JULIE ANDREWS · PAUL SCHRADER · JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY · ETGAR KERET · JOY GORMAN WETTELS · CHAYSE IRVIN · MANUEL BILLETER
Share their Stories
Writer Director
Oh, Hi! · The Boy Downstairs
In reality, we're all complex people with feelings and our own sets of baggage. I do think we are very good at self-sabotage, all of us. It's a very easy road to go down. It's safe because it's comfortable, and we know it. When you can find the ways you self-sabotage and try to stop that, it will hopefully lead to a happier life and things that are meaningful. When I was in my late twenties, I got out of a serious relationship and kind of reentered the dating scene. I was shocked by the simplification of a lot of complicated feelings around dating and how women are so easily labeled crazy, and men are so easily labeled assholes.
“Taxi Driver, the first script I wrote, it is very much a young man's film. And it's full of, the anger of a young man. And the striking out. And also it's full of the pathology of suicidal glory.”
”Tony Walton, when he was designing the costumes, he said, ‘I think somehow Mary Poppins has a bit of a secret life. She's a bit naughty..’ And it was a great clue for me because that little wicked thing that she has occasionally. And then while doing and thinking and talking to the director, you do form certain things like flying with the feet turned out and the way she walked. I tried to make her walk almost as if she weren't quite touching the ground.”
“I think that the truth of the movie is maybe as true as I could tell the story. What I thought was possible. It's a movie. And in working with actors. I mean, what are we doing when we're doing that?…A story can be true to whatever narrative, but it can be very boring to watch. I think that Willem's performance is probably the best performance he gave in his life.”
Academy Award · Tony · Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer/Director
Doubt starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams
Moonstruck · Wild Mountain Thyme · Danny and the Deep Blue Sea · Joe Versus the Volcano
I knew Philip Seymour Hoffman for several years. We went on vacation together. He produced a play of mine. Before we did Doubt, we worked in the same theater company together, and he was, you know, very committed to excellence. And so he could become impatient with anybody who was not committed to excellence, and that could make him a volatile person to deal with. Phil cared. He cared a great deal. And he worked really hard. They're very committed. Like with Viola Davis. Viola had done a decent amount of big work before Doubt, but she was not recognized yet. And she was careful. You know, she certainly wasn't throwing weight around. She was, I'm the new kid on the block, and I'm just here to work and be serious and do my job, keep my head down, and get out. And pretty much that's what I was doing too, you know, because I've got Meryl Streep, I've got Philip Hoffman, who I was friends with, but Phil's not an easy guy to be friends with or was not easy to be friends with. He's a very prickly person prone to getting pissed off about things that you might not expect. And then Amy Adams was somebody who, you know, tried to get along with everybody and Phil would say like, 'You just want everybody to like you.' So, you know, you're in the middle of that group, and you just, you don't want to put yourself in a position where you're trying to prove something. You have to let them...they're very, very smart people, and they're going to figure out whatever it is that you're doing. They're going to figure out whether you are in any way trying to handle that. And that's not going to go well. And so I didn't do that.
Creator of the Amazon series Riches
Writer/Producer on Inventing Anna · The First Lady · How to Get Away with Murder
I do feel that if one has the desire and the ability to be a much more big-picture showrunner, I think that's to the best. That benefits the show because there's a creative voice running all the way through. This isn't a movie, where it's a director's medium. It is the writer's medium, so I think the writer should be across producing and also empowering the director, but there is a clear vision. I think Riches has all the hallmarks of the things I've worked on before in terms of complex, slightly subversive women. At the heart of it, it is negotiating power dynamics. And at the heart of it, there are two very complex and yet vulnerable black women, but I've always loved family drama shows and particularly family businesses, whether it's fictional ones or in real life.
Award-winning Cinematographer of Lady Bird · Frances Ha · While We’re Young · Confess, Fletch
Every movie is different. Every story is different. I think if we're lucky in our lives, we can choose the path that we want to go down, whether it's something creative or in the arts or something else. And I think if you're lucky, you can spend your life or your career following something you really love or spending time following the path, whether it's a hobby or your career. And spending that time paying the attention that the craft or the hobby or the creative pursuit wants.
Environmental Lawyer · Partner Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Author of Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle Against DuPont
It's kind of a scary thought. We've got these PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), you hear them now referred to as forever chemicals because these chemicals–none of these existed on the planet prior to World War II–they're fairly recent invention and they have this unique chemical structure that makes them incredibly useful in a lot of different products, manufacturing operations, but also that same chemical structure makes them incredibly persistent and incredibly difficult to break down once they get out into the environment, into the natural world, into our soil, into our water. They simply, many of them, particularly the ones with eight or more carbons in their structure, don't break down under natural conditions. Or it may take thousands or millions of years for those chemicals to start breaking down. But not only that. Once they get into us, they get into people, they tend to accumulate in our blood and build up over time. They not only persist, they bioaccumulate. Unfortunately, as the science has slowly been revealed to the world about what these chemicals can do, we are seeing that they can have all kinds of toxic effects And unfortunately, we’re finding that those things can happen at lower and lower dose levels.
Award-Winning Writer, Director, Producer, Speaker
& Author of Beyond The Craft: What You Need to Know to Make A Living Creatively!
I like uncovering truth about behaviour, about history. I think all artists are attracted to unveiling truth. I think it’s a mirror of our society, of our world. It’s the soul of our world.
Executive Director of Greenpeace International
I have always hoped and dreamt to work with young people because I’ve always felt that it is their future. It’s so inspiring to be working with young people all around the world. I feel that we are in the midst of transformational change and that working together around these key moments where you can see those shifts happening – unimaginable things that you never thought were going to happen can happen. That would be my other advice to young activists that just when you aren’t expecting it, something will happen and you’ll be like, “I can’t believe they just decided that! Holy cow!” And then you’ve got to celebrate.
There’s this children’s book called Miss Rumphius, and I’ve carried it around with me my entire life. It’s about a woman who grandfather tells her three things, and the last one in the most difficult thing of all and that’s to fill the world with beauty. And I give this book to every one of my friends who are having babies, I have a copy with me almost at all times, and I’m reminded of that feeling that Jonathan Larson had in Tick, Tick…Boom! Of how much time do we have to do something great.
Writer and Director
When I compare novelists to short story writers or very short story writers, I can’t compare them, but one thing for sure, the purpose is different. I think that someone who writes tries to create or document a world. And when you write very short fiction you try to document a motion, some kind of movement.
