Evan's Blog

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.

Source: TheWrap

Rose McGowan in The Doom Generation (1995)

There's something really joyous about the idea of just being really, really evil.

Sometimes it's so absurd, it's hilarious. In Conan the Barbarian, I have these long, claw things, and I'm trying to find a virgin so I can slit her throat or something with these crazy nails. When I hear 'cut' in that situation, I just immediately start laughing because it's ridiculous!

So I was a huge fan of The Doom Generation growing up…

Aww!

The film is about a group of teens who find themselves on a cross-country killing spree, and it features a lot of gory violence and out-there sexual stuff. When you were making it, did it feel like you were doing something a little bit shocking or dangerous?

Well, the funny thing is that I'd never acted before, so I had no frame of reference for what was normal or abnormal on a movie set, or even what I was supposed to be doing. I based my character on myself when I was 15, which is to say I was very surly and sullen and occasionally snarky. There were so many sexual references in the film, but the truth is that I didn't understand half of them; I didn't know what people were talking about! People would always tell me that I'd played a brave role, and I'd say 'oh, thanks!' without really understanding why. It wasn't until about a year ago, when I was doing the DVD commentary with the director Gregg Araki and some of the other actors, that I watched it again, and I was shocked by some of the things I said! All these people had said I was brave, but the truth is, it came out of ignorance and idiocy because I had no idea what was going on.

Gregg Araki is a fascinating figure. What was it like working with him?

It was a trial by fire, because he is very intense on set. I'd never worked with other directors, so I didn't understand what it was like or that he was different. There was no ad-libbing, so all these crazy dialogue things had to sound completely natural, although I understood that to be my job. He was very demanding, but in the best possible way. He brings an incredible work ethic to everything he does.

Your character in Jawbreaker, Courtney, is one of the popular girls, mainly because everyone's terrified of her. There's a great scene in that one where she flips things around on her boyfriend, and makes him go down on a popsicle for her amusement. Was that fun to film?

It totally was, yeah! I didn't entirely understand what I was doing. I mean, I understood it was subversive. It was fun, though, because the director was very openly gay, and it was fun to be re-enacting his fantasy for him.

That was quite a subversive scene for a high school movie…

I like to inject a bit of subversiveness into everything I do. My character in Conan the Barbarian is obsessed with her father, so I had her develop an Electra complex and try to seduce him the whole time. That's a little creepy, but you don't often see that in movies, and I thought it would be hilarious. That's my sense of humour.

In Planet Terror, you played Cherry Darling, a stripper who ends up with a machine gun leg. Did you have to learn how to move in a whole new way?

Oh, completely, because I wasn't walking on a flat foot, I was walking on a gun barrel, and at one point, a peg leg. I had a five-pound cast, with LED lights, strapped to me, and my toe was taped up so it was just my heel resting on the ground. I had to always keep in mind that my character was walking on a tiny gun barrel or a table leg. On the other side, I was wearing a four-inch high-heeled boot. It was a challenge; I had to run faster and jump higher than everyone else, and do so while I was wearing this ridiculous, heavy cast and I had no toes.

So is that one of the more bizarre things you've had to do as an actress?

I've done quite a few bizarre things, but I don't know how you top having a machine gun for a leg. That can come in handy in so many different ways…

You once said that you fell into acting accidentally. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

I was living in LA off and on, and I lost… I had a boyfriend who died, so I lost the apartment we were living in. I was looking at the possibility of moving back to Seattle, Washington, to live with my father. I did not want to do that, because I don't like rain, and who wants to live with their father when they're 18? I was approached to do The Doom Generation, and I kept saying no, but then I realised that if I was to do that it would mean enough money for me to get an apartment, and I wouldn't have to live with my dad. That’s the only reason I became an actor; I didn't want to become famous or make my mark!

So did there ever come a point when acting felt like the right choice?

No, in fact, it was pretty much the opposite. I recently had an epiphany that I hated acting and didn't want to do it anymore.

Oh, wow.

The power went out in my house about a month ago, and I was just sitting around with no distractions, with no battery left in my phone, and I just thought, wait a second, I never really made a choice to start acting, I just fell into it, and I never once stopped to think if I wanted to do it or if I even liked the acting business. I thought, do I have to keep doing this just because so many other people wish they could be doing it? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I do.

Thinking about it that way has freed me up a lot. I filmed Once Upon A Time after that [McGowan had a guest spot in a recent episode of the fairy tale drama - ed], and I was a little worried that I was going to have a hard time and I wouldn't care, but it was the opposite; it all came back, so that was good. I’m more interested in directing now, to be honest. I just finished my first piece for RSA Black Dog, which is Ridley Scott's commercial music video company. I directed a 20-minute short with amazing actors. It was a really amazing project to do, and I felt really comfortable doing it, more so than I ever have acting.

Do you have a dream project as a director, a passion project?

My taste is a bit… I don't want to say 'twisted', because that's such a cliché, but I like things that are tongue-in-cheek, things that don't go where you expect them to. I've found a feature film project that I'd really like to start in the next six to nine months. I'm a huge black-and-white film buff, so I'd love to make something in black-and-white one day, although I don't want to be in it. There are a lot of actors who direct so they can put themselves in a dream role, and I understand that; they want to create something perfect for themselves. I'm at a point, though, where I don't really care about acting anymore, so I don't think I'd want to do that. I'm being really honest right now and I probably shouldn't be.

See Rose McGowan at Supanova 2013:

Melbourne: April 12-14 at Melbourne Showgrounds

Gold Coast: April 19-21 at Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre

Source: Junkee.com

Rose McGowan

Rose McGowan has some serious blonde ambition.

The Charmed actress, 39, debuted a new, lighter 'do over the weekend as she stepped out in Los Angeles, where she was spotted visiting a hair salon on Saturday. Wearing black leggings, a super-short black dress, a grey cardigan and knee-high tan boots, the formerly brunette star tied her recently dyed platinum blonde tresses into a messy bun mostly hidden under a beige and orange hat.

This isn't the first time McGowan has embraced her lighter side. In fact, the actress is something of a chameleon when it comes to her hair color. As one of the bewitching stars of the WB series Charmed, she sported black, brown, red and strawberry-blonde locks during the show's run. She also famously went blonde for the 1996 horror flick Scream when producers decided they didn't want two female characters with dark hair. Yet, in 2007, McGowan showed it again in big screen released-movie, Grindhouse, in which she portrayed a blonde character in Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse feature, Death Proof.
“I hated that color. [But] it was perfect for the role,” McGowan told Entertainment Weekly last year of the lighter hue she had in the movie. “It was like every plumber wanted to date me with that hair color,” she joked. “I immediately went down in the social strata of dating. From a sociological perspective, it was actually fascinating. Any guy that I liked wouldn't give me the time of day. Anybody who had a jacked-up pickup truck was all over me. It was hilarious.”

Rose McGowan during Season 6 of "Charmed"

Rose McGowan at 2002 Teen Choice Awards

Rose McGowan in Tarantino's "Death Proof"

Rose McGowan at 2008 amfAR's Cinema Against AIDS Gala

The outfit is just easy, before Cherry lost her leg. So the tricky step is only for the machine gun-leg. Don't make it too difficult, without the machine gun-leg, it'll be a Halloween costume.


2. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in The Birds