Interview [Written]: Nicole Holofcener

A Directors Guild of America interview with writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Please Give, Friends with Money, and Lovely & Amazing):

Q: Do you think women are pigeonholed into certain genres?

A: Like romantic comedies? Yeah. I mean it’s good to hear that a woman directed episodes of Breaking Bad. She’s breaking a barrier. But overall I think the business is just downright sexist and racist. The world is sexist and racist — why should the movie business be an exception?

Q: So does that mean male directors get offered better scripts to direct?

A: I do think that I get offered a lot less good stuff. But I can’t blame it on my gender. I just blame it on the fact that what I do is idiosyncratic. But there are movies that guys direct that I could have easily been offered. But they develop things. I don’t work that much also because I don’t have a production company. [Other directors] have people reading and optioning stuff all over the place.

Q: Why don’t you do that?

A: Having a machine or producing doesn’t interest me. But I am interested in a script that someone else wrote if it’s something I couldn’t have made up. I really wanted to direct The Weather Man, that Gore Verbinski ended up directing. That’s a story that no one would assume I would be interested in. And I did go in and have a meeting about it and they were open to it. But I totally blew the meeting. I think I was too opinionated about what I would change.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

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