Myra Paci

Myra Paci: Feminist Film Production Class Interview

Questions and Editing by Cal Wang

Myra Paci is a feminist director and screenwriter who has made short films shown at festivals around the world such as Butch Patrol and Transeltown. Through both trials and tribulations, she later starts the marketing and video production company known as SLAP Agency. This is the interview I did with her, and I’d like to thank her again for participating.

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1. During your time in the business realm of film and directing, has there been a defining moment in which you realized the inequality you must face in order to pursue your career?

I grew up watching a lot of movies – primarily European since my father was an Italian immigrant to this country – but also a wide range of U.S. cinema. If I recall correctly all the films I saw with my family growing up – until I went to college -- were directed by men except for those of Lina Wertmuller and Leni Riefenstahl. In college I took a class in women’s avant-garde cinema – we studied films by Chantal Akerman, Sally Potter, Yvonne Rainer, and Ulrike Ottinger, among others -- and started to become acutely aware of the lack of widely recognized female filmmakers. At NYU Grad Film School my class was 50% female; I think many of us women believed the gender inequality that we were well aware of (to put a spotlight on the issue I co-curated a Women’s Film Festival featuring work exclusively by female students) would not apply to us. We had a rude awakening when we entered the filmmaking work force.

I was fortunate to land a job shooting and directing commercial spots for a boutique NYC ad agency that had seen and liked my graduate thesis film. But once that gig was over and I had a reel to bring around to various ad agencies in NY, I saw that in addition to advertising creatives (copywriters and art directors) being almost always male, directors-for-hire were even more so. The roles where you’d find a lot of women? Producers and account people! Those who “massage” the clients, set up schedules, make sure everything is organized and running smoothly: just like good mamas are supposed to do. The sexism and gender inequality in the advertising business were – and are -- stunning and comparable to the world of the movies. Basically, when there’s a lot of money at stake and those holding the purse strings are white men, the opportunities for women and people of color are minimal.

It’s gotten a bit better in the intervening years but there’s still a long way to go.

2. I chose the trailer(s) for Transeltown as my first viewing of your films and I thought they were an excellent hook for your content. If you had to show a piece of work for any reason, what would that video or film be and for what reason?

This varies so widely depending on the context. The work of mine that is most pure and unfiltered – that is, in which I put exactly what I was thinking and feeling, with totally free artistic license, and with no thought as to what the audience would or wouldn’t like and to what I might have to achieve commercially – is Transeltown, without a doubt.

For that reason, I love it.

Interestingly enough, I think Transeltown has had the widest audience of any of my films and has had the most longevity in terms of critical essays and requests for screenings. If I’m trying to show more commercially-minded people that I can work with well-known actors and tell a more straightforward, commercial story, I show them Searching for Paradise or Girls Night Out or my advertising work.

3. What brought forth the interest in both film and directing for a movement such as feminism?

I interpret this question as asking if I started making films to express my feminist point of view, or if my feminist point of view made me want to go into filmmaking.

I don’t know that either of these scenarios accurately describes my path (such as it is), or maybe my path is a melding of the two because I can’t untangle my feminism from who I am. Unlike some women directors, writers and artists who do not like or choose to be identified as feminist or as coming from a female point of view (which always mystifies me, to be honest), I loudly and proudly embrace a feminist identity. The reason for that is I come from a place, in both my professional and personal lives, of believing that women in the U.S. and around the world have been and continue to be treated as second-class citizens, with fewer rights (over their bodies in particular) and less opportunity to realize their professional aspirations.

I love film, filmmaking and storytelling so I chose this path (and was fortunate to have been able to do so) in order to describe the world within me and outside of me; the lens through which I do that is a feminist lens because I am a woman and a feminist.

4. In Searching for Paradise, a wide array of emotions is used by your actors. How do you direct your actors to achieve what you envision? Any tactics or tips you can offer?

Directing actors is a mysterious and magical process, and at the same time very practical.

It kind of depends on the actor which approach you take as a director because they definitely are not one-size-fits-all creatures. I always sit down and talk with an actor who’s in a project I’m directing, to hear a bit of her story, her background, her interests, in order to see what elements of who she is I can incorporate into the film we’re making together. I often modify the role (including the dialogue or aspects of the character) to reflect that actor because I find it much more interesting to be collaborative than dictatorial.

It’s always angered and shocked me to hear about directors who consciously and aggressively manipulate their actors – including putting them down, tricking them emotionally in ways that are harmful or mean, using information obtained from or about them to achieve a particular dramatic moment, and so on. I think these are nasty and not necessarily effective tactics, and come from a place of exercising power and control over another human being, rather than from a sense of collaboration between equals.

Needless to say, the directors who are famous for doing this sort of abusive directing are – you guessed it! – men. Elia Kazan and David O. Russell are two well-known examples.

5. Did you actively reinforce your role as a director for feminism or did you sort of slip into the role as you progressed?

This is pretty similar to Question 3 above. I will add that throughout my career I have consciously chosen to write screenplays (and plays, fiction, and nonfiction) with women as the main characters. The reason for that is a) I’m interested in women’s stories, and b) I want to highlight women’s stories as written and directed by a woman because there has been and continues to be a dearth of these.

6. To those with interests in screenwriting, do you have any tricks on how to overcome writer's block?

Just write!

Write like you’re vomiting – or shitting -- out whatever crosses your brain waves and unconscious mind and don’t let your reasoning mind stop you by saying what a bunch of shit you’re generating. Just write and write and write. Then go back and see if there’s anything worth saving in all that shit. Go in and dig for whatever little but mighty seed could be in it. Then take that seed and see what sprouts from it, or take the one or two or three seeds you find and see what can be strung together from them. Seeds in shit: that’s what you’re hoping to find.

7. Who or what became the inspiration for what you do and the themes you present?

Inspiration for what I do and themes I present has come first of all from events and experiences in my life and from what I observe in the world around me. It comes from science and the animal world, including my dogs.

It comes from people I know or have known, ranging from acquaintances to friends and family including my mother and father, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, my brothers, my daughters, my husband, teachers and professors I’ve had, and my mentors/beloved, deceased friends Ruth Maleczech and River Abeje.

I also gain inspiration, knowledge, and pleasure from many filmmakers including Sadie Benning, Chantal Akerman, Agnes Varda, Ulrike Ottinger, Sally Potter, Claire Denis, Derek Jarman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pierpaolo Pasolini, Werner Herzog, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Billy Wilder;

From the plays of Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Suzan-Lori Parks, Tennessee Williams, Ariel Dorfman, Henrik Ibsen, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee; from the fiction of Elena Ferrante, Clarice Lispector, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Colm Toibin, J.M. Coetzee, Jose Saramago and others;

From the nonfiction writings of Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, June Jordan, bell hooks, Susan Sontag, and Arundhati Roy; from many graphic novels, comic books, zines and b-movies;

From the music of Beethoven, Bach, Schubert, Debussy, Satie, Verdi, Mahler, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Missy Elliott, Public Enemy, Fela, Ravi Shankar, and other jazz, rap, hip hop, classical and international artists;

From medieval, renaissance and baroque painting and lots of other art;

From fairy tales and myths; and much else I’m probably not thinking of.

8. If you could create a film that reached out to EVERYone on planet earth, what theme would you implement for EVERYone in the planet to absorb and process?

A theme I believe has bearing on all of us on this planet and that runs through most, if not all, of my work is our own capacity to do harm and do good.

I’m working on a psycho-horror feature now called The Bite that, like my other films, looks at aspects of ourselves we’d rather keep hidden. The themes and subjects of my early films – female aggression and desire of all kinds; horror of oneself or of the world outside; marginalized characters who are immigrants, or mentally unstable, or physically compromised, or simply female; ethics, both individual and systemic – are what deeply compel me.

I strive to bring to the surface the darkness we might not like to look at in ourselves (and in our world) in the hope that we might acknowledge it, perhaps even analyze it, and choose how we want to behave from a place of greater understanding.

9. Many a time people will feel uninspired and without motivation. When has been the lowest point in which you could have or almost gave up and what inspiration/ mental exercises helped overcome it?

Many times over the course of my career I have questioned my choice to be a filmmaker. Mostly because I questioned what tangible benefit it was to society; I’m not teaching in the K-12 public school system which so desperately needs good teachers,

I’m not a social worker providing urgently needed social services, etc. In fact, I have several times looked into becoming a high school teacher when I have felt especially dubious about filmmaking as a good use of my skills and time on this earth.

But I always circle back to filmmaking through the sheer love of it and the belief that if we (are fortunate enough to) do what we love, other people can benefit. The caveat being, do what you love as long as it doesn’t hurt other people and the planet: so no need for outrageously large budgets and mindlessly violent stories and images. I should also say that when I had breast cancer in 2000 – and I was diagnosed literally in the middle of editing my first feature Searching for Paradise -- I weighed whether filmmaking was killing me or would cure me. Having my film to go back to and complete was plausibly one of the things that kept me alive.

At the time I remember reading an interview with Jane Campion that helped me get through the loss of my breast, the nauseating chemo, and the sometimes paralyzing fear that the cancer would kill me:

“People say making movies isn’t a cure for cancer. I disagree; filmmaking is a cure.

It gives you a reason for living.

When my son died, on the third day I was devastated, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I went to see Orlando. It was so beautiful. This earth can be transformed. There are moments of extreme wonder…and that’s all worth living for. In the act of making a movie you are involved with those moments, those transformations. For me it’s been a way of life, totally fulfilling.”

I completely agree.

10. What’s something you want to tell the audience whether it be a plug for a new film, a nice message, or maybe both and more?

Make your art, follow your passion, but keep in mind that filmmaking is not the be-all, end-all. It’s a line of work like any other.

Be humble.

Be smart.

Be kind.

Do no harm, or if you do, make amends and try to do better next time.