Interview: Julia Hart and Jordan Horowitz

5 part series with ‘Miss Steven’s co-writer-director and ‘La La Land’ producer.

During the confusion at the end of last night’s Academy Awards ceremony, when it was at first announced that the Best Picture winner was La La Land, only to learn that honor actually was supposed to go to Moonlight, there was one person who handled the situation with incredible calm and grace: Jordan Horowitz. One of the producers La La Land, he gave a heartfelt speech accepting the award, and in the process acknowledging his wife Julia Hart, then when the mistake became clear, Jordan was the person who had the clarity of mind and composure to ensure the filmmaking team behind Moonlight were able to take the stage and embrace their big moment in the limelight. Indeed Jordan quite literally handed over the Best Picture Oscar to Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed Moonlight.

This stunning turn of events at last night’s Oscars and Jordan’s involvement in them to help make things right has drawn considerable attention as in here, here, and here. Turns out, I interviewed Jordan and Julia in September 2016 upon the release of the wonderful indie dramedy Miss Stevens which the couple co-wrote, Jordan produced, and Julia directed. Here are links to that entire 5 part series:

Part 1: “We were both very timid, especially you, as you [Jordan] had a reputation as a producer, to acknowledge to yourself that you had actually become quite a good writer. I made him put his name on the Miss Stevens screenplay. I was proud of the work he’d done.”

Part 2: “I like the idea of getting to show that a real woman is actually like. There are probably a lot of women that we don’t even know how complicated and flawed they are in our real lives because nobody has the privilege of seeing someone when they’re alone.”

Part 3: “You have to just listen to the work. The work is paramount… if you’re invested in the work and you’re patient, then the work will tell you what it wants.”

Part 4: “One of the greatest lessons I learned on this picture was to start to see some of the visual storytelling that can come in the editing process and that can come through directing and imbue more of our writing at an earlier stage with that type of cinematic language.”

Part 5: “It’s [La La Land] just a testament to having a dream to do a thing and then realizing that dream it in the best possible way with the support of a lot of amazing people.”

Jordan is an executive producer of the upcoming Starz series “Counterpart”. He and Julia co-wrote “Fast Color” which Jordan is slated to produced and Julia to direct.

If you haven’t seen Miss Stevens, I recommend it. A little gem of a movie and a wonderful directing debut by Julia Hart.

Twitter: @juliahartowitz, @jehorowitz.