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by Sarah Jacobson
Jennie Livingston is best known for her film Paris is Burning, a documentary about black gay men who vogued. Not only did her film spur a national craze (confirmed when Madonna dedicated a song to the dance style), but the film "crossed over" and brought some very heavy subject matter into the mainstream. The film made millions for the then-fledging Miramax, and broke conventions of all sorts — about documentaries being a commercial success, about people being interested in a film about black gay men, and about women filmmakers doing documentaries that matter. Jennie is currently in San Francisco working on her new film, Who's the Top? a musical narrative. We talked about her last film, her new film, and everything in between.
Sarah Jacobson: How did you become a filmmaker?
Jennie Livingston: I actually didn't really ever want to be a filmmaker — what I studied in school was English. I went to Yale and I got really tired of the English major, so I dropped out and switched to an art major. I got a lot of encouragement from teachers. I got a fellowship right out of school for my photography at an artist colony. They paid for me to sit there for seven months and process film and make stuff. At the end of that seven months, I thought, "I don't want to do this. There is nowhere for photographs to go — art books, art shows for rich people." Although there are photographs I love that tell wonderful stories, it is not a medium that people really understand.
I moved to New York and I took this class, "Sight and Sound," at NYU, a summer class. It was way over-priced and all the equipment broke. It was silly, except one day I went to Washington Square Park with my still camera and I saw these guys who were doing this dance on the street. They were doing all these elaborate hand motions. They were saying things like "butch queens and drags," and "Saks Fifth Avenue mannequins." I went up to them and said, "What are you doing?" They said "We're vogueing." I said, "What is that?" To make a long story short, they said come back, I could film them again. I came back with a little wind-up Bolex that we had from the class and they weren't there. So I went up to a really cute black girl in the park who had a very fabulous haircut and said, "Do you know anyone who vogues?" She said, "That guy and that guy vogue." I filmed them for the class and was drawn in.
I started going to some balls, started to get to know people, and eventually I sold this used car that my dad had given me, borrowed some money, and made a five-minute clip. With that I began to apply for grants. Eventually I got a rather large co-production deal for a first film with a public TV station in New York. I got half the money to shoot it and I had to raise the back end. The whole process took six, seven years. But I didn't have to go to film school. I didn't have to pay tuition. I actually did apply to a couple of film schools and didn't get in. I got rejected from NYU and then I really didn't get rejected from USC but they rejected my application, because something didn't come in on time. Now I've lectured at both those schools.
SJ: Do you feel a big separation as a queer filmmaker and as a woman?
JL: I don't know. I think it would be Women's Zoneong to say, "I'm not a queer filmmaker. I'm not a woman filmmaker. I'm just a filmmaker." I am my identity to a certain extent, but I really do think of myself as just a filmmaker. Obviously what you do in your life and the people you associate with, those things have a big impact on the stories you choose to tell, the directions you go in. But in a sense, I have a lot of ideas. My first movie was about gay men, black, gay men. I had to put myself in an environment that I initially didn't know anything about. In the end, I felt I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about the people I met. I can't say exactly what was my curiosity about that subculture. Was it driven by my being gay? A little bit. But it was just as much driven by my being female. I was interested in the vogueing subculture because of the construction of identity that was taking place in the theater of the balls — whether it was the construction of a female identity with the queens, or the construction of an executive identity with the guys who dressed up as executives. What interested me as a woman was how one's gender and social identity are put together by signs and symbols, and by correct or incorrect reading of media culture. I think that is something as a woman I might be slightly more attuned to, because as women we have to construct our identities more elaborately.
SJ: There is that great essay by bell hooks where she says America's most famous blondes are actually brunettes — Madonna, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe. One thing I loved about Paris is Burning is that I thought, "Oh my god, these guys want to be like my mom and live in the suburbs." It was so bizarre that way.
JL: I think one reason that the movie appealed to a lot of people — be they black, white, gay, straight, old, young — was very much about the American dream and the construction of the American dream. In terms of my first film I think, yeah it was a gay subject and I probably felt more comfortable and more drawn to a gay subject because I am a lesbian. But when I first started making that movie, I really didn't define myself as gay. In the course of making the film, I started to have girlfriends. I feel like my personal identity is my personal identity and it's a fluid thing, but my filmmaker identity is really about curiosity about the world.
The movie I am making now is a lesbian sex comedy called Who's the Top? and my one-liner is "Woody Allen's younger dyke sister goes to the dungeon." It's set here in San Francisco and it's a goofy sex comedy. It is kind of like She's Got To Have It meets Belle Du Jour meets 8 1/2. The theme is how do you live in a world where maybe you have one partner, you have one girlfriend, and you know your fantasies and possibilities are endless? What decisions do you make and how do you deal with that when those fantasies come to call? I think if the movie succeeds, it will succeed not just because everybody wants to know about lesbians, or sado-masochists, or lesbian poets. Those are subsets of identity that occur in the movie. There are themes of love versus lust. The movie also has a girl who has an intellectual crush; she's a dyke and she's a poet stuck on a straight white guy. She really apes this guy. She idolizes him and has all these imaginary conversations with him. The big question is, "How do women deal with having idols?" In almost any field, there aren't that many role models for women. Does it mean we want to become men? Does it mean we want to transmute our admiration of those men into another kind of identity? I think that is something that has a universality, not even just for women but, say, for blacks, or for anyone who has an idol and wonders how relevant looking at that hero is to their life.
SJ: Do you have many women role models?
JL: In my field I don't. I haven't encountered the people who could have been my role models. Jane Campion is a wonderful woman filmmaker role model. I haven't met her. She is also not my favorite filmmaker. I totally love her work, but she's not one of the people I saw and said, "I want to make movies."
SJ: Who are the people?
JL: In life I definitely feel blessed with having met strong women. My mom actually was a writer who Women's Zoneote eighty books. Every day she'd go into her office — she was a children's book writer — and write. She taught. She published. I'm lucky because I grew up in a house where it was assumed women were creative, that they produce. My mom wasn't exactly a feminist. She and my dad were of a certain generation, but the truth was, she did it. Her friends weren't doing it. So I feel blessed that way. When I look at women role models, I look at writers. I'll read about Virginia Woolf. There are many more woman role models who are powerful and who are writers than there are filmmakers.
SJ: You don't have to be bossy to be a writer.
JL: Yep, you just sit there and do your thing.
SJ: I think that is what's hard about women getting into filmmaking. You have to be really fucking bossy and it is scary. And it's not encouraged.
JL: One of the things I spent a couple years on after Paris is Burning was a movie I Women's Zoneote called Not For Profit. It was the first script I Women's Zoneote. I attached a bunch of actors — they were some wonderful actors like Lili Taylor, before she was quite as big as she is now, and CCH Pounder and Peter Gallagher and Wallace Shawn. It was quite an interesting group of talented actors who liked the script enough to attach their names without any definite money. Unfortunately, there was no definite money. It was a two million dollar budget — it was quite an elaborate story. Mindy Afrom (who produced Female Perversions) was my producer, and Mindy and I just couldn't find money.
SJ: What was the film about?
JL: The film was almost as if I had written an unfundable script — I'm going to make the most unfundable script in America and then see if I can get it funded. It's about a rapist of indeterminate gender who attacks famous straight white guys. (I was kind of inspired by the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings that were going on while I was Writing it.) There's this fundraising PR agency where this Jewish girl works, and they get approached by this coven of witches who want to better the image of pagans in the eyes of the public. The Jewish girl falls in love with the witch who is head of the coven. Meanwhile, the PR agency is trying to help a group that is against sexual violence — so the fact that all these men are being raped is really good for raising the public's awareness of them. Then our heroine begins to suspect that the witches are involved in the rapes. Can you imagine why these people didn't want to fund this movie?
SJ: You've tried to start your new film a couple of times and there has been some setbacks. How are you going to proceed with Who's the Top?
JL: I think the money thing is actually coming along. I feel good about that. My producers are Cirri Nottage, who used to be senior VP at Forty Acres and a Mule, and Michael Solomon, who runs a company in New York called Cross Productions. I have a little money, but if all this stuff that looks like it will come through doesn't come through (like the Shooting Gallery was gonna pay for the whole thing and they just dropped out), I would make the film very low, because I just don't have time to waste.
Meanwhile, I've started to write another script which is based in Berlin and New York in the late eighties. I had a fellowship from the German government in '95 and spent a half year researching that script. It's an ensemble piece, like a Short Cuts or Nashville kind of thing. It takes place among artists and writers in Berlin — some of whom are informants for the secret police — and among artists and writers in New York during the kind of art boom of the eighties, just before the stockmarket crashed. There would be stories between the Germans and the Americans that go back and forth. Most of it takes place in New York, and it is a little bit more of a mainstream film. Structurally it's difficult. I have to do this sex movie Who's the Top? because I have to get on to that next movie.
SJ: When do you think you'll finish shooting?
JL: I think that depending on the budget, probably we'll be done by middle to late September. This is going to be fun. It actually has a lot of musical numbers. I really liked the Woody Allen movie; I thought it was so delightful and so funny. I'm really psyched about working with a choreographer and doing these musical numbers, like rows of girls in leather and lace, and girls singing. It's going to be a goofy enterprise.
back to Where the Girls Are index
Sarah Jacobson, 25, has made two films with virtually no budget. Her infamous San Francisco Art Institute student film, the 1993 black-and-white short I Was a Teenage Serial Killer, makes boys squirm and girls churn as it wields a deadly lashing on sexist pigs. This year, Sarah made her first full-length feature, Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore. For more on Sarah, check out the Women's Zone interview with her from earlier this year and the Sarah Jane Web site. Or e-mail [email protected].
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