Photography
CÉDRIC INDRA
Interview
ELISABETA TUDOR
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.
Source:
i-D
