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@gretagerwigcollection
On the difficulty of writing
“Writing is really hard, but I love doing it. I love doing it when it’s going well, and I hate doing it when it’s not. It’s incredibly difficult, but there’s nothing that’s more satisfying for me than the process of authoring something...I love hearing actors say words I’ve written. It’s great.”
- Greta Gerwig talking to Collider in 2013. She also discusses her work in animation and the working with Noah .
On her perfect setup for writing in
“My perfect setup for writing is a place with a bed, a single bed, a bed for just me, because I like to take naps a lot, while I'm writing. It would have a slanted ceiling, it would be very small, it would be like a secret door situation, so no one would know when I was in there. It'd be lots of space where I can put stuff up on the wall, lots of books. But, cozy and secret...I have it planned in a notebook.”
- Greta Gerwig in 2020 for Vogue’s 73 Questions With Greta Gerwig.
On Kenneth Lonergan
The kind of writing I like is the kind of writing that one might think is improv, like Kenneth Lonergan, his writing does not sound like writing but it definitely is writing. I remember reading his plays when I was in college and I hadn't read them before and I read Lobby Hero and I read This Is Our Youth and I thought ‘oh this is closer...this is kind of what I think I could try to do’.
- Greta Gerwig
From ‘Greta Gerwig Likes Writing That Doesn’t Look Like Writing.’
Greta Gerwig on Jane Austen and Joan Didion
What book most positively shaped your idea of romance?
Well, I don't know about positively, but, definitely, I was shaped by Jane Austen, because she's Jane Austen, and it was what made me think that every guy who's a jerk, was actually a super nice guy, who wanted to marry me.
What book most positively shaped your idea of the world?
I don't know if this counts as positive, but Joan Didion's writing made me think that perhaps the life I was living was worth writing about.
- Greta Gerwig in 2020 for Vogue’s 73 Questions With Greta Gerwig.
On refining her work (in Frances Ha)
We also wanted it to be as perfect as possible and I think that you just have to do it a lot to make it feel that effervescent or that effortless. Because I feel like, 10 takes just looks labored and then 15 takes you're settling in, and by the time you get to the 20s you're getting good...and then you fine-tune it within that.
I mean I think it's similar to my experiences when I was writing. I learned how to really rewrite and hone something and perfect it in a way that I felt like I hadn't done before and I feel like I did that as an actor and as a writer, as opposed to like your first impulse feels so good, and it feels so good just that you found an idea to latch on to. But you have to get over the first love of your first attempt and you have to then figure it out.
But I think as an actor I'd never really had an opportunity to go beyond those first attempts, and I felt like I got to (with Frances Ha).
- From Sarah Polley and Greta Gerwig on "Frances Ha"
Greta Gerwig on Chekov and people not listening to each other
“I think people don’t necessarily listen to each other. It’s one of my favorite things in theatre and film, with everybody missing each other. (Gerwig laughs) I feel like all of Chekov is that — someone gives a four-page speech and the other person doesn’t care like in Uncle Vanya someone says: “I’m really worried about the forest” and the other character responds: “Do you have a crush on my friend?” I’m always interested in the ways people miss each other.”
Greta Gerwig - From A Conversation with Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Greta Gerwig on making films in Sacramento
“I’d like to make a total of four films that take place [in Sacramento]. I would like to do a quartet of Sacramento films. It’s inspired by the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan quartet — she wrote these four books that took place mainly in Naples. They’re so great. I thought, Oh I’d like to do that...Because [Lady Bird] was one part of Sacramento. There’s a lot of different parts of Sacramento that I’d like to explore, too. I feel like I have the privilege of being from a place. I’m really from that place — my family didn’t move, my family’s still there, my friend’s are still there — I feel like I can actually speak to it with some feeling.”
- From Vulture, summarising an interview from the A24’s movie podcast.
Greta Gerwig’s advice for people who would like to tell their own stories and don't necessarily know how to do it
I think often - I'm guilty of this too - I frame this discussion in terms of young people. But I think whatever your age is, there are tools available now to actually make work and put it out into the world in some capacity which are a little bit more accessible than they ever have been. Namely, you can shoot things on your iPhone and edit them and put them online and start practicing. And I think - I always think about that in terms of kids who are making movies now coming up.
But I think it's also a really interesting possibility for people who, you know, have had other careers or other, you know, had families or in another stage of their life because I think there's a lot of stories that go missing when you only focus on people who are in their 20s, to say the least. Not that I don't love people who are in their 20s, but I think sometimes it's fascinating to see - I'm always on the lookout for artists who have a different trajectory or have - do other things and then find their art and they perhaps start a bit later because I think they bring something else to it. So I think that making your own work and starting at whatever point becomes interesting to you.
- Greta Gerwig talking to Michel Martin for NPR
Greta Gerwig on adapting Little Women and being inspired by Hemingway
When I was reading the book, there was a kind of doubling of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote the book, and Jo March, who is the writer in the book. But Louisa’s life was different than Jo’s life. And there’s this quality of: Is that what happened or is that how you wrote it? I think that tension is best expressed through childhood being something that’s in a snow globe, that you can’t quite get back to. That it’s heightened in memory and maybe also slightly distorted. I like playing with time in that way. Maybe this is an odd reference, but in Hemingway’s “A Movable Feast” he’s writing it from the perspective that it’s all gone, that that marriage didn’t work. What happens later colors everything about that. I wanted to give some ache to this story.
Greta Gerwig to The Associated Press.
Greta Gerwig on Jo March and Twyla Tharp
Jo March was a model for me. At some point she says, “I don’t know what I’m going to be, but I mean to astonish you all some day.” I know how that feels, that sense of, I can’t wait to get out into the thick of the world of makers and doers. But I had my own collection of women that excited me. Twyla Tharp was one. She had written a book about choreography, about creativity, that I pored over. There was a section where she describes her and her father used to go out to this desert when she was a child and shoot rattlesnakes to blow off steam. I thought, that’s a great hobby. But no one would do that with me.
-Greta Gerwig to TIME Magazine
GRETA GERWIG’S TOP TEN BOOKS
1 - MIDDLEMARCH - George Eliot Glorious, sprawling, generous. It makes you wish you had not judged characters so quickly and that you could grow old with all of them. I read somewhere that it is a novel for adults, and it is, truly. It is a book I hope to read at every decade of my life, because I think each time it will have something new to teach me.
2 - NIGHTWOOD - Djuna Barnes There is something mysterious and unreachable about this novel, it makes you want to peer behind it somehow. It is rigorous and brave, never allowing the reader to become complacent. It is tragic and erotic and no matter how many times you read it, it eludes your grasp.
3 - THE IDIOT - Elif Batuman She accomplishes in this novel what I'm always trying to do in film: make the mundane extraordinary not by adorning it but by telling it as it is. It combines deadpan humor with romantic yearning and makes you want to read more novels and maybe also try to learn Russian.
4 - THE DEATH OF THE HEART - Elizabeth Bowen The plot of the novel is woven invisibly under you, and pulled out just as you are settling in. It is one of the best novels about a young woman that I’ve ever read. These moments of transformation and epiphany go by unnoticed by the outside world, but we have the privilege of being in Portia’s mind with her as she’s trying to figure out exactly how the world is put together and why people do what they do.
5 - THE WHITE ALBUM - Joan Didion She is my patron saint, and this collection of essays helped me understand the world I was not around for but that still shaped my life. Her truths are tiny knives, piercing the surface and bleeding out the illusions of life, especially life in California.
6 - THE ARGONAUTS - Maggie Nelson This book doesn’t fit neatly into a category. It’s personal but also global. It doesn’t prescribe anything; it raises questions. It allows the reader to feel as if they are watching this brilliant woman think in real time. It seems as if you are inside her mind with her. It’s funny and sexy and made me cry. And it is one of the best books on being a stepmother I’ve ever encountered.
7 - AMERICANAH - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie In this book, Ms. Adichie has constructed a full on romance that has the addictive power of a Jane Austen novel but with the specifics of life in Nigeria, as well as life in the United States as an immigrant. I fell in love with Ifemelu and Obinze in a way that I haven’t felt since I was a child reading novels for the first time.
8 - THE DUD AVOCADO - Elaine Dundy Funny, funny, funny. She’s wicked and wise. The main character is a total mess and a joy to hang out with. Every page has a great one-liner or quip and I felt like I never put down my pencil — I kept wanting to underline something.
9 - LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN - Alice Munro Alice Munro always gets to the thing inside me that knows, with certainty, that this is my one life. There is a penetrating sense of ultimate aloneness in her writing. And in just a sentence she can turn from the present to the future and then all the way into the past, making the reader feel as if they are experiencing the sweep of life as moments accumulate, and then double back and reconsider. It presents at first as just a drip drip drip… and then before you know it, you’re standing in a waterfall.
10 - TO THE LIGHTHOUSE - Virginia Woolf A classic for a reason. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again. The metaphysics she presents in the book are enacted in a way that allowed me to begin to understand that corner of philosophy.
From One Grand’s list of Greta Gerwig’s Top Ten Books.
Edit: This list is also on Goodreads in expanded form.
Greta Gerwig on passports
“I love getting passports, because when you get a passport, it expires in 10 years, and you have this physical object, and you think, ‘What are the next 10 years going to hold?’” she muses. “I got my passport renewed right after I graduated from college, and I had to get it renewed again last year. I remembered holding my passport right after I graduated from college and I thought, ‘What am I going to be like at 32? And what are these 10 years going to be?’ Then when I got it again, I thought, ‘What’s 42?’ I don’t know. The persistence of objects over time never ceases to amaze me.”
From Bust Magazine interview by Jenni Miller in the December/January 2018
“Not all of the saints and mystics here fall into a strict theological definition. Some are poets or artists. But all of them are people. I love that they are people. They are odd and funny and specific — teenage girls who hear God (or want to), women who write journals or poetry, women who struggle with faith, women who died for their beliefs. They inspire me, primarily, to listen. Listening is the most important task of any actor, but also of directors and writers. Because when you grow quiet, there is a chance, however unlikely, that something divine will speak to you and through you.”
– Greta Gerwig
From Gerwig’s zine Lady Saints & Mystics, produced for A24.
Greta Gerwig’s Reading List
(An ongoing) list of books Greta Gerwig has talked about reading in interviews:
- Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (“It’s kind of about a woman who becomes a witch!”)
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (”A People’s History of the United States was actually a very big book for me,” Gerwig said. “I read it in high school, and I felt like my mind was really blown by it. I think the truth is I read it because it’s referenced in ‘Good Will Hunting.’ Matt Damon says to Robin Williams, ‘Well, you know you read all those books? You know what you should really read? Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That’ll really knock your socks off.’ And I, being the nerd that I was, was like, ‘Well, I will go get that from the public library!’ That’s a little insight into what I was enjoying back then, and the kind of person I was.”)
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (“As a girl, my heroine was Jo...As a woman, it’s Louisa May Alcott.”)
- On Elizabeth Bishop by Colm Tóibín (”I love Brooklyn and I recently read Nora Webster...On Elizabeth Bishop is just so beautiful.”)
- The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante (”I would like to do a quartet of Sacramento films. It’s inspired by the Elena Ferrante Neapolitan quartet — she wrote these four books that took place mainly in Naples. They’re so great.”)
- A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (”he’s writing it from the perspective that it’s all gone, that that marriage didn’t work. What happens later colors everything about that.”)
- The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad (”The shadow line is a like when you pass these these things, like the equator or something and you don't know until it's done. You don't actually know when you're passing through it, and the book is about the shadow line of youth, and I think Francis is passing through it and she doesn't realize as it's happening”)
- Lobby Hero and This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan (”The kind of writing I like is the kind of writing that one might think is improv, like Kenneth Lonergan, his writing does not sound like writing but it definitely is writing.”)
Also see: Greta Gerwig’s Top Ten Books which we have posted separately as well.
Now a Goodreads List.
Gerwig on friendships with men
"I have a lot of male friends who I really like, and I've always enjoyed the feeling of ... 'I'll never sleep with you and you'll never have that power over me, and we'll never have that relationship, and I get to meet all the people who have to deal with what you cry about at night, and I will never have to do that.'
"I was not a cool girl in junior high or high school, and I think I figured out [how to be friends with men] when I was in college. And for some reason that's been a hobby of mine ever since. ... It clicked all of a sudden, and I was like, 'You just have to be really nice to them and you have to tell them they're right about stuff, and that their thoughts are really smart and just treat them like they're the best ones in the room and they'll really like you.' "
From NPR’s Gerwig, Baumbach Poke At Post-College Pangs May 14, 2013. Read or Listen on the NPR website.
Greta Gerwig on writing Lady Bird
By 2013, Gerwig had thrown all her ideas into a 350-page first draft. She then spent years whittling it down, slowly and deliberately.
“I tend to overwrite,” she said during a Telluride Conversation with Rebecca Miller. “I write and write and write. To me, it’s about taking things away. I read a lot out loud to myself. It’s almost a rhythmic thing, something will catch wrong, you go back and rewrite it. Writing takes a long time; it’s that process of knowing what I have on the page is what I want in the movie. The movie you see is pretty nearly how it read. I think about writing every single day. When I’m working on it and it’s not done, it’s bad. It’s humbling every day to be confronted with the thing that’s not written. It takes more courage than you would think. You have to let go of your critical mind.”
Excerpt from IndieWire: Becoming ‘Lady Bird’: Greta Gerwig Reflects on 8 Life-Changing Moments That Made Her a Director.
Greta Gerwig on writing and Lady Bird
“I try to get into a state where I’m allowing the characters to talk to me and talk to each other, because in the beginning of the writing process, I don’t know who they are yet. And this is the most pleasurable part of writing, because they’re telling me who they are and what they want and where they want to go. They’ll often say things I had no idea they were going to say, and so much of the plot is built off of me consciously going through the dialogue that’s jumping out at me. But the actual writing — the gathering of material — is a very mysterious process. You’re sort of shuttling back and forth between something that feels quite unconscious and something that feels very deliberate. The fact that the main character calls herself “Lady Bird” came about when I was struggling to write a scene, so I put everything aside, and I wrote at the top of the page: “Why won’t you call me Lady Bird? You promised you would!” And I just looked at this line and said to myself, “Who is this person that makes people call her by a different name?” I truly have no idea where that came from. It wasn’t me.”
Excerpt from Script Mag - Interview by Andrew Bloomenthal - November 27, 2017