Interview: Jill Soloway
Danielle Cantor for JW magazine
Editor's Note: Since this interview, Jill Soloway's show Transparent, about a Jewish family with a transgender father, has earned Soloway the 2015 and 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards for outstanding directing for a comedy series, the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in 2015, and the Danny Thomas Producer of the Year Award in Episodic Television in 2016. The show also won two acting Emmys as well as the 2015 Golden Globe for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy. Transparent is the first streaming video series to win the Emmy for outstanding comedy. Watch Jill's heartfelt acceptance speech at the Emmy Awards here.
Jill Soloway is an award-winning director and Emmy-nominated television writer, but she doesn’t fit into any conventional Hollywood mold. Also a comedian, playwright and feminist, she writes dialogue that is frank, funny, frequently sexual and authentic enough to make you forget it’s fiction. That’s the nature of Soloway’s original TV show Transparent, which premiered on Amazon Prime in February with its pilot episode. Soloway won the Directing Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival for her first feature film, Afternoon Delight, about a Los Angeles housewife who rescues a stripper. Her short film, Una Hora Por Favora, premiered at Sundance 2012. She was nominated three times for an Emmy award for her work writing and producing Six Feet Under on HBO. She has also written for HBO’s How To Make It In America, Showtime’s United States Of Tara, Dirty Sexy Money, Grey's Anatomy and numerous other shows.
Dedicated to both feminism and Judaism, Soloway co-founded the East Side Jews collective for unaffiliated Jews in Los Angeles, and created Wifey, a “curated video network for women” featuring scripted series, shorts, animation, music videos, vintage videos and more. Her book, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story, was published in 2005; she also wrote the novella Jodi K., which was published in the 2005 collection Three Kinds of Asking For It: Erotic Novellas. Afternoon Delight is now available for sale, streaming and download.
There’s a lively national dialogue now on women “having it all”; do you think women fall into a trap there?
The women’s movement really fought for equality, but I think we’re misguided, and we should be fighting for a life that is resonant with women. It is not a man’s life. So that means a certain kind of work schedule, a certain kind of family life, a certain kind of balance that works for women. I don’t even think we know what that is yet or how to define it, but it all gets particularly complicated by the way that we’re always working by having our phones with us. I just feel like “having it all” is short for having everything men have and having everything women have. We need to focus more on what makes women powerful. A shorthand version of this is that I think we can get work done in a lot less time if we focus. Women are really good at being able to divide up their time, so that they can do their work when they’re working and be with their family when they’re with their family. Any woman who has worked has walked into the house at six o’clock and thought, “Oh, now I know why men were perpetrating this scam on us for all these years, saying ‘Oh, honey, I have to work.’” The most relaxing thing in the world is to sit at a computer and stare at your own brain, and work with other people within the boundaries of professionalism. There are things that women know about what’s hard and what’s easy, what’s work and what’s not, and making space for family and children that I don’t think we have yet to incorporate into our ideal version of “having it all.”
Do you think women work against each other?
I think it’s a result of living in a global patriarchy that women find themselves competing for access or male attention, or thinking that they have to compete for positive regard or higher status or that one female spot on a writing staff. I don’t blame women for competing; that’s just the way a lot of women think they have to go about it. I think it gets tiring for women more than anything else; it’s a burden. I love to watch The Real Housewives, and these dramas where women compete about who gets invited to a party, who gets disinvited and who shows up anyway. These ways that we’re convinced to think that women actually behave, I don’t believe it’s natural.
What are the roots of the feminism that’s so pervasive in your work?
I went to the University of Wisconsin in the 1980s and took a bunch of women’s studies classes, and sort of got politicized. Then I really saw as my vision a way to take some of those ideas – and I do this with both feminism and Judaism – and try to translate them into the popular culture in a way that feels resonant with a non-feminist audience. I want to say things about Judaism or feminism to people who would not normally be going to temple or going to the women’s studies symposium. So I sort of feel like a translator in that way.
What inspired you to create East Side Jews – the “irreverent, upstart, non-denominational collective of Jews living in Los Angeles' East Side,” that holds “monthly events at unlikely venues during unpopular holidays for Jews with confused identities”?
East Side Jews was created a couple of years ago when a few of my friends and I were talking about wanting to create experiences for Jewish people living on the east side of Los Angeles that felt connected to tradition and culture, but had a very low barrier for entry in terms of Jewish knowledge, where you didn’t have to be a synagogue member. A place for young or old, unaffiliated or disconnected Jews to have fun and feel welcome and experiment, play and get to know each other, without all the rules about what people think Judaism is supposed to be.
Did you have a very Jewish upbringing?
I really didn’t have a lot of Jewish identity and culture. We went to uncles and aunts for the Jewish holidays and I definitely remember feeling very Jewish with parents who prayed to the gods of Woody Allen and Sigmund Freud. But we didn’t have a synagogue experience or any real connection with spirituality. I went to a summit put on by an organization called Reboot in 2005, and that jogged my linkage to Judaism.
Do you feel more at home in front of a live audience, as a comedian/performer, or behind the camera as a writer/producer/filmmaker?
I really like directing now. I used to do a little bit of performing, but I don’t have the urge so much anymore to get up in front of an audience and talk. I’m happy to do it, if it comes up. I love doing Q&As after a movie, but I do feel excited thinking that my movie is out there – it’s almost like I’m sending this little package of ideas out into the world, and I don’t have to be there to deliver them. That’s really exciting.
You live in the area where Afternoon Delight takes place; were those characters based on people you know?
A little bit, yes. It’s sort of based on me. I’m a little bit involved with Jewish organizing, so I’m a bit of Rachel and a little bit of Jenny. I can sometimes be found wandering around my kids’ school with a stapler in my purse, haranguing people to sign up for things. We shot the movie at my son’s school. We call it the Silver Lake JCC instead of the East Side JCC, so I fictionalized the name, but it’s vaguely based on people in my world.
Was the experience of the family in Afternoon Delight – their choices, their feelings – informed by the fact that they were Jewish?
When I first wrote it I wasn’t thinking of them as a Jewish family. I had, in my mind, set it in Evanston, Illinois, but we couldn’t go to Chicago – it was too far. Then we decided we were going to shoot in L.A. and thought we should probably find people we know and shoot in Silver Lake. Being a “Silver Lake Hipster Parent” is an interesting take on the idea of consumption. It’s not Beverly Hills, it’s not Malibu, it’s just sort of “keeping it real” wealth in Silver Lake. It’s this very specific kind of taste that’s about not being show-offy. So when I set everything in my own world, I feel like that really gave the movie a great specificity, as opposed to just “wealthy person saves hooker.” By moving the story into my neighborhood and deciding it was going to be at the JCC, everybody became Jewish. And it really wasn’t until after the movie was shot that two of the most important scenes came to mind – they were re-shoots. One was the scene where Rachel [the mom] apologizes to Kosher Amanda in the parking lot, and the other one was when they light the Shabbat candles, slightly inspired by what Kosher Amanda says about lighting candles on Friday nights. I was trying to rescue both the mom and hooker, and as the script was written I had thrown Kosher Amanda under the bus – I’d made a joke out of her. But when I realized I had to go back to the script and save her, I had the idea for that scene, which triggered the next part where they light the candles together. I was so excited when I got that idea, because it just felt so deep. It really resonated with me.
I’ve noticed you work a lot with actress Michaela Watkins. Is she sort of a comedy muse for you?
She totally is a best friend, and a muse. She was dating a mutual friend, and when they broke up I traded him in for her. I often feel that a lot of the simple formula that you see when you watch people like Judd Apatow or Seth Rogen – people who are making that stamp on the comedy world – is really just friends cracking each other up. I haven’t really been able to pull that off until recently, but I’ve known that feeling of playing with friends, and I knew that within that was the recipe for part of my voice. I was struggling in the world of television, working on TV shows and never really feeling a connection to what I was doing. I was writing a lot of movie scripts that were never getting made. It was that playfulness with Michaela that kind of turned a key for me. First we made a couple of shorts together for Funny or Die, and there was this insurance factor where I thought, “I love Michaela, and Michaela loves me, we’re going to be together on this set no matter what, if it doesn’t work it’s fine.” And I want to add – and I’m sure Michaela would be happy for me to add this as well – that in the days before we made those shorts, we both were beset with insecurities: “What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Should I cancel this shoot?” We were afraid they were too dirty, afraid they weren’t funny. I think women are constantly dealing with this feeling of, “I shouldn’t do this. I’m not good enough, I’m not funny enough, I’m not talented enough, I’m not ready.” That time, about four years ago, was the start of me getting the confidence to direct. And I had to fight day in and day out with the feeling that I was not good enough and not ready. Isn’t that crazy?
Tell me about the website Wifey: How do you describe it, and why did you create it?
After Afternoon Delight came out and we were talking to distributors – and even before as well – I kept hearing from financiers, producers, distributors, “There’s no audience for this movie. We don’t know how to market this movie.” I was having a conversation with a woman named Ava DuVernay who had won the directing award the year before me for Middle of Nowhere. It was a movie about African-American people but it didn’t have the broad appeal of a Tyler Perry movie or a Lee Daniels movie, it was just a human movie about real relationships. She had to create an entire distribution company and arrange a grassroots distribution plan by bundling her movie with other movies that were similar to get it to the African-American community. I realized that my brand doesn’t really exist in terms of a movie studio or a TV network. For women, there’s the Style Network or E!, but there’s nothing like Esquire, where women can get excited about ideas together, as opposed to fashion, makeup, mommy stuff, diapers, baby clothes. So Rebecca Odes and I wanted to create something that would appeal to us – a brand for women who are aspirational about ideas. It’s a place you can go where you know you won’t wind up feeling bad about yourself because you’re not skinny enough or beautiful enough.
In 2007 you launched a campaign against Lion’s Gate Films for its misogynistic poster for the film Captivity. Tell me about that.
My son Isaac went to Temple Israel Hollywood at the time, and as we drove to school down Hollywood Boulevard there was the most tremendous billboard you’ve ever seen – it was shockingly misogynistic. I feel knocked over every day by misogyny in our culture, on the Internet. I have no idea what to do about it or if it’s my responsibility to try and do something about the misogyny in certain kinds of pornography that our children have access to. But at the time it was a billboard that was on the way to school; a lot of kids were seeing it, it was in a very public place, so I just gathered a bunch of women and we were able to get the billboards taken down in a couple of days. The guy who put that billboard up claimed that it was a printing accident, but it seemed that what he was hoping for was exactly what we gave him – free publicity from some outraged parents. The fact that we may have fallen into his plan by getting outraged sort of makes me crazy. That’s one of those things that I look back on and wonder. I’m so glad that I did it. When things like that happen, I feel like I have no choice – but I’m a TV writer, I’m a director, and I’m in situations where Lion’s Gate, as a company, is close at hand. I do wonder if they remember me without holding a grudge.
How have you changed since you published your book, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants, in 2005?
Oh, I have totally changed. I am happily married to a Jewish man – I feel so bad about a whole chunk of that book where I talk badly about Jewish guys. I was encouraging women not to date Jewish men in a really bold way. I guess the lady doth protest too much. I’m also wearing a diamond ring – back then I had this whole anti-diamond thing. Isaac – my son, who was six or seven at the time – is now 17, and I have a five-year-old, so I’m parenting a young child all over again from a totally different perspective. Not much of that book is still true. Some of it is; I recently did the book on tape, and a lot of it was fun to hear, but I’ve definitely changed.
What’s next for you?
I’ve made a pilot called Transparent, about a Los Angeles family – another Jewish family – and it’s about memory, boundaries, sex and food. Gaby Hoffman and Jeffrey Tambor are in it. It’s on Amazon Prime, and it’s available to download as a sample episode as of February. If people like it, it will be ordered to series. I created a Facebook page for the show called Transparent on Amazon. It’s an odd process with Amazon Prime: They don’t really advertise when the pilot is ready for viewing, they just air five or six projects, and depending on what Amazon Prime customers like, they order those to series. If the show is ordered to series people will obviously know about it because they’ll be advertising it. Until then, I’ll be trying to create things for Wifey – I’m looking for opportunities to interview filmmakers I love. I feel like feminism is in this interesting place right now, in the way there is so much anti-woman stuff and misogyny in our culture, yet as liberal people it’s really difficult to line up toward any kind of censorship. So what do we do? These questions are the sorts of things that Rebecca Odes and I are exploring by finding videos that ask these questions – about consent and porn and feminism and all of these things that continue to define feminism. There aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the feminist political work I would love to be doing, let alone trying to have a career as a director, and spend time with my family.