Each month, we bring together community members and hand the microphone over to them to lead a segment we call Group Chat. This month features two Susans of film: Susan Kerns, executive director of Milwaukee Film and legendary filmmaker Susan Seidelman. Seidelman’s work includes directing films like Smithereens, the pilot of Sex and the City, and Desperately Seeking Susan, which is celebrating it's 40th anniversary this year.
Seidelman will be in Milwaukee this weekend to celebrate the film, her new book and have a Q&A after the screening as a part of the Milwaukee Film Festival. Ahead of that, we brought the Susans together to talk about everything from being the first to cast Madonna to the power of film festivals.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Susan Kerns: Hi, I'm Susan Kerns. I'm the executive director of Milwaukee Film. We're getting ready to start the Milwaukee Film Festival April 24 through May 8, and I'm here with iconic director Susan Seidelman to talk about her visit to Milwaukee for the 40th anniversary screening of Desperately Seeking Susan on Saturday, April 26.
Susan Seidelman: It has bee, yeah, thank you. And I'm happy to be here and congratulations on your new job! Because the last time we spoke, you didn't have this job. So it's exciting and a big change for you.
Kerns: It has been, thank you. It's been really great actually, being able to be immersed again in the film festival world and to be able to highlight differently, all the great work I see coming out of filmmakers around the world. So to start this chat, I want to ask you a couple of questions about Desperately Seeking Susan, if you don't mind? It's such an iconic film, and I think a lot of people think about the 80s in a very specific way in terms of like, the colors and the fashion and all of that. And it seems like so much of that stems from really this film in this moment that you captured in New York on screen. Can you talk a little bit about your creative process for, you know, thinking about how the film looked, but also how you came to cast Madonna?
Seidelman: Yeah, well, it's interesting because when you make a film you never think about it—that it's going to be a time capsule of a certain period. You know, I like to observe what's going on around me so I was living in downtown New York and very much a part of that world, and so I was just telling a story about that world as I saw it in that time. And of course when you talk about the early 80s, we were coming out of a very gritty —the 1970s were very gritty in America, but particularly in New York because there was a bankruptcy crisis — so suddenly things started to ease up, and I think the world was getting a little bit more colorful, and I wanted to kind of capture that. I had made a low budget independent film before this one, a film called Smithereens, that was very much about the downtown kind of punk rock scene. And as a result of that, I got to meet various musicians and just people who hung out downtown and one of them, and I didn't know her very well at the time, but I knew of her, was Madonna.
So when Desperately Seeking Susan came around, you know, it's the story about two very different kinds of women and how their lives impact one another. Rosanna Arquette was attached to the project from the beginning. I started to think about who might play opposite her in an interesting but also an authentic way. And that led me to Madonna, since I had seen some of her early videos like Borderline and she seemed to really... well, she seemed to know how to flirt with the camera. The camera liked her, and I thought that would be a good quality to give to the character of Susan.
Kerns: It's interesting thinking back, I was I was trying to kind of dig into my own memories of the film, and I do remember reading about the film in anticipation and seeing like set photos of all of the security and everything as Madonna was like coming to set or leaving set. People like, clamoring to get just like a look at her!
Seidelman: Yeah, only at the end of when we were filming, because when we started filming and when in pre-production she was still relatively unknown. Just a crazy, somewhat fortuitous thing that happened was that her "Like a Virgin" album came out during the nine weeks we were filming. And suddenly she went from relative, she was kind of known but mostly in New York, to being one of the most famous people in pop culture at that time and it happened very quickly. Very quickly.
Kerns: So can we talk a little bit about film festivals? Again, moving back to "Smithereens," [it was] the first American independent film to compete for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Congratulations, an amazing accomplishment, and it kind of launched your career.
Seidelman: Well, film festivals are really important. That's why it's wonderful that you are now running this one, because it really has so many people, especially you know film students and indie filmmakers have have launched their careers due to film festivals. Whether it's short film festivals where you just get that first audience that recognizes what you're trying to do, and you get to test out whether, you know, often as a filmmaker or a film student, you're working in isolation or you're showing it to a couple of your friends, but you never know how it's going to play to an outside audience. Also, when you get to talk about films with other people who love watching movies in a on a big screen in a big, dark room.
Kerns: Yeah, I keep thinking about when I see a film at the Oriental Theater, which I'm so excited for you to get to experience! You know, I'll be in there with 300 to 1,000 other people and just the vibe of like, the energy of people reacting to the film, it's entirely different than when I'm watching something at home, you know, streaming online.
Seidelman: Which is why I think film festivals are so important, particularly nowadays when most young people are growing up just watching, you know, entire movies on their iPhone.
Kerns: Yeah, I've been talking to people recently, too, they've been kind of confessing that movie theaters were one of the first places they were allowed to go alone as a kid. And so there is a way in which you feel like a little bit more adult or a little bit more freedom or whatever in that space.
Seidelman: Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, that's that's why I got kind of hooked on movies. My mother would take my sister and I to a movie theater that was down the street from the hair salon, where she would go to get her hair done. And we would watch, back then you saw a double feature, usually they were two horror films. But it was a grown up experience and we got to eat all the junk food we wanted to eat. For a lot of people, those memories are so much a part of their childhood.
Kerns: Yeah, it's similar in downtown Cedar Falls, Iowa [where I grew up] we had the Region Theater, and on Saturday afternoon they would show just like whatever kids film. And it was like hundreds of kids in there without there! I mean, I feel so bad for the people who are working at that theater. Like the mess they probably had to clean up. But, you know, we would all like stomp our feet when the movie was beginning and just that vibe I think really did hook me into the to the whole thing.
So thinking about all of the, the films that you've made, the television shows over the years, obviously you've delved into women's lives in so many nuanced ways. Are there any contemporary stories about women that you feel like aren't being told right now that you'd really like to see?
Seidelman: I'll be honest. I mean I'd like to make another film, but I also believe in passing the baton on. And so I'm kind of excited about the stuff that younger generations of women today, not just women, outsiders of various sorts are now getting the opportunity to tell their stories. You know, I'm glad I got a chance to tell mine. I still have some more stories to tell, but I'm fascinated by what it sounds like you're doing at your festival - trying to bring in all kinds of voices. Some of that's happening I guess using streaming and all the all the new platforms, but the studio system is still pretty old fashioned. It's still pretty conservative, you know? I mean, the statistics are I think in terms of studio [films] maybe only last year 15% were directed by women and I don't know what the percentage was for people of color or the LGBTQ community. I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's pretty low.
Kerns: Yeah, and one of the things you're reminding me of too, is the importance of short films. And I think that's one of the things that I'm glad that we can highlight at the Milwaukee Film Festival, because somebody asked me recently, 'What are the films that I should see to be watching the stories that I haven't seen before?' And I started to really think about it, and I was like, I think pointing people to short films because that's where new voices are able to get their start before they can get the funding for a full length feature, they can try some things out in five 5 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever it is. And for as much as YouTube is a massive phenomenon, and I watch a lot of things on YouTube, I think film festivals are really still the one place where you can get sort of a curated shorts experience.
Seidelman: Absolutely. I'm curious because I know you made a film recently — a multi-camera film, correct?
Kerns: We're still working on it, yeah. But this job has kind of interfered with my own filmmaking but we're pitching it as, like a strange, shot on 16 millimeter horror film and, slowly in bits and pieces it's coming together. But it's been a lot of fun to make.
Seidelman: Yeah, because I was going to ask, coming from the world of academia and also being a festival programmer, how that relates to actually making a film? [Because filmmaking] is a very collaborative experience. I mean, the director is the leader of that collaboration and has to keep everyone's vision honed. But how do you navigate that water?
Kerns: Yeah, I'm not sure I figured it out yet, but I'm trying to kind of keep the project sort of slowly moving forward. When you're working on an independent film, it's like the projects ... work at their own pace a lot of times. So I do think that being a maker, I just have so much admiration for like every film that gets done. My partner Jay has often said, 'It doesn't take any less work to make a bad film,' and it's true! Because it's just so much work and so many voices, like you're saying, so many creative voices coming together to get something done that in some ways, when I'm thinking about programing, it's probably bad because I'm very generous and I'm like, 'Oh, but they are really trying their best!' You know?
Seidelman: That's kind of the key to filmmaking, I think — and that's tenacity. So many things that can go wrong that do go wrong, there's so many reasons to stop making the film. And what I found is you need a strong vision because it is collaborative and there's so many ways you can get sidetracked. So the director, along with the producers, really needs to kind of keep the train on the track and remember why you're making the movie and that idea of, you know, how you navigate so many egos. Everyone has a great creative idea. You know, how you kind of diplomatically encourage people to be creative, but stay in line with this overall vision so you're all making the same movie?
Kerns: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I remember talking to a group of students one time and they were talking about collaboration. I was like, OK, imagine that you're writing a poem with like 50 people and they're just like, 'Oh, that sounds awful!' I was like, well, that's what you're doing. I think it's also about really valuing and honoring your your collaborators and trusting that the things they're bringing to the process are [beneficial].
Seidelman: Absolutely!
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