Randa Haines: The Waiting Game

LG: There weren't many women directing 15 years ago--what was it like the first time you walked on a set as the director?

RH: The first three days I went back to my room at night and said, "What, was I mad? Why would anyone want to do this? This is horrible, this is awful, this is torture!" Then, on the fourth day, I felt, "Ah, I think I know why I wanted to do this, I think I understand." I had always felt all those years before that I was all clogged up, that I didn't have a creative outlet for all this energy that was in me. Suddenly I felt like this flowing of something that had been blocked up. It was just like really being alive.

LG: You then made The Jilting of Granny Weatherall for PBS. Was your career on a roll after that?

RH: After Granny I had two years of unemployment, which was partly my own choice by being very picky. I was offered teen comedies which is what women directors were offered at that period, and I wouldn't do them because I felt I couldn't do a good job on them. So I would decline things and just kept digging into my bank account.

LG: And then along came "Hill Street Blues"?

RH: "Hill Street" was really good quality and that was the first thing I did in commercial television. I did four of those and then I got offered "Dallas" and other things and I wouldn't do them. I just didn't feel like I could do anything that I didn't understand.

LG: Did TV help you to work fast?

RH: You really, really learn to think on your feet. But I don't think one should do so much of it because you develop habits of compromising.

LG: So TV just reconfirmed your desire to do a feature film?

RH: Yeah. Because that's where you have the biggest canvas for telling a story. There's a very big emotional difference between looking at something on TV and on the big screen. The big screen is more like dreams, it's more attached to your own consciousness. TV, your body is bigger than the screen, a different thing happens. But TV can be incredibly powerful. "Something About Amelia," the power of that, the number of people that saw that in one night was 60 million! That's amazing. And it had a very profound effect on a lot of people.

LG: Since the subject was incest, what was the reaction?

RH: Kids called in that were in trouble. Fathers called in to say, "This is about me." Women called in who had never told anyone that this was what they had been through. So it opened up the discussion. It was the first thing that ever dealt with that subject. My goal was to do it in a non-sensational way that was compassionate to all the characters, even the father.

LG: Were you surprised a TV star like Ted Danson agreed to play the father?

RH: It was amazingly courageous of him. It was a scary part for anyone to take, particularly him, in the position he was in.

LG: Was it this that led to your first feature?

RH: After "Amelia" I got offered a million television movies, all kinds of strange sexual things, and I turned them all down. I just didn't want to do the same sort of thing again. And then I went in and had a meeting on Children of a Lesser God, which had been in development for some time.

LG: Is it true you turned it down at first?

RH: Yes. I'd never seen the play and I didn't like the screen-play. My agent said, "Do me a favor, will you look at this again." And I did and went, "Oh, yes, I want to do this." That taught me a really important lesson: Sometimes you don't see what's right in front of your nose the first time. If you are reading it in a form that isn't good, you know the point is to look at the essence of it. That's really important: to see down to the core of the thing.

LG: The DGA made you the first American woman to be nominated as best director--how significant was that?

RH: I was really happy to be nominated and to have the film and my work recognized. As far as the first woman, yeah, it's sad but it's true. It's sad that it's still such a big deal that we're still having these women in film articles. I'm so sick of these articles, already! But it's fun to be a milestone, though I really look forward to the day of getting past that, when it's just individual achievement.

LG: Children received 5 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture--but you, like Streisand would be for Yentl and Penny Marshall for Awakenings, were ignored. Were you bitter?

RH: I've never felt comfortable talking about whether I should have been nominated. I don't think that's something one should say publicly.

LG: But on the day the nominations were announced...?

RH: I couldn't get out of bed that day. It was like being given something so great and then just this little stab right at the bottom of it. But it's ungracious to talk about this. I've sort of avoided your whole question here. It was hard sitting at the Oscars. On the one hand, I was sitting in the back and there in the front are the actors and the writer who I had worked with for about a year and a half, and the producer who had come in a year and a half after I did. It felt funny not to be with them.

LG: Have you ever felt discriminated against because of your sex?

RH: Unlike most women, I have had, by waiting, by gambling, and by just being lucky, access to, in each category that I've been in, really good material. And that's what's been really hard for women: to get access to the stories that they want to tell. They've been given the teen comedies for years, that's what they get. And it's all about the material. When you get the best material, that's when you make the best movies. I really did at some point put blinders on about this subject. For my own sanity. If you're hearing, "Oh, she's a woman, she doesn't know what she wants," or, "She's a woman, she couldn't possibly do an action film," there's nothing you can do about that. People tell me I was such a strong-willed person in those years where I was trying to make my career happen that I didn't let myself see if it was around me. And I know from everyone else's stories that it was around. Either I missed it, by luck, or I just didn't hear it, because it would take all my energy away. I don't mean to sound like a Pollyanna, like it doesn't exist, because it does exist and I've heard stories, but it hasn't happened to me. There hasn't been a job that I didn't get because someone said, "Oh, she's a woman, she can't do that."

LG: Is there a feminine sensibility?

RH: We don't know yet. We won't know that until we see a whole body of work by enough women. I suspect there won't be.

LG: Had you been a man, would your career have moved faster?

RH: I wouldn't have been the same person, so I might not have been such a picky gambler. I could have made 20 movies in the last five years. A lot of very successful movies, I've turned down, but I don't regret any of the decisions that I've made.

LG: Why are you so selective?

RH: I have to really, really care about something. To really understand it, it has to be about me in some way. I have to identify with it. I hope that changes for me. I hope that I expand the base of themes that interest me. And I probably will as I get older. Also, the more films you make, I suppose, the easier the process becomes.

LG: What's it take to be successful in this business?

RH: When you make a list of all the things that are required to be successful as a director, luck is probably higher on the list than talent. At each stage of my career I've been very lucky that the good material has somehow come to me.

LG: Any actors you'd like to work with?

RH: I'd love to work with Al Pacino. With Robert De Niro. I always wanted to work with James Mason. I loved him.

LG: All men.

RH: Yeah, I don't know why that is. I was going to say Michelle Pfeiffer, she's on my mind. I've gotten to really like her work a lot.

LG: Who are the directors you most admire?

RH: There was a period of my life when Jean-Luc Godard was my favorite director. Alain Resnais, Akira Kurosawa. Usually foreign directors. Billy Wilder is my favorite American director.

LG: What do you like about Wilder?

RH: It's not so much individual films, it's a kind of spirit, a wit and intelligence and humor that comes out of real human behavior. It's the tone, a tone that I would love to be good at. Like The Apartment, that mixture of pain and humor. Some Like It Hot is a favorite film of mine. You can imagine somebody making that film today and it being just very easy comedy, stupid comedy. Guys in high heels...

LG: Are there any favorite old films you'd like to remake?

RH: I have mixed feelings about remakes. If it's a film that you really love, that was wonderful, you should leave it alone.

LG: What's the biggest problem you face as a director?

RH: Finding material that you love.

LG: You don't feel you have mainstream taste, do you?

RH: I don't have mainstream taste in the sense that I probably wouldn't have made Home Alone or Ninja Turtles. I'm not in that blockbuster mentality. But I think there is a tremendous hunger for films that are emotional and make you think about your life and move you. There is a definite coming together of my taste and that hunger in the public. I hope.

LG: How do you manage financially, doing so few projects, then going for years without working?

RH: Making lots and lots of money was never the goal for me. I'd rather do things that I care about. A $100,000 car is not something that I would feel comfortable having. I don't want to ever feel that I have to work to support all my real estate and my possessions.

LG: Are you happier now than you were when you were younger?

RH: I guess. She said unhappily. I'm not feeling very happy today, but yeah, I'd say, yes, I am.

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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Steven Seagal for our April cover story.

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