Details
Director: Rose McGowan
Writer: M.A. Fortin & Joshua John Miller
Cast: Tara Lynne Barr, Hannah Marks, Reiley McClendon, John Grady
Genre: Short, Drama, Thriller
Runtime: 17 mintues
On Monday, June 22, 2015, Rose McGowan released her much-anticipated short film as it was one of many short films which was picked by the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 and gained a warm feedbacks from the critics. Dawn tells the story of a young teenager named Dawn (played by Tara Lynne Barr) who longs for something or someone to free her from her sheltered life. The film was set in the 1960s. As her fan, I was so happy to know that Rose has done a breakthrough for herself in directing besides acting. And it's true, I was keen to watch the short film which was nominated for Short Film Grand Jury Prize award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was also getting a buzz for an Oscar nomination (though she didn't get it). Here goes my review.
Dawn is to be true an intense yet stylish film about the life of a girl during her rebellious phase who basically had a very fanatically protective parents. The 17-minutes-long film is wrapped up in a quite disturbing ending. As it is set in the 1960s, the short film seemingly have a bit of modern touch but is presented in precise storytelling. It is also quite a moving story with the warning to both parents and teenagers on their society.
Dawn played by Tara Lynne Barr.
“Dawn is a cautionary tale. We hurt girls with casual negligence. We change the course of lives with a stereotypical view shared thoughtlessly. We shape the minds of the innocent. Let's think different and be better.” said Rose McGowan as her message to the audience who watches. Somehow, the short film also tells about misogyny and feminism. It's clear with the depiction of Dawn in a vulnerable figure and a bitter ending, marking Dawn as a typically strong thriller. Though it could be a good example of short film done correctly, Dawn somehow looks predictable through its "dark" style. Also with the depiction of Dawn's life which could be considered "not so representing."
As a conclusion, Dawn is both riveting and thought provoking. It's the type of film which can make you feel sorry and say “Oh my god” or “Jeez” or whatever comes to your mind. The cast worked nicely. The story was acted in a proper way thanks to Rose McGowan's excellent directing. The style productions, which was also handled by Rose, proved to be a great depiction of 1960s. The whole short film is typically accompanied with incredible sound mixing and music. Dawn is utterly amazing, straightforward, disturbing, worth to watch twice as suggested by Rose McGowan and showed what Miss McGowan had always dreamed about.
Rating: A
Watch Dawn now if you don't believe me:
“My inspirations were varied - I wanted the color palette of The Parent Trap (1961) the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting, the driving tension of Night of the Hunter mixed with Hemingway's unsparing style of editing. These greats are my teachers.” Rose McGowan admitted.
“I have, obviously, shit to say,” said Rose McGowan earlier this week at a suite in New York’s Edition Hotel, where she was promoting her directorial debut, the short film, Dawn. “I’m not saying it’s good stuff, but I’m saying I’ve got stuff to say.” For almost 30 minutes, McGowan and I talked about Hollywood (McGowan is best known for her roles in things like Scream, Charmed, and The Doom Generation), fame at a young age (“It fucked me up”), and the controversial statements she made last year on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast regarding misogyny amongst gay men and the state of the struggle (“I see now people who have basically fought for the right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange Speedo and take molly”).
Having written about those statements, I couldn’t wait to talk to McGowan about that last point specifically, and she did not disappoint. She was quick, fiery, and poised to argue but seemingly happy to explain. We hurtled through a series of topics and I’m preserving much of our conversation in the transcript below (which has been lightly condensed and edited for clarification).
But, first, here's Dawn in its entirety:
And here's Rose and me:
Gawker: Making this movie was sort of a political act for you, right?
Rose McGowan: That’s a really interesting way to couch it. You’re the first person who said so. I would agree with you. It is. I tried to make it a very layered piece. I wanted to say something about class disparity without saying it, and you can do that by just having perfect furniture and somebody who’s got dingy jeans sitting on it. And then the two men that she references in the movie are Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson, both gay. All that stuff is not on accident.
Why make a short instead of a feature? Are you dipping your toe in?
No, I was really inspired by the exercise Hemingway gave his writer friends, which was to see if they could write a full story in six words. His was “Baby shoes for sale, never worn.” That always resonated with me. I saw a lot of movies that couldn’t seem to tell a full story in two and a half hours. I wanted to see if I could do a full story in 18 minutes. It was actually just a personal challenge. I think a lot of shorts are made trying to get them made into features and I actually don’t want to make Dawn into a feature. It is what it is. It stands on its own.
In terms of content, it seems like there’s a pro-woman, if not feminist, guiding hand at work.
It’s just shining a light on something. I don’t know if that means feminist. I would hope that a man could have easily done this, too.
He wouldn’t have, though.
He wouldn’t have, that’s the thing. I mean, the sad part is that there are a lot of male writers and they’re told to write what they know and they write men. That’s how we come up with some not very complex characters.
But then the alternative is something like Top Five. Have you seen that?
Not yet.
In it is a gay character who’s ridiculed for being gay.
Literally he was a scapegoat? A punching bag?
Yeah. And it struck me: This is what happens when straight men write gay characters.
But what if I had made it? Would I have gotten reamed? Yes.
You think so?
Yes. I would never do that because my friends are men and women that happen to be gay. They’re not gay first. It’s just [about] people understanding that it’s humans first. To say Dawn is feminist, yes, but it’s because I’m a woman so it has to be, but I’m a humanist. But how you felt about seeing that gay character, imagine how I feel about seeing women in movies all the time. Or playing them.
Do you regret anything you’ve played?
Yes. (Laughs) I had a very big agent who basically did the mind-meld on me: “Do this movie about wrestling.” I threw the script in the garbage three times because that’s where it deserved to be. It was Ready to Rumble. It was a lot of money. She just didn’t care, and I mistook her for someone who was a strong woman. What she really was was a mercenary woman. And there’s a difference—and one who didn’t like me, either. A lot of agents aren’t supportive of their talent in any way. Nobody’s understood how to represent me, which is why, other than film publicists, I currently have no representation other than my lawyer. I don’t need it. She said, “If you do this movie for Warner Bros, they’ll stick you in the next Clint Eastwood movie.” OK, I do the stupid movie, I’m trying to have an out-of-body experience the whole time, like, “How is this happening to me? I can’t believe I agreed to do this.” And I did it, I brought it, ‘cause that’s what I do. And it was silly and, whatever, harmless. But not really—it was really harmful to me.
Psychically?
In my psyche, it was very harmful for me. And I was so deeply uncomfortable. And of course, I come to find out that the Clint Eastwood people didn’t know me from Adam. She just straight-up lied. And that was very common in my history.
I assume there’s no coincidence that you’re making your foray into filmmaking in your 40’s...
Not at all.
Really? Because 40 is when they say...
You don’t understand my life, first of all. I spent the last seven years dismantling...I have a very big life beyond what people see on the outside, including you. And that’s understandable because I never told anybody anything. I’m not one of those people that goes on TV and gives everybody updates on my current movements. I’m a businesswoman, I own a lot of businesses, a lot of real estate, I’m kind of a baller in many other worlds. This one I came back to a year and a half ago, like, “Oh wait, I’m an artist. Hey, OK, I got this.” Has nothing to do with my age, nothing to do with disappearing roles. I disappeared from the roles long before they disappeared from me ‘cause I didn’t care. There was no reason to care. I was bringing it and nobody else around me was. I worked with a lot of great directors, possibly on their lazier projects. Acting has nothing to do with what I’m directing. But does your time in Hollywood have anything to do with it?
No.
There’s a dearth of female directors...
No. It’s completely coincidental.
Really?
It just happened to be that I was like, “Oh.” The problem for me was that I would get on set and I would be shocked at the house my character was in or shocked that these are the actors that are across from me, shocked that these are the clothes I’m wearing. “What is happening?” It was because I directed the whole thing in my head. I was just in the wrong job. It’s not really that dramatic. I was just in the wrong job.
A large part of it was I was discovered and within a year and a half, I was famous. And when you spend your life playing and being other people, it’s fucked up. You’re only you in your off time. And when I got stuck on a TV show, that was about 15 hours a day for five years straight, other than like a month and a half in the summer. I was so exhausted, there’s not a lot of time for personal development.
I don’t feel like sticking myself in a movie. If I had the motivation I believe you possibly felt I had, would I not be sticking myself in the movie? Creating a part for myself? I have not. The stereotype is that there are no good roles...
But that doesn’t even matter to me. I don’t want to act, so it doesn’t matter.
You accepted the New York Film Critics Circle award for Jennifer Kent and talked about the lack of female directors, so I figured you were seeing a space and stepping up.
I’m stepping up because no one else is. There are some, they’re starting to get louder, but I realized as an artist you’re in an un-fireable position. And actually we all are. All of us humans cannot be fired from being ourselves. We can be fired from our jobs, we can not be hired for a job, but we can’t be fired. We’re us. And we’re legion. And it’s an amazing feeling and an amazing, empowered feeling.
Is it an amazing feeling being Rose McGowan?
Right now it is. I earned it. I fucking earned it. I had a very colorful life way before Hollywood. I spent my life surviving. And I’m not in survival mode right now and that’s an amazing thing.
You said if you’d done the gay character in Top Five, you would have been reamed for it. Do you think you were reamed last year [for your comments about gay male apathy]?
That was bullshit. Why?
Why was that bullshit? Because I was actually speaking very specifically about a group of guys in West Hollywood that were mad at me. I was not speaking about all gays. That’s dumb. They can’t all fit on a float, I know this. That was hatcheted up, and I think it’s ‘cause I went after, honestly, some leaders in the gay community and so as payback they kind of hatcheted up what I said, and I was like, “Really? What’s what you’re going to do?” And the problem is now, there are so many people that are keyboard activists. “I feel pious because I don’t go to the Beverly Hills Hotel.” You know what, why don’t you feel pious by not going to a movie and not getting gas? Why don’t you feel pious about [Richard] Branson who’s like, “I’ll never let any of my Virgin employees stay there,” and then he just did a huge deal with Brunei? So, shut up. The reality is the Beverly Hills Hotel is a living history museum. We don’t have many of those in Los Angeles. My thing was about saving it, and also, duh: don’t protest it, take it over. It was pretty ballsy to have a party with 100 gay guys and women there and have them make out in the hallway. Those pictures I sent to the sultan.
[The Beverly Hills Hotel stuff] you’re referencing is part of the podcast that didn’t get passed around—the pull quotes [about gay misogyny, floats, and molly] were what caused the stir.
Of course. And the pull quotes were cut up, as they do. It was shocking at first. It’s very weird to have a phone where you can touch an app and all this hate or whatever comes through. And it’s like, “You’re not even understanding—I’m speaking about a very specific group of people who are very 1 percent.” How many people are really protesting the Beverly Hills Hotel? What percentage of the 99 versus the 1 percent is feeling pious because they’re not going and getting a $35 cheeseburger? I don’t care about the cheeseburger. I care about the employees and I care about the place itself. It’s living and breathing. There’s so much history there and I’m basically an amateur Hollywood historian. I’m on the board of the Film Noir Society. I also did a show on TCM. I’ve studied film since I was 4 with my father. The classic film stuff is in my blood. So for me, it was really just about that. And it was also about the gay community...maybe needs to be shook up a little. Why are there sacred cows? These are men first. So why would they be different? And in fact, they can put a lot of their lives together completely excluding women. I know they relate on the underdog part, but what happens when you’re no longer the underdog?
I think that gay people are still underdogs largely per the legislation of our country.
Largely. Of course.
But it’s like you were saying, your movie’s feminist because you’re a humanist...
Right, so there’s a gay struggle because it exists because you are. It will cease. It will come. It’s the fastest growing civil rights movement in United States history, and I’m fucking proud of how far you guys and women have come. I’m fucking proud of it, but you forget the women. Believe me, I hear the gays, and I’ll use the word slander... [from] my friends, my gay friends...I was a runaway taken in by three trans women and a stripper named Tina, and I grew up protecting the kids on the playground. I was an outsider. I was a weirdo. I was Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family, basically—the Addams Family of intellectuals and activists. We were the weirdos on every block everywhere, and that was fucking great because I didn’t bother fitting in. My mother asked me if I wanted to assimilate more and I said, “Look at their shoes. No.”
To have people that are not fully developed in their brains torture other people just because they challenge something, just by existing. That’s not fair and that’s not OK in my book, so I’ll fight for them. I was out there, believe me, the night of Prop 8, marching. And I thought that was mishandled. There’s so many things, but there is a pay-it-forward part of this that needs to be happening.
Did you like what Patricia Arquette said after the Oscars?
Of course I did. Because she’s right.
I thought she was right, too. A lot of people felt like she wasn’t being intersectional enough...
Why should she be? Are you guys?
No, I’m not saying, “I’M interviewing YOU.” I’m saying I’m interested in what women (and people of color) do. My job is not activist but it is to be aware, and I care...
And I appreciate that. I do my small part.
Right. It’s a small part and it can be bigger.
I think that’s the bigger point, there’s this utter selfishness in contemporary American culture...
That’s the thing! That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I want: people to be 10 percent better. Ten percent better versions of themselves. That’s it. If people were just 10 percent better, including myself, in all areas, in heart, in soul, in design, in thought...like, go one step beyond the obvious. And then, you’ll have a lot more understanding of other people and I think the world will actually change. And it’s not that hard. And the paying it forward to me—I hate that term, but I don’t know what else to call it—is, for me when it hit a moment, was the vote. I was waiting for the NAACP, I was waiting for the gay rights leaders, I was waiting for them to denounce that vote on the senate floor voting down equal pay for women. I’m like, “Do you not represent women ostensibly? Do they not pay your dues as well?” Where are you? That’s not OK. So I was angry that day [of the podcast], but I was also angry about being misinterpreted by a group of people from West Hollywood primarily, so that’s who I was talking to. I’ve had some time to think about it and maybe I’m right. Not for everybody. Not with a huge, sweeping generalization. I have gay friends who donated to NARAL and Planned Parenthood on my behalf. Like I said, everyone can’t fit on a float. I wanna be a on a float, I’ve been on a float, I know how many people can fit on a float. I haven’t been on a float in 10 years.
I’ve been on a float, and I’ll rock that shit. I haven’t done molly in a year, either.
It doesn’t work on me. I’ve tried. It sucks. It’s so unfair. I think I was the only sober person at Coachella. I wanted to kill myself.
The older I get the more wary I am of doing a drug that’s going to fuck up my next day, my next two days, my next three days.
That’s the thing, in like 10 years or whatever, you have no idea. But my father...one of the things I champion is I’m on the board of the Daughters of Pulmonary Fibrosis. It’s a horrible disease that killed my dad. He was a vegan for 25 years, hiked two hours a day way before it was popular. He would put our cereal in brown paper bags. Never owned a microwave. And he got a horrible lung disease that is idiopathic, so it’s not caused by anything in specific, and it killed him. And he was a giant of a man. It was like watching the lion of the pride go behind the bush to die. It was intense.
That was part of the last seven years for me. Recovering from being paralyzed in my right arm. Recovering from a car accident. Basically, everything had to break in order for me to reform, to become myself not [only] in the off period. Imagine everyday you go to work, you’re saying something someone else wrote for you to say. You’re not even speaking for yourself. It’s very strange. I have, obviously, shit to say. (Laughs) I’m not saying it’s good stuff, but I’m saying I’ve got stuff to say.
How much did being a young famous person fuck you up?
It fucked me up. It didn’t fuck me up in terms of turning into a cliche. I was never arrested, I never did any of that stuff. I had always wanted to go dance on a table in a red dress but because of the environment at the time—the internet was crazy, it was the Lindsay Lohan era—I just left. I was like, “Peace out, losers. This is not my bag. I’m not playing this game. I will not be for sale.” I had a publicist that was like, “Why don’t you call me one day when you’re looking cute?” I was like, “Excuse me?” She said, “We’ll send our photographer down so we can get coverage, you know if you’re in a store and you look cute.” I was like, “What?” I thought about it for about two seconds and was like, “I absolutely cannot do that.” My father used to collect Edward S. Curtis prints and he did a lot of amazing prints of Native Americans and studied that culture. My father did as well. They say they feel the camera steals your soul. So I’m here to steal others. But you’re not going to continue the cycle?
No. I never did, really. My thing was always like, “You want me to play on the red carpet? Let’s fucking play. Let’s go hard. You want me to play? You want me to be your show pony? I’ll be your fucking show pony.” Why not? Why is everything a sacred cow? I realized that all of these rules that are put down for us, they’re all illusions. They’re not there. I’m not saying, “Fuck you,” to the rules, the rules simply don’t exist. That’s what irritates me when people complain about societal expectations. It’s like...
I don’t care! It’s like Madonna says: I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me. If this is how you want to approach marriage, do it. Don’t put it on me. If this is how you want to approach your religion, do it. Don’t put it on me. Whatever your deal is, do it. Keep your side of the street clean and leave mine alone, ‘cause your thought doesn’t count unless I invite you in and maybe we can exchange thoughts and be better and that’s amazing.
Tired of Hollywood's misogynistic attitudes towards female actors, Rose McGowan has quit acting to make films that tell women's stories.
As her debut short-film Dawn, is set to be released on June
22 on YouTube we met with Rose McGowan and discussed her new vocation
as a film director, the story behind her upcoming first feature film The Pines,
and her escape from Hollywood's status quo of misogyny. And as it turns
out, her new professional journey is far more personal than one could
imagine.
First things first, let's discuss your short-film debut, Dawn, the tragedy of a teenage girl... Dawn
is about growing up as a young woman in the 60s, experiencing first
love and femininity, but it is also about asking what happens when we as
a society, with maternal influences, bind our daughter's hands? How we
give them no defense mechanism at all-we only say 'no, you can't do
this', without explaining why. But it also questions the idea of
masculinity, the two men that Dawn idolises are Robert Hunter and Rock
Hudson, now known as gay actors, but at the time, they would have been
her teenage dream. I also wanted to question class disparity by putting
an emphasis on the material contrast between the working class and the
middle class--for example, the condition of Dawn's family car which is
brand new, versus the boy's car, who works at a gas station, which is
much older. I say a lot without having to hit anybody over the head. So
it's not a coming-of-age story per se, it's rather a cautionary tale.
What about the casting, how did you chose your actors?
I
didn't want anybody to look like an actor from L.A. I got Tara Barr to
play Dawn, her face doesn't have this innocent baby-fat anymore. As for
the male lead role, I was looking for somebody who could embody a
paedophile, a victimiser, a manipulator capable of gently scrambling
Dawn's brain.
Dawn was screened during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. How did people react?
My
favourite reaction was from one lady who told me that she threw up
after watching it-for me it was a compliment. It was very stressful to
her-not because there's any gore, because we don't really show any
violence—but I think Dawn affects women of a certain age group, the generation of women who grew up in the 60s.
Why did you chose to focus on the 60s in particular?
Well the
60s are a very weird time for women. Even the sexual revolution, which
came towards the end of the decade, was still benefitting to patriarchal
culture. I mean, by the end of the 60s, you weren't considered as cool
unless you were into free love, but five years earlier you'd been taught
to only please a man. It was a very schizophrenic time for women, and I
wanted to study that and express it through Dawn.
The way women perceive themselves - is this your principle priority at the moment?
Women-and
the way women look at each other and feel about themselves-are at the
core of my work. I was looking back on my own career and I realised that I
was turned into a commodity, and one that I didn't participate in or
sell very well. I felt very uncomfortable about making myself into that
commodity. The male gaze affected me a lot, most of the time, when you
see a woman on screen, she proceeds with the eyes of the men that filmed
and directed her; she sees herself that way instead of having her own
perception. And I've been seeing that way for years-I'm not blaming
anybody, I was part of the Hollywood machine-but I'm glad that my own
life experiences and empirical evidences made me think and act in a
different way. The only way to get beyond this is to leave the gender
part out of filming-you have to show people the middle. That it's not
only always about men versus women or women versus men. For me, it's not
even about focusing on a female-centric perspective, but rather about
developing a story-centric one. I hope that comes through in Dawn.
The Pines, your debut feature film, is currently in pre-production. Can we get a little sneak-peek of the plot?
It's
set in 1971—it looks like I'm obsessed with period films, but I'm not.
It's about a mother-daughter relationship. The mother used to be in a
mental institution, where she committed suicide, and her daughter is in
that same mental institution and is told to leave, but she actually
doesn't want to leave, she feels safe there. Then, she gets taken in by a
family of healers... and that's all I can tell for now. I will start
the movie very desaturated, without colour, and as her mind gets
healthier, the colour will evolve and get brighter… I basically want to
question reality through visual elements.
Do Dawn or The Pines somehow reflect your own life experiences? Or is everything pure fiction? I
use the women in my films as substitutes for what I want to say. I was
institutionalised when I was young-not through any fault of my own, I
had a step-father who wanted me out, and I was put in hospital from
which I escaped. But the subject was very intriguing to me, as I met
people there who felt more comfortable in the hospital and were
completely afraid of the outside world. And I understood that, because
for 7 years I quit acting, largely, and traveled compulsively, and
ended up rattling around an empty house in Los Angeles. It was my
version of the hospital, I was getting well in there, I could recover
from a lot of personal issues, including my car accident, the death of
my father, and many other things that happened to me. So I related to
this script about a girl that is trying to find her own sanity. For me
it took all of these things to get me out of acting.
Were you truly fed up with acting? Don't get me
wrong, I loved it, but let's put it this way: it's very hard to think
about other jobs when you're discovered standing on a street-corner at
18. I realised that my favourite part of being on set is being on set -
leading, directing and running things, it's my personality. My brother
used to call me Hitler!
Oh wow, that's something...
My
job as an actor was to take the audience on a journey, and now, as a
director, it's just a broader version of that. I used to be part of a
universe as an actress, and as a film director, I'm defining that
universe.
Did you feel trapped in Hollywood, and unable to express your own vision?
My
brain needs a lot of stimulation, and as an actor you often don't get
any. You need a good memory, a lot of stamina, emotion, and hopefully
intelligence-it has great thought but it doesn't require it. Imagine if
for 15 years, the only thing you've ever said is what somebody wrote for
you to say. You're paid to be like somebody else. I actually grew up in
my spare time, when I wasn't being other people, when I could focus on
my extracurricular activities, such as lobbying on behalf of the
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), or working on a new web-platform
for curated creative experiences, and on a music project, among many
other things. What gets said and done in that town, especially towards
women, is disgusting. There's an omnipresent ownership of women. Once, I
had an agent who told me not to speak very much in meetings, because it
was intimidating to men-and she was a woman! Or another example, three
years ago, I was considering coming back to Hollywood when I met my
husband, and was about to sign with a new manager-and that guy stuck his
tongue in my throat after the meeting. I just reacted by saying
''C'mon! Is this still happening? Still? You just showed me a picture of
your 9-month-old baby! But I will out you at some point. I've got a
list.'' I always try to take everything with humor and with a punch in
the nose for them. Mainstream America doesn't get me, but that's cool,
because I don't get them either, so at least we have something in
common.
Interview ERICA RUSSELL Stylist Assistant BECCA GRIFFIN Makeup SONIA RESHETNIKOVA
Ever since Rose McGowan made her scree debut back in 1992, the effortlessly comedic and seductive actress has become a sort of cult queen, known for her tongue-in-cheek wit, bad-girl-meets-bombshell attitude, and for playing some of the most iconic characters in our American pop culture canon.
It’s difficult to accurately pinpoint McGowan’s most iconic role. For many, it was the starlet’s turn as Amy Blue in Gregg Araki’s 1995 dark comedy The Doom Generation. Others look to homicidal high-school clique queen Courtney of 1999′s post-Heathers, pre-Mean Girls teen classic, Jawbreaker. Then again, there’s always Tarantino’s one-legged go-go dancer Cherry Darling, the heroine of 2007′s Planet Terror. And did I mention Paige from TV’s Charmed?
This past year, however, McGowan took on an entirely new role, one which she hadn’t tried her hand at before: director. Released in early 2014, Dawn – an atmospheric short film about a teenage girl growing up among the social suffocation of the 1960s – ushered in McGowan’s official directorial debut. There has already been Oscar buzz circling the film.
In celebration of her career-defining work on Dawn, I spoke with the pop culture icon and multi talented artist about feminist issues, her passion for music, and finally finding her voice in filmmaking.
Can you talk a little about Dawn and the conception of the film? Dawn is my first film. I wanted to make a full feature in 18 minutes. It’s set in 1961 and explores what happens when society binds the proverbial hands of a young girl, leaving her defenseless. My great friends, Joshua Miller & Mark Fortin, wrote it for me and they simply said, “It’s time for you to direct.” And I did.
There are some intense themes and messages regarding women’s voices and empowerment in the film. How did you decide to explore these themes for your first directorial venture? I wanted to say something important. The screenwriters wanted to say something important. There’s enough triviality on-screen, and I’m not particularly interested in bringing more. I am, and always have been, very political. I feel like it’s my duty to speak up for those without a voice. A lot of that gets me in trouble but I don’t much care about that.
Were there any particular challenges you had to overcome as a director during filming the project? Not really. There were just minor emergencies here and there, but I’m good at putting out fires.
Creatively, how does filmmaking compare to acting for you? For me, creativity lives the mind. Directing has me firing on all cylinders. Acting is largely emotional for me so my brain wasn’t getting enough of a workout. It took me a long time to identify what was wrong in my life.
You’ve talked about filming Charmed and how intense it was. How do you find the balance between work and life? How do you prioritize? I didn’t have any balance during the Charmed period. I don’t think I’ll ever do a schedule like that again. I prize my freedom above all else and I need to honor that!
You have a very strong feminist voice. How do you view the state of things for women currently in our society? What do you think needs to change immediately? The list is too long for this interview! I think we need to collectively start viewing each other as humans instead of just a sex. Compassion for one another is key and to stand up for women if you’re a man.
I feel like your role in Jawbreaker was resurrected a bit with your appearance in Charli XCX’s video. How did that come about? I got a call and just went to film. She’s a cool one, that Charli!
I know that you have been passionate about music for a long time. Does music play a big role in film-making, or even acting, for you? Oh yes, completely. All you have to do is turn the sound off on your TV and play a song. You’ll see how it transforms the tone of the work entirely.
Do you have any plans for an official Rose McGowan music release anytime soon? Yes! I’m working on it now, actually!
What’s next for you, Rose? What are you looking towards over the horizon? My autobiography, music, writing a screenplay, and directing more films. It’s all happening! It’s a very exciting time for me.
Rose McGowan at last year's Sundance Film Festival.
Rose McGowan has signed on to make her feature directorial debut with the psychological thriller The Pines, with shooting set for fall in upstate New York.
Sundial Pictures and Tangerine Entertainment are producing.
McGowan will direct from a script by Alex Mar, in which a troubled
young woman’s dreams of stability are threatened by a family of healers
who could help save her mind, or lose it completely.
Sundial principals are Morgan White, Joey Carey, and Stefan Nowicki.
Tangerine Entertainment, founded by Amy Hobby and Anne Hubbell, is a production company for films by women directors.
The deal was announced Thursday on the opening day of the Sundance Film Festival. McGowan’s short film Dawn premiered last year in competition at Sundance.
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.
I’m going to tell you about the Nine Lives of Rose McGowan. They’re lives of intersection, lives of expression, lives occasionally glazed with death, the macabre, the dying. They’re lives of spotlight, scrutiny, sex, and longing. They’re lives not yet lived, and lives long forgotten.
Rose McGowan is drinking tequila with muddled jalapeños, her shoulders exposed from a white dress to a balmy Santa Ana breeze atop a boutique hotel in Hollywood, her hair cut short in a punishing bob. Our opening exchange is taut and tense, warm and nuanced, marked as much by polarity as the subsequent conversation that follows. To wit: McGowan’s digesting today’s closure of the agency that currently represents her for acting, Resolution, run by former ICM chairman, Jeff Berg, while enjoying a declaratively charmed review of her directorial debut, Dawn, by The New York Times.
Life, in this moment now, is moving like a current through McGowan, knotted up and ready to incite something, anything. It’s when she laughs—as she’ll do while chewing on ideas of art, fame, sex, expectation, power, and spiritual renewal—that this is most evident. It’s a stage laugh, capable of rattling the nosebleeds, almost superhuman.
Yet, here is someone wholly human, with their mistakes, their faults, their missteps, and their successes. Here’s a human who has lived on the streets, experienced the murder of a lover, spent some 17,000 hours on set [under the guidance of Gregg Araki, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, and Wes Craven, among others], kept romantic company with other celebrities, ceased working with glamour teams for photo shoots or red carpet, has partnered on a forthcoming three docu-series with Relativity Television, and who, at 41, shamelessly bears it all for Flaunt in the photos herein.
Dawn, too, in its way, bears it all. The crown jewel of eight currently touring films from the Sundance Film Festival, Dawn is a period piece (1961) that—despite its short format—sears, positioning McGowan as a potential earthmover behind the camera, in the increasingly droll American film scene. McGowan’s turn at the camera results in a gauzy, tummy-stirring piece that harkens Flannery O’Connor’s iconic short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” with similarly bewitching restraint and seraphic imbue. But that’s merely a referential pivot point, not the film’s winning gravitas.
Dawn tells the tale of an adolescent girl lured into a sexually explorative—albeit dark—moment in time, the long-term scars and marks that go unseen on those involved. As well, there’s tenderness, and shameless play, and an ending we won’t spill here, but somehow fitting for whom we’re enjoying reposado with. What’s winning about the 19-minute piece is that its tonality and directional maturity depict much of what makes Rose McGowan a person now—despite, or perhaps because of—the aforementioned lives lived and led.
Everything is bleeding over at this particular moment in time, and that’s cool by McGowan. Fear is dead weight, regret is for character roles, not waking life, and the entertainment machine is fickle. Life will not surprise her, no matter its turns. For as O’Conner was known to say: “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” So now: a summary of our conversation in Nine Parts.
I. Sometimes, in life, things repeat themselves.
I meet Rose McGowan in the back of an Uber during Art Basel Miami Beach 2013 before we let loose our divinities at a Benoit & Sergio show at The Electric Pickle downtown. She’s a friend of a friend, and we’ve rung her ahead of time to ask for some tequila from her mini-bar. She obliges. There’s no jalapeños for muddling, but she does tell me briefly about Dawn and its acceptance into Sundance, where it will screen to charmed reviews seven weeks later. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here,” she says, speaking to the art parade and carnival that overtakes Miami annually, relieved we’re leaving the beach for the bass, I ask over her shoulder what Dawn is thematically about and she pauses for a moment, before softly announcing over the satellite radio:
Rose McGowan: A girl.
II. Sometimes we need to breathe. Because before all this: Breath. Because with breathing, we go on, we regulate. We keep the fire burning.
Dawn, for me, was about rebirth. I got off on the wrong track for an extended period of time. I’ve had a lot of fun, I’ve had an amazing time. But the last seven years I largely took off. I had gotten stuck into a lot of things that were other people’s artistic visions, which sometimes were very limited visions. And I’m not oil on someone’s canvas, I’m much more than just an oil.
III. Sometimes, impact: reversals, returns.
A real impact? How about this: making a left turn into a car that smashes into my seat. The side airbag shatters glass into my right eye. Cuts my face open. That was a point of impact. And I wonder if I broke a massive mirror, maybe the Versailles Hall of Mirrors. Because I had about seven years of tremendous bad luck. But that’s okay. There had to be something really intense to shake me out of the life I was stuck in. It took my dad dying, it took my arm being paralyzed on a set, it took my dogs dying, it took a lot to get me out of the fame bubble. At that time, in 2008—when I basically peaced out of Hollywood—it was the real zenith of Perez Hilton power, Page 6 power. All this bullshit that doesn’t matter at all. Just bullshit. And there was no Twitter yet so you couldn’t fight back. As an actor, it’s arguably the only voice you can have. Before, what? They do a retraction on page 46, big deal. So after the car accident, things just went haywire.
IVa. Sometimes, there’s fate in these lives we lead.
I was discovered standing on a street corner. So I didn’t have the same trajectory as other people that, you know, understood how to get agents, managers, lawyers, and do all that. I just didn’t understand it. And I didn’t understand those people, I’d never been around people like that. And frankly they were terrifying. Terrifying because what was considered valuable and valued in that world is not what I consider valuable in mine. IVb. Sometimes fate means loss. Other times we have gain. Sometimes we gain in loss.
I’m not scared of anything. I’m not scared of the people that I find scary. Like I’ve done horror movies, and I’ve never seen them. Because I just don’t like things that frighten me. Not frighten me like I need to fight for my life, but frighten me in a way that just turns my stomach. Repulsive. About lack of empathy, lack of quality of life. On a comfort level, that period was high quality. A comfort level in your soul? Not so much. But that’s okay. It’s all about art now.
V. Sometimes we move on, we change, we redirect. Sometimes we wholly let go.
Past lives? I worked at a funeral home for my first job dressing bodies for viewing. It was a lot of past lives I was dealing with. My life has been threaded with death, more than anything. I’ve only been to two weddings. The second was my own [to artist Davey Detail]. Some people just get nailed with it. Some people just have more of it and eventually it will catch up with all of us. But it is intense when you’re younger and dealing with death. It’s not that you’re not prepared for it. You can never really be prepared for it.
VI. Sometimes, it all boils down to moments.
Standing on a street corner crying after my boyfriend was murdered in L.A., and I had nowhere to live—that was a moment. The scowl on my face…the tears running down. I was couch surfing—I was staying at my friend’s house. He actually wrote Dawn. I have so many moments, but that would be one. Or this: some woman approaching me and asking if I knew who Gregg Araki was. And of course I didn’t, because I was only raised on classic stuff. And I said, “No,” and she said, “Would you go to meet him in The Valley?” And I said, “No,” and she said, “Why?” And I said, “The Valley is very far.” Eventually they got me to The Valley, and here I sit today.
VII. Sometimes, it’s as if we’re not living. It’s as if we’re made into something else.
I’ve been dehumanized, I’ve sexualized. I was very sexualized. And I went part and parcel with it, in a way, because it was just like: this is the trade off. Once you promote films, you have to. And it’s not about being nude. I think nudity is beautiful. I feel in a weird way I’ve been like Cindy Sherman. I’ve just been paid to be that way. It just wasn’t my choice. It would be like Cindy Sherman being told what she had to look like in each photo.
VIII. Sometimes, cats are said to live Nine Lives. They spend these lives, so they say: playing, staying, and straying.
Survival was my staying. Looking back now at fame, it’s almost like I was on a ship. And I just hold myself, in a way, before the storm ends. Because I had nobody protecting me. I never had a fighter for a publicist, or a rep, anything like that. And I was taking all the blows. Because I didn’t come here pursuing it, I didn’t understand this masochistic business. And I opted out. And life opted me out. But then I opted back in. But not on anybody else’s terms. Just because things have been done a certain way for so long doesn’t mean that they have to still be done that way. How boring. I think Hollywood just needs to become a lot more progressive. It’s time. It’s not going to survive any other way.
IX. And yet, the cat will stray.
I’m not in a rat race. You’re told you have to be in this studio movie even though you hate it and it’s about wrestling. Because then they’ll hire you for other movies. No they won’t, assholes. Now I’m just stuck in a stupid wrestling movie, you assholes, you dicks. I don’t listen to what people say in that way. That’s straying. Was it Malcolm Gladwell who said you’re a master after 10,000 hours? In that case, we’re all masters; we just have to realize we are. I spent over 17,000 hours on sets. That’s a conservative estimate. And I’ll meet a director that’s done two movies, and it’s like, “All right. Chill out. Simmer down. Let’s just be people.” That’s the number one thing. I think there’s a kind of movement going on right now. I think there’s a real move towards us being human.
Rose McGowan attending "Dawn" premiere at Downtown Independent theater on September 19 in Los Angeles.
The “Grindhouse” actress said directing the short film “Dawn” will launch the next phase of her career
For some, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone is a career pinnacle, a childhood fantasy attained. For Rose McGowan, a suggestive pose on a 2007 issue of the iconic magazine was a wakeup call.
“I just had this bouffant hairdo, this big bubble hairdo, this weird Photoshopped forehead that they gave me — I don't know why exactly, because my forehead was fine, last I checked — and this dark fake tan, and I'm chest-to-chest with Rosario Dawson and an ammo belt around my hip was the only clothing I had on,” McGowan remembered in a conversation with TheWrap on Monday. ”And I was like, Who is that?”
The trouble wasn't so much just that those specific photographers and designers at that specific magazine had put them in a less-than-comfortable pose (to promote Grindhouse), but that the cover represented everything that she had come to hate about her career and industry.
“It's always part and parcel of it, you're expected as a woman, this is what you trade off of, this is how you sell tickets to the movies, this is your part of it,” she rattled off, regretting the state of the business. “Your job as a promoter is this: They're not sticking a guy on the cover doing it, unless it's like Seth Rogen doing a joke. So as a woman I'm expected to sell myself, my body, my image, my sexuality, in order to get your ticket sales up. It's kind of fucked up. And it's like, wait, I wasn't aware that when I signed on to act, I had to sell myself that much.”
And so McGowan retreated from Hollywood, more or less, taking time to travel and study and appearing in fewer projects (most notably an arc in Nip/Tuck and a supporting role in Conan the Barbarian in 2009). During this time, she says, she found both her true self and her true passion, which together led to her directorial debut on the short film Dawn.
A 1961-set story about a teenage girl lured into danger by older kids with bright smiles and dark intentions, Dawn is a lush, impressive debut, and one that McGowan says will launch the next phase of her career.
TheWrap: You've been in the industry for most of your life, so when did you decide that you wanted to direct? McGowan: I think it just actually came out of the writers, who are my friends, it came from an outside source, instead of an internal source, and then it all just clicked. And all my years of frustration, I was like oh, I can actually do something about this.
It seems like we're in both a permission-based industry, and also the sense that you can go do it yourself because things aren't as expensive to make. There's a weird split there. McGowan: There is a big schism in this industry; if you're on the actor's side, it's like, here is what you're allowed to do, or what we're gonna let you do, and maybe you'll get this, and maybe you won't. Where the other side of this is just, go be a maverick and just do it yourself, which as it turns out, is more in line with my process.
How long did it take you to shoot? McGowan: It was a four-day shoot, but pro-rated, if it was a full feature, it probably would have been about 30. Budget-wise, it was a big undertaking. We had water tankers on set, it had to go with us through the forest when we were driving… It was pretty intensive, but I handled things very well. I always have, I've just never really gotten the credit for it.
I read that this story was loosely based on your mother, in some way? Why did you connect with the story? McGowan: I connected with it because of my mother, it wasn't loosely based on her. It was a study of those kind of themes, obviously anything story-wise, no, but the maternal influence was very much there.
The struggle of women throughout the ages have been legend. And they still go on. Dawn, set in 1961, has a lot of parallels to today. It's a little more subtle now, but [sexism] is still endemic in the world and in our culture.
This summer, it seems to come to light more than ever, maybe it's finally just being exposed a little bit, even with the NFL, what's happening there. McGowan: Exactly, and it's like, Jesus, really? It's taken this much time? But at least it's getting there. But like, really? It just gets so boring. That part for me is that it just gets so boring. All of these like, it's the same treatment of women throughout the ages, we haven't moved on yet, people?
Does it seem like we're having this conversation more this summer? McGowan: For me, if I was going to think about it, I would say that it's probably something akin to people feeling like we've moved on, we're now a more civilized society, but it's just a veneer. The true problems are all still there. You don't discuss them. You don't discuss the fact that violence against women is so huge in this problem. All those gun statistics deaths, besides for inner-cities, it's women, that's who's getting killed. I was in Colorado doing a movie and every day in the newspaper, it was like, “Woman gets killed by her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, etc.” and you're like ugh.
And imagine what a good old boys [club] the NFL must be. What a nightmare. I thank god I'm not a football player every day.
At least they're finally feeling some heat. McGowan: At least they finally are. And they'll feeling heat from people who are thinking, progressive males, which is heartening.
I'm always torn because making the topic of an interview that someone is a woman director is putting an asterisk on the work they've made, you must be sick of it. McGowan: It's just like female comedians. It's a gender-neutral position. It makes me a little bit crazy.
But at the same time, the numbers are pretty terrible, so if you don't talk about it… McGowan: Oh, they're horrifying. Believe me, the NFL might have nothing on us.
So do you get annoyed by those questions? Do you feel they're annoying but essential? McGowan: It's really tricky, because it sets you up in a way that, as a woman answering it, you're bound and you have duct tape across your mouth, and if you say something, it's like, you're just another woman harping on… but it's like no, it's just reality. I'm not a woman harping on anything. It's just a fact. I wish it weren't a fact. I would love to never talk about that again, wouldn't that be exciting, wouldn't it be exciting just to talk about work? How great would that be? So freeing, because that's what it's about.
The last I heard, the sex I was born didn't really come into play with what I'm doing, other than to other people. I didn't check with myself that morning and say, as a woman director, I wonder how I'm going to approach this scene? Do you know how silly that sounds?
But the statistics are so grim, and so I'm going to do something about that. And I think it's time.
Do you have plans to direct a feature? Is that the next thing in your career? McGowan: Yeah, absolutely. I'm in negotiations for two right now. One's a big one, and one is a more indie one. This is what I love, I've finally really, really, really found my passion, more than anything.
So people see the short and say oh wow, we have to take her seriously as a director now! McGowan: Basically yes. As an actor, you're not taken seriously because you're given the roles you're “allowed” to be given, and you're trying to make a living, you're trying to survive and you're trying to do this so you take the best of what is out there. In my case, it was a bit of a Jessica Rabbit case in the past, where it's like, “I'm not that, I'm just drawn this way,” where my brain is very different. But because of what I look like, I got stuck doing a lot of certain things that didn't necessarily go in line with how I think.
Do you think that now that you've entered this new phase, can you find acting roles that are more suited to your thought process and personality? McGowan: Absolutely. I literally just signed on to two movies to act in and again, I think it's what you put out in the universe maybe to an extent is what you get back. Things rise up to meet you. The two movies that I'm in negotiations to act in are very very different than anything I've really done before. Just not trading on any physical aspect of anything. One is a goofy trio of people that hunts for ghosts, so it's kind of idiots, basically. A trio of idiots. And that's a comedy. And one is just a psychological drama about this woman and her husband whose life gets torn about by someone having false memories or maybe real memories of the husband committing a crime. So their life just gets dismantles. It's cool, it's stuff with some meat on it.
"Dawn" will be playing for a week in L.A. along with female-driven films picked by the director
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When Rose McGowan’s short-film directorial debut Dawn premiered at Sundance this winter it took many by surprise. It didn’t look like the work of someone who had been acting since she was a teenager (TV’s Charmed, Grindhouse, The Black Dahlia), but rather the work of a cinephile who had spent a lifetime feasting on the classics.
"I am a big film and art buff, I think better films would be made if more people were," McGowan tells The Hollywood Reporter. "My three inspirations for Dawn were the look of the original Parent Trap, the tension of Night of the Hunter and the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting."
The highly stylized short, set in Kennedy-era America, tells the story of Dawn (Tara Barr), a teenager living a sheltered existence. When a hunky and mysterious gas station attendant (Reiley McClendon) innocently flirts with Dawn, the door to all her teenage dreams swings open. What follows is not your typical story of sexual awakening, but rather a surprisingly twisty film of heightened reality that could best be described as Douglas Sirk-meets-David Lynch.
After generating some acclaim for Dawn earlier this year, McGowan is now hoping the film can nab an Academy Award nomination. To qualify for best short it must be publicly exhibited for paid admission in Los Angeles for three consecutive days, but McGowan has decided to turn her qualifying run into a week long “Dawn Festival” and will be setting up residency at the Downtown Independent on Sept 19.
For seven nights, Dawn will be accompanied by a movie picked by McGowan. According to a statement, the films were chosen because they “feature iconic performances by actresses that prove rich, complex and layered roles can and should be written for and by women.” The films will screen with McGowan and special guests in attendance.
For the former Charmed actress, Dawn and its Oscar run are her first steps towards directing features. "I have three features in the works right now," McGowan tells THR. "Two are in rewrites. One is a bigger film, one smaller. After conservatively estimating my time on sets at over 17,000 hours, I’m more than ready."
Here’s the full "Dawn Festival" lineup, along with McGowan’s reasoning for picking each film:
Safe: "Todd Haynes directed Julianne Moore in a haunting study of a woman's life."
Thelma & Louise: "Ridley Scott directed two substantial actresses in two substantial, inspiring roles."
Harold and Maude: "Hal Ashby directed Ruth Gordon. Two creatives on a creative journey."
Sixteen Candles: "John Hughes directed Molly Ringwald. He made a teen's hopes and hurts real."
Rosemary’s Baby: "Roman Polanski directed Mia Farrow in a virtuoso breakdown performance."
Silkwood: "Mike Nichols directed Meryl Streep and Cher. They showed us women can change the world by finding their voice."
The Silence of the Lambs: "Jonathan Demme directed Jodie Foster. She showed us what a person can do when they go forward despite their fear."
