New Dawn
Photography
MARK SQUIRES
Interview
ANEL PLA & CONNER WHITE
FLATT: Your current film Dawn has the look of a bygone era. What films inspired the aesthetics and the tone of the story?
ROSE McGOWAN: I did the production design, so what really,
really inspired the aesthetic was the original with Hayley Mills,
Maureen O’Hara, and Brian Keith. There’s this color palette that is just
peaches and pinks when they get to the California section of the movie.
Dawn’s bedroom was a direct knock-off of the bedroom in The Parent Trap. I modeled the mother in dawn as
kind of a cross between the Columbia pictures woman, you know, holding
the fire, and Maureen O’Hara in that movie. And loneliness is a real
character in the movie for me as well. It’s a look, loneliness. And the
look for loneliness that I wanted was of an Edward Hopper painting. I
wanted to somehow palpably to feel the loneliness you feel when you look
at a Hopper. And then the tension is night of the hunter. But other than that, it was really just about The Parent Trap. That was my real color palette inspiration. The rest is paintings.
FLATT: It’s funny you say Hopper, because that lonely tone on the outskirts of town definitely has that feel. gas by Edward Hopper definitely looks like an inspiration.
ROSE McGOWAN: Design is also such a huge influence in my
life. My house now is like Seventies Pierre Cardin and Milo Baughman
pieces primarily. My house before this was all directly tied into the
movies, doing productions, putting every piece of furniture in place. I
learned by restoring houses how to do that, like a set design. All these
things that I always called useless talent, it used to be, oh, useless
talent number 72, now they’re all coming into play, and it’s been a
really great time of life.
FLATT: You restored houses before? Oh, wow.
ROSE McGOWAN: Yeah. My dad always liked craftsmen, so I
grew up taking field trips to Frank Lloyd Wright — not field trips, but
like trips. I broke into Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis house actually. I
climbed up the tree, across a wall, and then I had to get into the
house, all the while not being noticed by the minder, who was off on the
side of the property. I broke in so I could look at Frank Lloyd
Wright’s dining room furniture because I had never seen it close up. It
was a very exciting . I’m a design freak. Then two days later I was in
Rio and I met the realtor for the Ennis house in line at a restaurant.
And he told me, I can get you in to see it any time. I was like, yay!
FLATT: Do you typically find paintings inspiring for scenes of your films?
ROSE McGOWAN: When I would be on set as an actor, I would
see paintings all over the place, or what could have been an
interpretation of a painting. Maybe that was the frustrated director in
me seeing it. I see that a lot. I mean, I think film is hard. It’s
living art. It’s moving art. I feel like any artist is inspired by
artists before them. And what was before film? Obviously photography,
and then paint, paintings.
FLATT: About what age did you become interested in art in general?
ROSE McGOWAN: Well, my father was an amazing painter, and
that was his only job he ever had his entire life. So I grew up in
Italy, I got to go to museums all over the world. And my family and I
are very steeped in the art world – my sister works in the Pace Gallery
in New York, my other sister runs a gallery in Denver. It’s just kind of
part of the fabric of my family.
Growing up in a creative family was a godsend looking
back. I don’t know — I don’t know any other way to grow up, so it wasn’t
even that we were always making things or doing things, although I
think we probably were, but it was just . . . interesting. I have seven
brothers and sisters, so there was just a lot going on at any given
time. When I would go out into the world, we would be looked at as the
weirdo family. I was okay with that because I thought everybody else was
weird. Basically that’s it. I thought my brothers and sisters had
tremendous minds and spirits and humor and talent, so I didn’t
understand when people thought we were weird. I just thought it was so
sad for them that they couldn’t see what we saw.
FLATT: Can you tell me about maybe a memory of art having
an impact on you at an early age? Maybe something your father showed
you?
ROSE McGOWAN: There was this statue, this life-like
rendering of a woman, her name was Linda. I remember this was at a
museum in Denver and I was nine and a half and had just come to the
U.S.. I was having troublesome time. The piece looked just like my
mother to me, who I was separated from at the time. I set off every
alarm in there five times in a row because I wouldn’t stop touching her
hair. I couldn’t understand how they made something like the folds of
her skin and all of that. Growing up going to the Vatican, you’re seeing
what people can do out of marble and stone…Growing up in Italy, it’s
all around you. It’s not even a specific thing. It’s just really an art-
everywhere kind of place. You just have to look up. I’m also an
inveterate reader. I started reading when I was three, proper books by
four, and whenever I wanted to escape growing up, all I would do is
read. I traveled, I traveled a lot in my life, but I also traveled a lot
through books and through art.
FLATT: Any books in particular or authors?
ROSE McGOWAN: I re-read The Count of Monte Cristo every
year. I always had a mad crush on Edmond Dantes, which I know is
hopeless. It’s a hopeless crush, Edmond and I. The unabridged version, I
could have lived in that book, I could have stayed in that book. But I
also just recently re-read The Stories of Eva Luna, which is Isabel Allende, which is amazing. And Marquez I’ve re-read. I’ve read Love in the Time of Cholera every year since I was 14, just because I found the pacing in that novel just insane.
FLATT: You are connected to storytelling. Dawn is your directorial debut – Why this project? Why this story?
ROSE McGOWAN: I was originally supposed to do a Flannery O’Connor short. I was doing A Good Man is Hard To Find. And I had all four locations for Dawn–it wasn’t Dawn, now it’s Dawn –locked down for A Good Man. And this amazing script. I had Piper Laurie, who was going to star in it, who was the mom in Carrie,
who’s just unreal. And then when I was leaving the fourth location lock
down, I got a call from the Flannery O’Connor Foundation and said they
had sold the rights to make a feature and they could no longer let me do
the short. So now I have locations and so much money sunk into it, and
no script. No story. And I’m going to shoot in a month.
So the writers who were tremendously talented people,
Joshua Miller and Mark Fortin – I locked them in a hotel room for two
days and I said, these are my four locations, this is the last line that
I need and the last situation: Go. And they saved my ass. It turned out
to be for the better, absolutely. And so there is some Flannery in it,
there is some Southern Gothic going on there.
FLATT: Got the Southern Gothic, that’s cool.
ROSE McGOWAN: I like the South.
FLATT: Can you describe your role then in the script writing process?
ROSE McGOWAN: I was not part of the screen writing
process; I didn’t have to be, the script was so well done. It’s better
to let it breathe. My job was painting. I love words. And I can’t paint
with my hands (it’s one of my life’s frustrations) but I can capture
with a camera what I see, and I can capture it with words. I can take
words and I can paint with them, and that’s my job as a director, that’s
my job as a writer. I am writing other things but not this.
FLATT: Tell me a bit about what led you into film making from acting?
ROSE McGOWAN: Well, you know, the acting is a long weird
story anyway. Basically I was standing on the street corner in front of a
gym and I got discovered. What led me into filmmaking is what led me
into acting, which is just my love of film.
I just grew up with not just an appreciation, but the
desire to break down the study of film. Okay Rose, let’s study the
Lumière Brothers, who invented the moving camera. Let’s now study and
focus on this. So when I was discovered for acting I thought, oh, this
must be what I’m meant to do. But I was never comfortable in the role of
basically being voiceless. I worked with some seriously misogynistic
directors. And people get a pass because they’re directors – but you
don’t get a pass for being a bad person, you just don’t. I don’t think
any job. I got really tired of being sexualized. There was a moment, I
was on the cover of Rolling Stone, with a fake tan and gun belt around
me and breasts, they gave me some big bouffant hair and glossy lips, and
I just was like, I’ve had it, I have just had it. I’m like sick of
being sexualized, I’m sick of this. So I just checked out and I ran
around and I had the most fabulous time. I figured out finally what was
wrong. It was not that I wasn’t meant to be an actress, it was just that
I was meant to be in film, and I just was literally cast in the wrong
role in life. And I’m good at acting, I like exploring different worlds
and I like disappearing, but I spent 15 years disappearing into other
people’s bodies, into other people’s minds, other people’s clothes,
eating what other people would eat. It wasn’t that I didn’t have amazing
moments or got to do amazing things, absolutely. I’m an artist, but I
never felt like I was an artist as an actor. Not because of how I was
treated, because that’s not how artists are treated, or should be
treated, or people should be treated.
FLATT: Can you talk to me a little bit about women in
film making? We’re sort of at a halcyon moment, at least in the history
of film making, where women are being afforded more opportunities.
ROSE McGOWAN: I think it’s a great time for women
filmmakers. Women are being afforded greater roles in their destiny, or
roles in art, or roles as directors, but why should women be “afforded”
anything? I shouldn’t just be allowed to have something – it is my
right. It is my right to create as much as it’s another human being’s
right, and I think that comes first. Somebody asked if I thought a man
would have made Dawn, and I don’t know if they could have. I don’t know if it would have occurred to them.
The Seattle International Film Festival, God bless them, put me and dawn was
in the festival, which was an honor, but then under genre, they put
“woman director.” I feel bad because then of course I go on Twitter and I
was like, ‘Dear Friends on Twitter, please explain to the Seattle
International Film Festival why a woman director is not a genre.’ I got a
letter back from them saying we can assure you: we are neither sexist
nor racist. I was very confused by that one, and I said no. It’s a
passive sexism and that’s dangerous. All the people that looked at that
to go into the program, nobody waved a flag at that one, because it’s
normal. And that’s what has to change, I think.
FLATT: For sure. Can you tell me a little bit about some of your feelings leading into making this film?
ROSE McGOWAN: I was never nervous filming Dawn. I
kept waiting for a panic to happen, and it never happened. I felt like I
was wearing pants that fit me correctly for the first time. When I act,
it is such a cliché, but the night before I first start shooting, I
always have nightmares that I forget my lines, that I’m letting everyone
down on set, and the stress. And I had none of that when I was
directing. It just felt right.
FLATT: Can you tell me a little bit about your work outside of the film industry? Maybe some of your philanthropic efforts?
ROSE McGOWAN: I support Children of The Night, they are
who I earmark for things and anybody who’s going to donate on my behalf,
they work to support children and teen runaways. I’m involved in are
working at Walter Reed Hospital. I’ve been working with the military in
the USO for years. I’ve been to Afghanistan and Kuwait, and I’ve done a
lot of stuff in the last seven years military. I’m very, very close to
that world. I have the utmost respect for them, and it’s beyond that. I
think I would have been a really good soldier or officer, frankly.
Except for I probably would have gotten kicked out for some reason or
another, I’m sure. But I’m a fighter, I’m a born fighter, and I respect
fighters, in any capacity.
