Oh he is books. It's showtime.
People say, good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Un it off. Sometimes in life you hit a turning point. Really, oh, you gotta be more careful girl.
And that was it for me. How long have you worked there? Just shy of twenty years.
I don't understand why you stayed at first.
It was just shenanigans. I've got a schoolboy nonsense. Really, if you.
Can find me some habitants, I need substantiation to build you a case. Well, here we go.
You sure you're up for this? What time you will leave? Now?
Your income, if you include overtime, it is half of what the men are making. She was bossy.
I thought she was better than everybody else.
John wants me to smile.
Don't you dare smile?
These are powerful groups. We knew that they could go either way.
You think they should get away with how they treated me?
No, the partners and I would like to take this to the Supreme Court.
That company took advantage of me like so many companies are taking advantage of their workers. She wins. Women all over the country are going to use this as an excuse to sue. I'm so damn proud of you.
Bet.
Miss Ledbetter was consigned to a career as a second class employee only because she is a woman.
That cannot be the law and it Isn't you knew you were being paid less than your male counterparts.
You waited to retire before sue? You really believe I chose to work twenty years know when I was being cheated and discriminated against, just so I could wait to sue. Does that make any sense? Going on one of them? And you never will be. You're a country girl who grew up Swimen and Doc Brewster's fat, right, so I know how to burn off a leech.
Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Rachel Feldman. She is the director and co writer of the new film Lily. It is all about activist Lily Ledbetter, starring Patricia Clarkson. Fantastic film, really eye opening, and I had a great time talking with miss Feldman to find out more about her. Visit Rachel Feldman dot com. Check your local listings for Lily and I hope you
enjoy the interview. Do you might tell me a little bit about how you got involved in filmmaking.
I'm one of these people just always known what I wanted to do, even though I didn't know exactly what it was that I wanted to do. I was a kid with a very big imagination. I was always drawing, I was always in make believe. You know, I come from a dysfunctional home. I'm sure that my imagination was a very good company for me during difficult times. I loved playing with dolls. I could turn any inanimate object
into a character. I just had that ability. I could go into a playground as a child and immediately envision the house and the geography of the set. And then I was a child actor. I started working when I was five. I was a model for a little while. I didn't really like modeling, and then I started doing television commercials. And by the time I was twelve, I think I had done over three hundred commercials, and I was an on camera accist for many years, and I
liked it. I liked working. I lived, I lived in the Bronx near Manhattan, so it was an easy schlep. Loved it. She was backstage mom and we had a great time going together. She was frustrated singer herself, so it was fun for her. And I just loved being on set. I loved hitting my mark and finding my key light and knowing my lines. And I loved that they all thought that I was I don't know that I was a very good actor, but I was competent, and for a child actor, that's a beautiful thing. I
think we're two a lot of child actors. So from there, I became a voiceover actor. I no longer wanted to be on camera when I was like twelve thirteen, adolescens hit and I just don't look at me. But I loved performing, and I loved making goofy voices. I've always made goofy voices. I sang, I did jingles, and so I became Lucy and Peanuts and I became the girl in the Tricks Rabbit commercials, and I just do a lot of voices for other children. I would then Adr
and Loup. I was good at looping and by being in the studio, like with you with heads phones behind the glass and communicate with technicians. I developed a sense of myself very early in my life as a technician. And during those years of my teens and twenties, I was drawing, I was painting, I was sculpting, I was acting, I was dancing, shooting, I was doing photography, and I was also writing stories. And so it didn't really coalesce for me that, oh, I want to be a filmmaker.
But it was all there all along. And then when I graduated from college, never thought about being a director, even though I've been on a set my entire life, because I've never seen a woman director. And I read an article in the New York Times about Anyes Varda and Lina Vertmuller and all of these international European women, who of course had decades in experience because their government supported the arts. And I thought, Oh, a director, that's
what I want to be. And so I applied to NYU Graduate Film School and I got a master's and I made a bunch of short films that started winning awards. But I didn't understand gender discrimination at the time, and so it took fifteen years for me to get my first job.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you as far as the gender discrimination and just what the industry was like for you at that time, coming up and trying to be a female director in the industry that at that time was predominantly male.
The statistics will prove that in those years, less than one percent of the top two hundred and fifty films and television shows were directed by women. So now I think in feature films where somewhere between eight and nine percent, we'd have to find the statistics at the moment, and in television we're better. We're at like thirty percent. Within the course of my own lifetime, I've seen tremendous change.
I don't rough one to eight is tremendous change, but in television, where there were mandates for the studios, that's tremendous change. It was rough, It was really rough. No one in film school ever mentioned the word gender discrimination. It never occur to me, Never could any of us and the class at that time with the past fifty percent female, So no one really explained that diverse filmmakers were going to have a hard time. And it really didn't hit us, and I say us, me and the
other women until we were in the workplace. We were trying to be in the workplace, and we saw the guys who hadn't even come to class, the guys who'd never finished their films, the guys who were nasty start to have major careers, and none of us could get it going. So it finally it dawned on us that maybe it wasn't a personal problem, maybe it was a global problem. And that's really when I became an activist.
Would there any particular incidents or things that happened that helped move that needle and helped up that percentage, that small little bit it managed to move up over the years.
Well before me, the women of the generation right before me actually had lawsuit and that did change things in Hollywood for a little while, and then it slid back, but really not a hill. Times Up Me Too. I was co chair of the Women's Steering Committee of the Director's Guild of America where I personally tried to activate my guilt. And this is in twenty twelve, in twenty thirteen, so bring me too and times up, and the Guild
didn't believe there was a problem. It's very recent and it really was times up in me too, when everybody was compelled, forced to acknowledge that we were not making things up, and things did change. Now we're in a very different time. I don't know what's going to happen now.
But how did you hear about Lily led Better and decide to make this movie about her?
So I'm a little embarrassed to say that until I saw her speak on television at the Democratic National Convention. Like everybody else, I didn't know who Lily was. I should have, but I didn't. And I saw her, and I swear like I had a physiological response. I got goosebumps, the hair on my body stood up. I grabbed my husband's shoulder. And I'm not a story person because I'm also a screenwriter, ashi as a director, I'm not usually attracted to biopics. I liked them. I love seeing them.
I like thrillers, I like crazy characters. I like dark psychological material. But of course I love Aaron Rokovich, and I loved Burma Ray and I loved How Green was My Valley in the movie of my Mother's Generations. That were those social justice north Stars, And I said, this is it. This is a great story. And I don't remember how I got it but I got her phone number the very next day and I reached after her and I spoke to her, and she said, I have a lot of people traducing me. A lot of people
are interested in my story. You have to talk to my lawyer. Okay, who's your lawyer? Her lawyer was John Goldbarb And so I called John, who you met in movie? And I've called John whit just hit it off. And the thing about John is not only is he a brilliant civil rights attorney, but he had gone to film school. And so while there were studios and exact excutives and producers who are chasing the rights to her story, there were no other filmmakers. And he was an editor, and
he just liked to talk about making film. And I don't know whether it was because he's a Jewish kid from Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm a Jewish kid from the Bronx. We just immediately had a common language. And he said, look, Lily and Lanier I are in the process of writing a beautiful memoir right now, and they have high hopes for the book. They're not going to option to anybody right now. Let them finish the book. Let us get the book out into the marketplace and come back in
two or three years. So I came back three years later and it was the same thing. People were chasing the rights. The book is gorgeous and it made me want to make the movie even more because Lanier really delved into Lily's childhood. That gave the backstory to understand what made this woman tick. And it just came alive
from me and I really wanted it. And I said, John or Lily, look, I don't have the cloud, I don't have the power, I don't have the agents, I don't have the money, but I have the willpower and I have the determination. Please and Lily just I think saw a little bit of herself in me. And she warned me, she's a raightchel this is going to take a long time. This has got It took me ten years, He's going to take you ten years. And it did. She was right. It's great. Working with her was a
wonderful experience. She was a remarkable woman.
How do you even approach the story? How do you say, Okay, this is where we're going to start, this is where we're gonna be in the middle, and this is how we finish this story. Up because obviously the story continues, but you have to pick that point in time, which you picked the most perfect one.
I think, thank you. Look in a memoir, you can do a cradle to graves. Even though she was still lying. She wrote the book a breakdown of seventy five years. But in a movie, you have an hour and a half two hours to tell a storage. So we chose the ten years from the point at which she discovered the note to the point at which the law was signed, which was about a ten year pocket. And yes, I feathered in some backstory. I wanted a feather in a lot more, but we didn't have the time and money
to do that. So I looked for a co writer in the beginning because I was intimidated. Quite honestly, I'm a person with a big imagination, and this is a true story, and I'd never written a true story before, and I really wanted to. I had to adhere to what year did it happen in, how old was she? What were the details of the law the transcript? These are kinds of details that I'm really not that interested in. What is the basis of the law, How does the
law read? I'm a fiction person, I'm not a nonfiction person. My co writer, Adam Prince, and I really broke the story down and structured, knowing the architecture of a screenplay that we needed our first act, we needed act to A, act to B and then our third act. How was
this ten year period going a breakdown into that? And like any screenwriter, once you hone in on what that story is and there are so many just organic ups and downs in her life that laid out so perfectly into screenplay for so I was lucky about that.
Tell me a little bit more about Adam Prince, your co screenwriter.
Adam lives on my street and was running. We have a park two blocks away, pant Pacific Park, and he would run with his dog every morning when I did by power walk for many years and we would just circle one another, Hey, hey, hey, you know. And then one day he ran next to me huffing and puffing, and turned out that he had gone to USC School of Cinematic Arts and gotten his MFA there when I was currently teaching directing there at the same time. And he asked me if I would read a couple of
his scripts. And I read a couple of his scripts, and I thought, Wow, this guy's a really good writer. Now he was writing graphic like graphic novels and animation and action thrillers. Not at all in my vein. But I'm really the kind of person that rebels against niche casting. I don't like when I go into a job and they said to me, oh, you've only darn drama and we have a comedy. Like I'm a director, I can put on any apps, and so I didn't want to Nicheifi him and he had a big brain. He'd gone
to Yale. He was good with facts and figures, and I said, look, you want to help me break this story down? And he said sure. Actually first he said no, and then he came back the next day and we were doing loops again. He said, my wife said I should say yes. So that's how that happened.
And then, of course the casting for this movie is just critical, especially Lily herself. Can you tell me about the casting process for this.
I'm the luckiest filmmaker in the world for Patricia Clarkson too. I said yes to a filmmaker that was known as a television director. As your readers probably know, in our industry, we're very nicheified. And it's not like I'm a famous pilot director. I'm a journey woman television director, and so this is my first feature And even though I've directed seventy five hours of television and several television movies, as
a feature film, it's my first feature of film. And for her agents at CAAA to first of all just vet the screenplay and give it to her is a testament to them. And that's Chris Andrews and Kevin Huvain who did me a tremendous favor, and I'm grateful to them they gave it to Patty, and so grateful to Patty, who's the kind of filmmaker who has worked with first
time directors throughout her career. If she likes the material and she likes you, she doesn't need that celebrity polish that a lot of other actors need to feel comfortable saying yes. So it was remarkable that she said yes. She of course knew who Lily ledbetter was she herself comes through a political family. Her mother, Jackie Clarkson, was a prominent councilwoman in New Orleans who worked for women
and families for most of her career. Patty's one of five girls, and so they grew up in this strong feminist household, and so she wanted to play Lily Ledbetter and she says to this day that it's her proudest moment as an actor to play Lily Ledbetter. So working with her was a joy. She's a dream and just couldn't be happier.
The thing that with me was that this is so modern and that you're dealing with these problems in the early two thousands, when I was under the impression that this was a thing, We're long past. This just the presentation that you give of all of these kind of like shady back room deals and all of the guys who were having these conversations behind closed doors. I imagine that all that is still going on to day, if not worse now than ever.
You know, fair pay is a problem. Today women only make seventy eight cents and even worse for women of color. So it's an ongoing issue. It probably won't be solved for another fifty years, if ever. And the message that Lily wanted to give was to young women that they really need to think about these things from the very beginning, from their first job, because often when we're young women we're young people. We get that first job, and we're just so grateful to have the job. We're willing to
take less. We're willing to look away, we're willing to not ask all the questions. And asking the questions is really part of educating yourself to stand up for yourself, because you need to know what other people are earning. And now you can know. In the days when Lily was working, you were not allowed to ask, but now the laws have changed. You can't be fired for asking.
And so it's really important that young women negotiate for themselves very well at the very beginning, as she says, that's going to affect your four oh one K and your social security long after you're thinking about this at your first job.
How great is it for you as a filmmaker to have Ruth Vader Ginberg almost narrating your story for you.
I have to say archival footage was not in my original plan, certainly was not in my screenplay, and it was my editor's idea when we started cutting the film. Toward the end of the film, when Congress is making the vote, we needed that urgency, that sense of time, are we getting the vote? I hadn't bake that into the screenplay. So we thought, okay, let's get archival footage. We'll actually see the tally being accounted for and that'll
give us some urgency. And then we put in the piece of Kennedy and the piece of Reolkowski and the piece of Clinton and Obama. So we had that at the very end, and then the editor suggested that we add some of this beta Ginsburg footage. At first I said, no, absolutely not. I'm not a documentarian. I'm a fiction person. I'm a drama person. I really thought it would hurt
the film, I said, but truck it. Let's see, And she and her assistant were fantastic and found these pieces and laid demand and I saw them, and I changed my mind. I thought it was undeniable to have this juxtaposition of a woman that we respect more than anyone else in the country ever to be speaking about the very thing that just happened. And yeah, I think it's very additive. And the audience just seemed to love it. So I'm glad you did two.
Tell me about the audience reaction. I know this comes out wide release May ninth, twenty twenty five, but where have you seen it? Where has it played before this?
It's so interesting because this is my first feature film. As a television director, you have your four days with your editor and the editors are fantastic, and you do your cut and you leave and the next time you see it's on television, you go, oh, that looks so good. I'm so proud of it. Or why did they take that shot out? Or we cut it that way, why they cut it this way? Whatever. I designed the shot to be the opening, and now they're using it the
closet whatever. Usually it's a joy because they're top professionals and they know their show and it turns out well. But when it's your movie, you're in a dark room for a really long time and nobody sees the film except the same couple of people, and you look at it over and over and over again. You really don't know what you have until you show it. And we showed it to a couple of people points of confusion
and time periods. But our world premiere was at the Hampton's International Film Festival in October I think it was October tenth. We were in a very large, beautiful cinema. I think it was almost five hundred people. Patricia, like most actors, doesn't like to watch the movie, so she had gone out to dinner, and most of the producers had gone out to dinner to be with the actors, and they couldn't believe that I didn't want to go
out to dinner with them. I'm like, are you this is the first time I'm going to get to see if the movie in an audio, and so five hundred people, I'm not going out to dinner. So I sat in the cinema and from the very beginning of the movie, people were laughing, people were crying, people were cheering, and at the end of the movie they all did up. And so at this point I leave the theater and I'm backstage waiting to go on for the Q and A, and the moderator comes back. She's also been in the cinema,
so she's excited like I am. And then Patty comes in from the back door Lottie dog, and she hears this roar. She's right good going up, and that's Hetty.
I did, And tears are streaming down my face and tears streaming down her face, and we're like little girls, jumping up and down, hugging each other, and her mother had just recently passed away, and I'm thinking of my mother, and I said, I'm thinking of my mother, and we were just it was just one of those beautiful moments and we have quickly dry our eyes and walk on stage and the audience cares a standing ovation for I don't know how long, and it was glorious, what can
I say? And I've been to I don't know, twenty film festivals, fifteen twenty film festivals, and they have almost two the one been that kind experience, so I don't know. Clearly, people come to film festivals with a certain kind of attitude.
They know they want to see a movie about Lily Ledbetter, they know what it is, even though I hope it's a surprise, because it's a love story for God's sakes, and so I have been thrilled, and I really hope that audiences around the country will have that same reaction. This is an entertaining movie. This is a popcorn movie, This is a love story, this is a family story. This is a great movie for Mother's Day. And it's not a political film. It's a film about an ordinary
woman who did an extraordinary thing. And I hope that it's a movie that inspires us right now, in this moment in time.
I can't say that I stood and cheered because I was in my living room, but I can totally understand audiences doing that because it's such a wonderful film. And Ms Feldman, thank you so much for your time today.
Oh thank you.
You asked great questions, and you asked them in a great way.
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