Joyce Chopra - Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond

PRAISE FOR JOYCE CHOPRA

Joyce Chopra, what a gift of an extraordinary filmmaker you are, and one of our great pioneers who forged a very difficult path. And for female filmmakers everywhere, we are so blessed to have you as a storyteller to forge the way to make it easier for others.

Laura Dern, actor

Joyce Chopra has written a devastatingly frank, candid, and unsparing memoir of her life as a film directora woman director in a field notoriously dominated by men. The reader is astonished on her behalf, at times infuriated, moved to laughter, and then to tears. Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television, and Beyond is one of its kindhighly recommended.

Joyce Carol Oates, author ofWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Joyce Chopra paved the way for future female filmmakers, and this book illuminates how ahead of her time she has always been. Her honesty is refreshing as she lets readers into her life, detailing her relationships, friendships, personal triumphs and devastating tragedies. Here is a woman who has nothing to lose, who is ready to tell her story, from her perspective, in her own words, with no holding back. I only wish Id had this book to read when I was a shy teenage girl, to give me extra confidence as I dreamed of my own career in film.

Alicia Malone, TCM host and author of Girls on Film:Lessons From a Life of Watching Women in Movies

Joyce Chopras memoir is like a mentor in my pocket. Her vibrant writing makes me feel like I'm right there next to her, and her stories resonate with me and inspire me as a filmmaker and artist working today.

Alexi Pappas, filmmaker and author ofBravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

Lady Director is not just a fascinating memoir, but an entertaining, inspiring and occasionally outrage-inducing report from the frontlines of filmmaking. An absolute must-read for anyone interested in the history of American cinema.

Elizabeth Weitzman, film critic and author ofRenegade Women in Film & TV

Through the lens of an extraordinary, determined and adventurous career, Lady Director reminds us that present-day female Oscar nominees for Best Director stand on the shoulders of women like Joyce Chopra. This surprising, often shocking book is destined to become a classic.

Honor Moore, author of Our Revolution:A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury

Chopras memoirboth personal and politicalis a deeply necessary corrective to histories of cinema and tales of the great artists of the 60s and 70s that tend to focus on big men and their big movies. Like all of Chopras work, this memoir candidly reminds us of the injustices that structure our world, and gently says, we can do better. The book is a gift to all of us digging for authentic, revealing stories about the lives of women artists.

Shilyh Warren, author of Subject to Reality:Women and Documentary

Lady Director is a bold, sometimes devastating, uncommonly honest and brilliant story of the inextricable nature of art and life, where few have feared to tread in cinema or on the page. Having already blessed film culture with at least two all-time masterpieces (Joyce at 34 and Smooth Talk), Joyce Chopras crucial memoir may be her most lasting contribution. A rare and great work that will be read for years to come, and that we are lucky to have.

Jacob Perlin, Founding Artistic Director of Metrograph,and distributor, The Film Desk

Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond

JOYCE CHOPRA

CITY LIGHTS | SAN FRANCISCO

Copyright 2022 by Joyce Chopra

All Rights Reserved

Cover photo courtesy of Joyce Chopra

ISBN: 978-0-87286-868-7

eISBN: 978-0-87286-869-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Chopra, Joyce, author.

Title: Lady director : adventures in Hollywood, television and beyond / Joyce Chopra.

Description: San Francisco : City Lights, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022014882 | ISBN 9780872868687 (paperback) | ISBN 9780872868694 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Chopra, Joyce. | Women motion picture producers and

directorsUnited StatesBiography. | Women television producers and

directorsUnited StatesBiography. | Motion picture

industryCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory. | Television

broadcastingCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC PN1998.3.C64575 A3 2022 | DDC 791.4302/33092 [B]dc23/eng/20220713

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014882

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

citylights.com

When I was about twenty-two or so, I purchased a Bolex film camera and never once dared to use it. It just sat on a tripod in the corner of my room, staring at me reproachfully. Becoming a movie director had taken a firm grip on my imagination, but I hadnt the vaguest idea of how one managed to do that. There werent any film schools that I knew of, and, even more problematic, I couldnt picture myself in the directors role since I had never seen a movie directed by a woman. Even the film history books that I collected to educate myself never mentioned a single one. It didnt strike me as odd; it was 1958, and that was the way the world was.

I would have been astonished if anyone had told me that a French woman exactly my age, Alice Guy, was the first person to direct a one-minute movie with actors in 1896 in Paris, or that twenty years later, an American woman, Lois Weber, would become the first person to direct a feature-length film, an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, for the newly formed Universal Studios in Hollywood. I would have been equally amazed to be told that another woman I never heard of, Dorothy Arzner, directed major films all through the 1930s starring the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford, having begun her own transition into the new world of talkies along with the silent movie star Clara Bow. Miss Bows fear of microphones was so intense that it prompted Arzner to invent the boom mike by attaching a microphone to a fishing pole that followed the actress around the set where she couldnt see it.

But none of these accomplishments would be recognized until many years later when scholars began to uncover womens roles in the early days of moviemaking. Its frustrating to think that I knew nothing of their work at a time when it would have helped me to feel less insane to think of such a career for myself. But even if I had known that other women had once been successful film directors, I would have been dismayed that their success didnt last. By the 1940s, when Hollywood became a very corporate world, not one woman could be found sitting in the directors chair except for the actress Ida Lupino, who survived by forming her own production company and hiring herself.

Like Lupino, I too had started my own business Club 47, a folk music venue in Harvard Square that drew a devoted audience from the day it opened. But once the club was up and running, I became restless and unable to stop myself from obsessing about making movies. I even started a weekly film series on the nights we were closed so I could see films I had only read about, and then watched them a second time to take notes on how they were shot. In a way these private viewings were harmful; the more I learned, the more convinced I became that I was deluding myself. How could I possibly think I could be part of such magic? I also doubted that I had the courage to leave my familiar world behind to venture into the great unknown. It took a year, but obsession finally won out. I gave my treasured Bolex to a friend who I hoped would actually use it and sold my share in the club to my partner Paula. With fifteen hundred dollars in my wallet and a backpack, I set out to find my way.