Director Jamie Babbit.. Andrea Sperling with Jamie Babbit at Sundance.
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Director Jamie Babbit is rushing to the set of The L Word in Vancouver, where she's directing an upcoming episode. But in between making a pit stop at Starbucks and looking over the day's call sheet, she finds time to talk about The Quiet, her first feature since the hilarious But I'm a Cheerleader. There was also time to chat about her appearance in the upcoming documentary This Film Not Yet Rated; working alongside her partner Andrea Sperling, who produces her movies; her television series work; and her next movie. Here are highlights from our conversation:
[ NOTE: There are potential spoilers in this piece. ]
Windy City Times: The production notes on The Quiet say that you were attracted to the 'perversity, comedy, and seriousness of the story.' Could you talk about that for a minute, please?
Jamie Babbit: Well I wanted to do something that was really different from Cheerleader. When I had first gotten the script from Joel Michaely, who was one of the actors in But I'm a Cheerleader—he gave me the script for The Quiet because he was friends with Abdi and Micah, the writers—and I read the first few pages, I just thought, 'I'm not interested; it's just another high school cheerleader movie.' Joel said, 'No, no it's not—you've gotta keep reading.' So I kept reading and then I thought, 'Wow, this is really twisted.'
WCT: Uh, yeah—
JB: —and I was interested in exploring the whole sexual abuse side of it and I just thought, 'This is something I could be interested in for a year and a half of my life.' So I agreed to sign on.
WCT: You know the tone of the picture is really dark, but it's also really tantalizing in a way—the idea that all these characters are confiding their darkest secrets to this deaf/mute person—or so they believe. Do you think the character Dot would have been an even more tantalizing ( or less ) confessional figure if she'd been a lesbian?
JB: You know, I kind of thought that Dot was a pre-lesbian. She was, you know, dealing with the death of her father and moving to a new place so she's not really in a place where she's sexual but I do think she's going to grow up and be a lesbian, yes.
WCT: That's very interesting because I certainly detected an unresolved lesbian crush on the part of her and the other character, Nina. I didn't make that up, right?
JB: No, not at all. Actually, the Michelle character was supposed to definitely be a lesbian and in love with Nina. I mean they're both in love with Nina basically.
WCT: OK, so I got that. Now back to those three adjectives—'perversity, comedy [ and ] seriousness.' Would those three adjectives also describe your filmmaking journey as an out lesbian director in such a male-dominated industry?
JB: Comedy, perversity and—what was the third one?
WCT: Seriousness.
JB: [ Laughs. ] Yeah, probably. Actually, definitely.
WCT: It seems The Quiet falls in line with a lot of other cautionary tales about the affluent suburban dream gone wrong—like American Beauty and The Ice Storm. Movies like these and yours seem to point out this sort of distracted, mean-spirited malaise that seems such a part of our culture. Is that part of what drew you to the material, too?
JB: Oh yes, definitely. I'm definitely a part of suburbia. I was a latchkey kid [ who grew ] up in suburban Ohio and I do think kids are so bored that the things that happen are just horrible. I also think that the way suburban perfection is expected and there's all this fucked-up shit going on interests me. I think it was also because in some ways I was growing up with a secret—you know, that I was gay and living in a J. Crew catalog. So I just related to the idea of these girls having so many secrets.
WCT: There's also a lot of ambiguity at the end of the movie. What would you like audiences, in particular gay audiences—because that's my crowd—to take away from the film?
JB: [ I'd like them to take ] a feeling of empowerment that the two girls have saved each other and that they've both had issues with their father that were unresolved. Dot, in as much of a kind of spell under her father, was as destructive as Nina was under the spell of her father. In the end, it's an empowerment tale.
WCT: Can you also talk for a minute about your cast because you assembled a great cast to pull this off.
JB: I had always wanted Elisha [ Cuthbert ] to play Nina because, in my mind's ey,e she physically looked exactly how I pictured her and, originally, Thora Birch was actually playing Dot.
WCT: That's interesting.
JB: Yeah but two weeks before shooting Thora Birch pulled out and so I had to find a Dot really quickly and I was lucky enough to have seen The Ballad of Jack and Rose. In some ways, that film was like a preface to this movie because it's about a girl in an obsessive relationship with her father and her father dies at the end of the movie.
WCT: Right.
JB: And in this movie she's leaving a destructive relationship with her father and going to live with a foster family so I thought, 'Wow, this girl can really work.' I was lucky enough that she was able to come on board and she happens to be a concert pianist and that helped also.
WCT: I'm a pianist myself and I thought perhaps she might be playing.
JB: She was and she had to memorize all those pieces, too, which wasn't easy. So I thought Elisha and Camilla would be great for those parts and as far as Edie Falco and Martin Donovan, I had a hard time convincing Martin to be in the movie because he didn't want the world to hate him.
WCT: It's not an easy role.
JB: Right but when Edie came on board then he was a lot more interested. He thought, 'Oh, I really like Edie. We worked together before on a Hal Hartley movie,' and I also said to him, 'Don't judge the character, you have to play this like it's Dr. Zhivago—this is a love story for you.'
WCT: I'm going to switch tracks for a minute, if you don't mind, and talk about something really fun and perverse and comedic yet serious, like This Film Not Yet Rated. I had no idea, of course, what you went through with the travails on getting Cheerleader rated.
JB: Isn't that ridiculous! I mean, it's a PG movie. You know, they said to me, 'What do you think the ratings board is going to think about this film?' I said, 'I'll get an R and it's not going to be an issue.' How fucked up is it that it got an 'NC-17?' I would be less likely to want kids to see The Quiet than Cheerleader, but they don't care.
WCT: I hadn't thought much about this issue but after seeing the film I was amazed by all the evidence [ showing that ] GLBT films get a much harsher treatment from the ratings board.
JB: Oh yeah, definitely. When Cheerleader came out, no GLBT movie had ever, ever, ever gotten anything but an R—even The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, which is so G-Rated. I was told before the movie, 'Don't think you're going to get anything other than an R because you're going to get an R.' When I got an NC-17, I was like 'You've got to be kidding me.'
But actually, in the last year, D.E.B.S. was actually the first lesbian movie to get a PG-13 and that was historical. Never, ever, ever has a gay movie gotten a PG-13. Then, Big Eden was the first gay male movie that got a PG-13.
WCT: Oh that's cool. Didn't your partner, Andrea Sperling, produce D.E.B.S.?
JB: Yes.
WCT: And The Quiet, too?
JB: Yes, and we're both working on The L Word so we're in Vancouver right now.
WCT: Can you talk about working with your partner. Is it nice? Is it a challenge?
JB: It's definitely challenging but the great thing is that she is so good at her job that it makes me fall in love with her to work with her again. [ Laughs. ]
WCT: That's a great, romantic answer.
JB: Well, she's such an amazing producer. She's just so good and I'm very blessed and lucky because when I met her, she had already been a fabulous producer and I never knew. I fell in love with her without knowing how amazing she was at her job; when I worked with her I was like, 'Oh, now I see a whole other side.'
WCT: Between my editor, my partner and myself, you've worked on [ some ] of our favorite TV series—Nip/Tuck, Gilmore Girls and I loved Wonderfalls so much—
JB: Oh, me too.
WCT: And now you're doing The L Word. How do you have such great taste in TV? [ Laughs. ]
JB: I don't know if other people consider it great, but I just like certain things and I'm actually working on another show which I'm really excited about called Ugly Betty.
WCT: The show they moved to Thursday night's before Grey's Anatomy on ABC.
JB: Yes, and it is sooo good. If you watch TV at all, it's a great new show. I watched the pilot and I was like, 'I have to work on this show this is amazing.'
WCT: It's about an ugly woman, obviously.
JB: Yes, who works in the fashion business. It's kind of like Devil Wears Prada and the weird thing is that it was around way before that. It was the most famous TV show in Colombia and then in Mexico and Salma Hayak bought the rights and had it remade here. It's great ... so great.
WCT: Okay, I'll check it out. What's your next feature, by the way?
JB: The next feature is Itty Bitty Titty Committee and I've already shot it. I'm editing it right now.
WCT: What's it about?
JB: It's a reimagining of Born in Flames, this camp sci-fi movie from the early '80s where militant lesbians take over the world. It's about a girl who's aimless and doesn't really know what she's doing with her life, working at a McJob. She encounters a group of radical activists and gets sucked in and changes the world.
WCT: Who's in it?
JB: A lot of young girls in their early 20s—Clea DuVall is in it. The main girl is Melonie Diaz, who was in Lords of Dogtown and Melanie Mayron ( from the TV series Thirtysomething ) , who's gay and plays an interesting role; also, [ model ] Jenny Shimizu and a lot of other girls [ are in it ] . It's a big ensemble movie.
WCT: For lesbian and gay filmmakers out there, do you have any words of encouragement? Have things gotten better?
JB: Things have definitely gotten a lot better. There is a community—many more than when I first started. There are a lot of lesbian filmmakers out there that are working and making a living and it's encouraging.
