LITTLE WOMEN (2019) Behind-the-Scenes Greta Gerwig: Women Making Art

Little Women has been something that's been part of who I am for as long as I can remember there was never a time when I didn't know who Joe March was and she was always my girl she was my literary character she was the person I wanted to be and I loved her and so when I heard that they were going to make the movie I went into Sony and I said you have to hire me because I'm the only one who can do this Justice and I have a very specific idea of what it's about and it's about women as artists and it's about women and money it's part of what the book is it's just an aspect of it we haven't delved into so this may be a more personal phone for me than Lady Bird this is everything for me why this little women is so incredibly speaks to this moment in time is because of Greta she wrote it she adapted it she's so spontaneous that she couldn't help but make this about young women now she wanted to tell the story from them as adults so the movie starts with them as grown-ups having the lives that they've chosen and we go back and forth in time the way the book was written it was written in two books in the first book which is the childhood part which is what I think people think of when they think of Little Women and then the second book is the adult part eight years later and they're really twins and their Companions and I found as I started looking at the chapters that you could graft them almost one on top of the other and they're like the adult answer to what had happened in childhood and I I thought there was just something incredibly poignant about it and we certainly have all the Cozy snow globe images but it has a very different modern understanding for me I okay I could hear it clear Isabel but when I was writing this screenplay completely new parts of it jumped out at me I think the most exciting thing about witnessing Greta the writer is that the moments that she wanted to be the most radical she would say I can't believe this I'm actually going back to the text to use her exact words because it's so modern there's a line where Mommy says to Joe I'm angry almost every day of my life that's from the book she says that and then she explains how she's fought against that tendency in herself but I thought that's such a modern thing from mother to say to a daughter and Amy Says in the book she says I want to be great or nothing that's not a line I made up and so I tried to make the script have as much word for word from the book as possible because I love the language of the book [Music] but the challenge for credit was the way that people talk in Period movies they sort of sit like this and no one touches each other and people say things very slowly as opposed to the way maybe life actually was and so we tried to give the movie an incredibly naturalistic Sensibility Greta's just from the get-go wanted to just mess it up and make it comfortable for us and make sure that you know we weren't always in our costumes that were half dressed or that we're you know getting out of bed she really wanted to make this as authentic and as real as possible and that's so fun to have a director that just you said okay how can we mess it up the pace that we speak at the fact that we overlap that's not something that you really see in Period pieces despicable strong words that mean something I have to go back to school and I don't have any lines lines it's scripted in a way that a play would be where they she uses dashes and it just makes it quite musical a lot of the times on a take I would see her not even watch us acting it but she would just be listening to How it sounded and whether it sounded like a piece of music and it sounded right to her but it is in a rhythm it's not in a random Rhythm it was almost like conducting an orchestra there were actually times when I'd I'd say and begin and then I'd hear all the lines come at me because it was like I wanted to hear certain words poke out and I wanted it to sound like how sisters talk yes okay and I do [Music] all wrong Mr Lawrence sent it lovely I think that having a director who is also the writer and knows how they want their words spoken it's gorgeous to have it articulated so clearly that you know what they want there's a confidence in her directing where an uncertain director will just kind of cover everything with cameras and redo it redo it because they don't really know what they really want she knows what she wants and once she has it we can carry on you just see your commitment or focus and I actually really like that Greta's ambition was less about how do we put a Twist on it and more like let's just try to do it as good as possible people think of it as a movie relationships and it is but it's also a movie about somebody becoming fiercely independent in a time where that was unheard of and what you have to do in order to be successful Louise May Alcott did not want to have Joe get married at the end of the book but she caved she did the thing that was gonna sell books and she was right it's sold a lot of books the first printing was sold out in two weeks but she did a couple of things she kept the copyright and she got a greater percentage of the back ends than I think any other deal at the time 6.6 done and you don't need to decide about the copyright right now no I've decided I want to own my own book I wanted to include that in the movie because I kept talking about it to people it was like you have no idea she was so interesting she kept the copyright she was she was this amazing woman she was so funny and then suddenly I was like why don't I put all this in the movie this is worth having as part of the story because it is part of the story and when I started looking at her life and her journey as a writer and her journey as a woman I realized that Joe was the hero of my girlhood in Louisa May Alcott as the hero of my Womanhood Greta has said that this film is about women money and art and how women negotiate that especially in a world where they are coming up short in the in the transaction and she was very interested in subverting that my whole idea to construct the end of the end of film I and really the whole thing is I wanted to deliver on what the pleasures of Little Women are and also give Louise May Alcott the ending she wants so I wanted to do the romance I wanted her to get bare I didn't want to Rob us of that and then I also wanted to ask why do we want that why do we need her to have that so the first scene of the movie is her with her publisher and he says and if the main character is a girl make sure she's married by the end or dead either way and that's sort of the way I approached it married or dead that's what you've got to do with female characters because if they're not married and they're not dead God knows what they're going to do it's gonna be a mess so what I was trying to set out to do was saying well I told you at the top married or dead that's the rules and then you got Joe and you're like What's it gonna be and so there's something afoot in terms of what we're saying the story is about there's fiction and then there's the writer of the fiction it's like you start layering all of these different realities on top of each other I remember thinking like I really hope I can land This Plane because it really set up all these different strands that I'm trying to pull together Joe but I felt she would have liked it so I did it it's romance it's mercenary just end it that way will you fine the fact that she's able to sort of add her own spin on it was to also actually staying really really true to the literary version of the story is incredible if you are a young woman Greta gerwick has become this kind of symbol she's kind of paved the way for women to tell stories and there's something very meaningful about that thank you I think that there's something of the complete revolutionary Rebel Spirit that's contained in Joe and this possibility for life beyond what your gender dictates at the moment that is completely exciting still it's like she allowed us to be free so Little Women feels like more autobiographical to me than anything I've made this has got a lot of me in it [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: FilmIsNow Movie Bloopers & Extras

Views: 190,703

Keywords: Little Women, Greta Gerwig, Women Making Art, Little Women Featurette, Little Women Greta Gerwig Women Making Art, making of Documentary, making of featurette, Little Women 2019, drama movie, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Timothée Chalamet, Little Women reboot, Little Women new movie, Amy March, Jo March, Meg March, Beth March, based on novel, american civil war, FilmIsNow Extra

Id: 6EEKme2YX6A

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2023