A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Filmmaker Karyn Kusama wrote, directed and produced her debut film, “Girlfight" at just 27 years old.
The movie finally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000 and put its star, Michelle Rodriguez, on the map. It also kicked off a directing career for Kusama, who went on to make "Aeon Flux" with Charlize Theron and "Jennifer’s Body" with Megan Fox.
Her new movie — her first in seven years — is an indie thriller called "The Invitation," which centers on a peculiar dinner party in the Hollywood Hills.
Kusama spent years raising the money to make this movie. In the end, she funded it with help from a group called Gamechanger.
"Gamechanger is a consortium of investors who are committed to financing films directed by women. They really put their money where their mouth is," said Kusama on The Frame. "It took me more than a few years to find financing for the movie and they were the ones who stepped up. Once they did everything else kind of fell into place."
Kusama stopped by The Frame to talk about independent filmmaking, how "The Invitation" came to her and how women have a harder time finding long careers in Hollywood.
Were people unwilling to finance it because they didn't want a woman directing it or they didn't like the material? Because it's a very commercial idea.
I'm glad you think it is, I think it is too, I always did. I can't really speak to whether it has anything to do with me being female. I think what it is is that as a genre film, there's a demanding quality to the film. It's demanding patience of the audience. I think it pays off in a really big way, but that's not everybody's cup of tea when it comes to genre.
The writers and producers of this film are people you know pretty well, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. Phil is also your husband. Were they always writing this for you? How did you come on to this project?
They were writing it thinking maybe they would direct it. Once I read the script I was so beguiled by it. There was an economy to it, a precision. The control you see up on the screen, that was on the page, too. There was a real sense of understanding that this film had to work in this notion of reversal and surprise territory, so that the audience could be kept guessing and engaged. That interested me so much that I sort of shot my hand up and said if you ever decide to not direct this project I hope that you'll consider me first in line. They relented.
The essential conceit of the movie is that a couple is hosting a dinner party. There are little things that are noticeable very early on in terms of foreshadowing in a way what's going to happen later, but it doesn't tip the hand to obviously. Is that part if what attracted you to this story?
For sure, there was a very careful revealing of detail over the course of the night...When I read the script initially, I never quite knew where it was headed and I felt really excited by the idea that could make a movie that might mirror that experience for the audience.
If you look at your film credits there are usually a big gap of years between Girlfight, Aeon Flux, Jennifer's Body, The Invitation. Is that a consequence of your choice or other factors?
I'd like to be making more films more frequently, but I do find that making movies for me has proven to be an extremely challenging road. No movie is easy, no movie has come together quickly. Once I recognized that I wanted to be making smaller, personal films, those movies take longer than the studio films to get up and running. They're just harder. After "Jennifer's Body" I had to take some years to stumble with a couple of other indies that couldn't get financing then finally succeed in getting financing for this one. It's a rough road, it's just a really rough road, that's the bottom line.
What is rough about it, because one of the things we have heard from other women directors is that the latitude that a woman has to succeed or fail is much narrower. If a woman directs a movie that is commercially unsuccessful she ends up in what is called director's jail, whereas a man gets out of jail free. Do you think that's true? What are the other issues?
I think there is really something we need to examine about the notion of careers, and are women encouraged and given the same opportunities to have vital healthy careers in which they are challenged by certain things, they try new things, they struggle, maybe they stumble, maybe they fail and then there's more room to succeed as well. That is what I think is missing for a lot of female filmmakers. I'm hoping to just one step at a time, make those changes for myself. It is different, I think, for women.