Jodie Foster is remembering how much of a “feminist” filmmaker Jonathan Demme was. Demme directed Foster in 1992 Best Picture winner “Silence of the Lambs“; the “Philadelphia” and “Something Wild” director died in 2017.
When asked by Variety while promoting Cannes film “Vie Privée” about collaborating with female filmmakers, Foster pointed to how feminism is not bound by gender. “It’s hard for me to be in the business of saying, half my movies are going to be made by women or men or whatever. Shouldn’t it be a more instinctual choice?” Foster said. “You would hope that you’d be interested in the human being. I mean, Jonathan Demme on ‘Silence of the Lambs’ was my favorite feminist director.” (Paul Thomas Anderson also previously praised the late director as being his “favorite, top-of-the-line filmmaker.”)
Foster continued, “That said, I think some sort of quota system is important when it comes to giving first-time filmmakers an opportunity. You need to start the process early so we all get the same opportunities.”
Foster most recently worked with a trio of female directors on series “True Detective” and films “Nyad” and “Vie Privée.” The actress/producer/director reflected on how there has been a welcome shift in Hollywood to emphasize films made by women.
“America had a sort of golden moment of consciousness in the last 10 years where the men that made the decisions — and who were blind to their own xenophobia and racism and sexism — suddenly woke up and were like, ‘Hey, why are there no women on our list of directors?’ They were being called out publicly, of course, but that forced them to look at themselves and decide to change. We’re reaping the benefits of that,” Foster said. “I’ve watched things change a lot. When I started acting, the only woman I ever saw on set was a makeup artist or script supervisor. Then I started seeing some more female technicians. But the last bastion has always been directors. When I decided to direct, I was lucky. The people that made decisions knew me, so they didn’t consider me a risk as a first-time director. But as an actor, before my last three projects, I only had made one movie with a woman director. That’s over 50 years.”
She added, “It’s amazing that it took this long to explain to studio executives that women are 50 percent of the population. Female filmmakers are not a risk. And by the way, it was not female executives that made this change happen, because we had Amy Pascal, Sherry Lansing, Dawn Steel all running studios at the same time. At one point, four of the six studio heads were women and those lists of directors were all men. We need the people who run studios to make sure that they don’t imbibe the institutional bias. I’ll get off my soapbox now.”
Foster did, however, have to turn down working with one female director recently: “Freakier Friday” filmmaker Nisha Ganatra, who cited that Foster was offered a cameo in the sequel as she starred in the original “Freaky Friday” film (which was later remade with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in 2003).
“I was busy doing this movie [‘Vie Privée’],” Foster said of why she does not appear in the sequel. “But Jamie Lee Curtis is a really good friend of mine. I followed the shoot and all that stuff.”
And Foster is looking to return to directing herself soon, provided she can find financing. “I do prefer directing [to acting],” she said, “but it’s hard to get things off the ground. I have to work on the material for so long in order to make it mine. I love the movies that I made, and they speak to my life. And for me, they feel like auteur films. If I can’t do it that way, I don’t really want to do it.”
