've gotten older, I've gotten more cynical and I don't think people have to work on their issues to solve them. Olivia has money problems. Well, now she won't have any money problems. She'll have another kind of problem. But maybe Olivia doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up and she doesn't want to have a career and that's okay. I see the finiteness of life and life is too short to try to fix everything about you and if she can have a healthy loving relationship where someone loves her and takes care of her and she doesn't support herself - who cares? That's not what most important in life and that's not necessarily what she needs. I feel like there are people in the world, like some friends of mine who are broke, and I just wish they would meet someone rich or win the lottery and yes, maybe they're not rich because they have low self esteem or they don't believe in themselves or they're afraid of failing but also, they could meet someone rich and just get on with it. So I think I'm cynical. But at this age, it's how I feel. There are so many problems we have and problems we face, it would just be so nice if some of them could be taken care of for us.
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