Mills' movie is a tribute to his mother, a unconventional woman who raised him in '70s Santa Barbara; "The Joy Luck Club," released in 1993, was supposed to usher in a new era for Asian-American storytelling in Hollywood. That hasn't been the case.
'20th Century Women' reflects how filmmaker Mike Mills was raised in a matriarchy
“20th Century Women,” is a new movie that takes us back to Santa Barbara in 1979.
At the time, Jimmy Carter was president, the Talking Heads and Black Flag represented different sides of the music scenes, the feminist movement was in full bloom, and 13-year-old Mike Mills was being raised by a mother who defied convention. His film is very much a tribute to her. But also to his sisters, his female friends, and his wife, Miranda July.
The son in “20th Century Women” is played by Lucas Jade Zumann and the mom, Dorothea, is played by Annette Bening. Early on in the film she turns to two younger women, played by Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, to help guide her son through his teenage years.
When The Frame’s host John Horn spoke with the filmmaker, they started by talking about why Jimmy Carter was an influential figure during Mills' childhood.
Interview Highlights:
On Jimmy Carter's Crisis of Confidence speech:
The way he talks about the vulnerability of the American soul, the way he talks about the collapse of things we believe in — it's just so illegal for a president to say in this day-and-age and yet so necessary and accurate.
I remember Carter vividly because my mother loved him, because he was the peanut farmer president [who] wore jeans in the White House. My mother, who this film is based on in many ways, is such a lover of the underdog and just anything unpretentious, anything slightly socialist, anything that's undermining pomp. He was big in my mind. That particular speech I remember more from my American history class than my lived experience. In doing the research for the script, when I found it, it's what made me put the film in 1979 because I could talk about my characters, I could talk about this perfect way to describe the crisis moment that was happening right then in our shared history.
On how Annette Bening's character is like his mom:
[My mom was] born in the 20s. She grew up in the Depression. She was 16 when WWII started. She wanted to become a pilot in WWII. She had a kid late in life, which in the '60s didn't happen. My mom was 40 when she had me in 1966, and there were no other moms like that. She looked a little bit like Amelia Earhart and smoked and drank like Humphrey Bogart and wisecracked like film heroines from a 1930s film. She just did not fit into the Santa Barbara mold. And in some ways that divide between pre-WWII life and the '70s — it's epic. It's so huge. The cultures that me and my mom formed ourselves in are unknowing of each other.
On how "Beginners" and "20th Century Women" aren't therapy:
I come to these films after doing a lot of therapy with my wife and my sisters and all the people close to me. This stuff has been processed. I'm not doing therapy in the making of the film. It's kind of the result of a lot of self examination. Christopher Palmer [in "Beginners"] is not my dad and Annette Bening is not my mom. There are moments when I watch the film where I do feel like there was a very accurate energetic portal opened up where it was like, You do remind me of her a bit! Not for any obvious reasons. Not by looks or gestures or any mimicry, but more a kind of psychic connection.
On growing up in a matriarchy:
I have a very strong mom and two older sisters that are 10 and seven years older. I have a dad [who's] around, unlike in the film. And my dad's a very sweet, great man. But maybe it's because of when he was born in the '20s, maybe it's because he was a closeted gay gentleman, he just wasn't very present. He wasn't really emotionally present. I never really had real conversations with him about my life and my struggles. It was the women who tried in my life. Then, for whatever reason, I've always sort of gravitated toward women. My best man at my wedding was a woman. I feel more at home in some ways. I think in my childhood, women are the people who really tried with me.
On how his mother was a model of an adult who defied categorization:
My mom was like a contractor and sort of a frustrated architect. She was an incredibly hard working person. My mom didn't [appear] particularly feminine and she looked pretty butch. She walked and talked not like a woman in lots of ways. She didn't really identify a lot with gender and that was the unspoken landscape of my childhood with her. I watched her struggles a lot, and her loves and passions a lot. That was the bubble in which I grew up. That was my main model, not just as my mom but as a maker-person.
How Miranda July inspired Greta Gerwig's rant about menstruation:
I'm married to a very strong feminist and strong woman, Miranda July. In that scene, she's explaining to this young man how important it is to be able to be comfortable with the idea of menstruation and to speak of it as if there's nothing shameful. That's something that Miranda did with her older brother in her real life ... That scene just came really naturally to me.
On how he sees his mother in himself as a filmmaker and as a parent:
I'm incredibly practical. I finish every day on time. I'm always under budget. I am sort of a Depression-era person. She really loved hardworking people and I adore my film crew. I protect them and I'm their number one advocate, I hope. I'm also not easy on them, but I'm hard working, salt of the earth. Human, hands-on effort is something that, in my family and in my mother's value system, is the most important and honorable thing.
My mom's been gone since 1999 and I often miss her in the presence of my son. My mom was funny. I hope I'm funny with my son. My mom was very empowering. She really believed that you have to go out and get in the jungle and figure out yourself. I haven't gotten that far with my son yet, but I hope to have some of that in me.
"20th Century Women" arrives in theaters on Dec. 28. To hear more conversations like this, subscribe to The Frame podcast on iTunes.
The legacy of 'The Joy Luck Club' and why its success hasn't been repeated
"The Joy Luck Club" was released in September, 1993. The film is about four Chinese women who immigrated to the U.S. and how their relationships with their American-born daughters were affected.
Sandra Oh: I saw it in Vancouver and I bawled my eyeballs out. I knew it then, but it took me a much longer time to understand the significance of what that was for me. I had not yet realized, until that moment, that I have never seen myself on screen and the deep significance of that.
Janet Yang, an executive producer on "The Joy Luck Club," said it wasn’t an easy movie to get made.
Yang: When you're a movie producer, you always have to prepare for the possibility that something will not get made. Especially one that is so unusual that was just breaking all the rules. There was no reason that it should've gotten made, in a way.
“The Joy Luck Club” was one of the first feature films Yang produced. She began her career organizing Chinese film festivals. She eventually got the attention of Steven Spielberg and worked as a consultant on his 1987 film, “Empire of the Sun.”
Yang moved up the ladder at Spielberg’s company. In the late ‘80s, she met with a publisher who thought a new book by first-time novelist Amy Tan would make a great movie. At the time, Tan had only finished three chapters.
Yang: I remember reading them on the plane. It still brings tears to my eyes because I just couldn't believe that I have never read anything that so reflected my own life. I had crossed the barrier of never even seeing any Chinese on screen. But then to read something that was so intimate, it was almost shocking. I couldn't even believe it.
I think at some point I said to someone that it was like my life was turned inside out. Again, like so many Asian-Americans, we live these duplicitous lives — a private life and a public life. You just don't think that people would be interested.
“The Joy Luck Club” was published in 1989. It took Yang a few years to get the movie financed because it called for eight actresses in a story that had never really been told. Simply put: the struggles of being a modern day Asian-American.
Eventually, Jeffrey Katzenberg — then the chairman of Walt Disney Studios — thought the film was worth making, even without well-known stars. So Yang and her fellow producers, Ronald Bass and Oliver Stone, decided to give the eight starring roles to actresses that best fit them. Tamlyn Tomita was cast as one of the daughters, Waverly.
Tamlyn Tomita: To this day people [think] of me as Waverly. They thought, Oh, she ain't the approachable one. She's the mean one.
Tomita’s character was the “rebel” of the bunch. She ended up in a relationship with a white man. And it caused a tear in her relationship with her mother, who disapproved. But eventually, her mother came around.
The film — released in the fall of 1993 — cost $10 million to make and earned more than $30 million domestically. Critics loved the film. Roger Ebert’s four-star review said: “The movie is a celebration of the richness of Asian-American acting talent.” But the film’s successes didn’t really boost the actresses’ careers.
Tomita: When the consideration for Academy Award nominations came out ... in my humble opinion, my mother, Tsai Chin [who plays Lindo], should have been nominated out of the eight of us. She's the most memorably played character. But we had heard from various agents in the industry that we all cancelled each other out.
We couldn't believe it! And it was a kind of convenient excuse. So have we progressed at all? Yes, but then there's an Asian American saying: "Seven steps forward and eight steps back."
This lack of movement to get Asian-American stories on the big screen isn’t noted only by Tomita. Sandra Oh says she recognizes are trend in the dearth of Asian-American-centered films.
Oh: There's a real pocket there in the mid-'90s. So "The Joy Luck Club" opened. I had just shot this film in Canada called "The Diary of Evelyn Lau." The following year I shot "Double Happiness." Then I realized that it was a pocket of time that it happened in.
Why? I don't know, but honestly, I don't want to spend time thinking about it because it's f****** heartbreaking. Why has there not been [more Asian American movies]? It's really about whoever the heads of the studios are. Ask them.
Janet Yang has been in the room where studio executives make decisions. She says there’s been a shift in the movies the big studios focus on — the reliable superhero/reboot/sequel blockbusters. Those films sometimes feature Asian characters, but the roles are going to the likes of Tilda Swinton, Elizabeth Banks and Scarlett Johansson. Yang says it’s time for the Asian-American community to speak up.
Yang: I haven't been much of a complainer over the years. One big reason is that I've always felt very lucky. I was often the only woman in the room, I was often the only Asian in the room. But I saw that as being a great opportunity. So it felt disingenuous for me to complain. But now is the time to not so much complain, but try to awaken people.