Over
the course of Amy Heckerling's 30 years as a writer and director, she's carved
out a niche for herself making broad mainstream comedies like Fast Times At
Ridgemont High
and Clueless,
which try to stay rooted in real human behavior and real human problems.
Heckerling's latest feature film, I Could Never Be Your Woman, stars Michelle Pfeiffer
as a Heckerling-esque middle-aged TV producer and single mother, battling the
bosses at her network over the content of a teen-oriented comedy show.
Heckerling finished the film in 2005, but due to the financial troubles of some
of her backers, I Could Never Be Your Woman sat in limbo, and finally
showed up on DVD earlier this year. Heckerling recently spoke with The A.V.
Club
about her career-long struggles with studios, and what her film has to say
about the Hollywood beauty mill.
The
A.V. Club: I Could Never Be Your Woman appears to offer a personal perspective
on what it's like to be a working mother in Hollywood. How much of it is
directly taken from your own experiences?
Amy
Heckerling:
Some of it. Mainly the idea of having to try to figure out what's going on with
the youth of today, and then trying to cater to them and serve them up something
you know
is BS, because you have a real young person around you.
AVC:
How much input has your daughter had on your more youth-centered work?
AH: When I was doing the Clueless series, my daughter was
an entirely separate entity. There was a studio, and a network, and what they
expected us to feed to young people. And then there was this person who had
entirely different taste, and no interest in becoming the kind of characters I
was expected to write. She had no interest in becoming what she calls a
"fashion girl," or a "girly girl." She was not interested in clothes, not
interested in trends. She'd be much happier listening to Billie Holiday and
watching Marx brothers movies. And she was a pre-teen at the time.
AVC:
How do you strike a balance between wanting to entertain a mass audience, and
also wanting to write something that's true, and maybe even a little painful?
AH: Well, there's another
element involved, and that's knowing that there really are young people out
there who care a great deal about what you say to them. There are these images
and characters you want to give them to look up to, vs. what you're going to be allowed to do or say. It can be
something as simple as a girl dressing a certain way. Do you dress her up so
that she's comfortable, or so she'll look pretty, or because you like the way it looks? Is
it too sexual? Do you want your daughter to have to dress that way and worry
about it? It's tough.
AVC:
The film presents a pretty scathing portrait of the beauty industry in Hollywood,
but do you have any sympathy for women who get caught up in it, and Botox
themselves to keep their careers viable?
AH: It's been that way from Sunset
Boulevard
on. Hollywood is the dream factory, and no one dreams about older women. It's a
youth-and-beauty-obsessed place that sells a certain image. Of course I have
sympathy. If you look at all the pictures of women in magazines, everybody's
got a forehead that looks like a billboard. Completely blank. When I was 20, I
had these furrowed lines between my brows, because I was always angry. And I
was 20.
I don't think that was a mark of age; it was just my personality. Yet these
people think that when you have a completely blank head, you can put
advertising on it. That's not youthful. What is that? Some of these young girls
that I find and put in films, I see them in a magazine a year later, and
they've got big fat lips and stick figures. And you go, "Why? Why are you
buying into this?"