DIRECTING WITH GRACE
I watched a promo for an entire season of a show I directed – 10 episodes. And with delight, I said out loud, over and over, “That’s my shot. That’s my shot!” I was delighted to see that, while promoting ten episodes, the studio editors gave me the honor of including eight shots from the one episode I directed. It was like getting that “pat on the back” from strangers – editors for the studio who didn’t know me and didn’t care. They just liked my shots.
That show is just now dropping on a platform, though I directed that episode almost a year ago. Maybe that’s why it was so fun to see those shots, it was like a blast from the past. The important thing is that those shots – that work – exists. It is, for better or worse, a legacy of my work. It may fade into the digital equivalent of some dusty file drawer, long forgotten in some archive, but it is still there. Something I created is still there, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. (Unless some nuclear accident happens.)
The other thing that will exist is the book I co-wrote, Directors Tell the Story, about the craft of directing. After my body is gone and my spirit is drifting somewhere unremembered, the book will be left behind. Just like every author through history. Every filmmaker. Every architect and artisan. And me. I take comfort in that.
Perhaps because I’m getting older, I think about this stuff. What mattered? What did I do with my life that made a difference?
I like to think that my work had a lasting impact. Perhaps not in the message that a particular episode might put forth because that was the purview of the writer. I long ago decided that while I can’t control the ideas of an episode as perceived by the audience, I can control one thing: how we make the episode. I can be kind to everyone. I can nurture the actors. I can interact with the showrunner with integrity. I can be decisive and get the crews out every day at a decent time, and that elevates the communal spirit. And maybe that approach makes a difference – maybe a young grip gets home in time for dinner and to put his toddler to bed. Maybe someone in the art department decides that they’re going to stay in this crazy business because the episode we did together was creatively inspiring. Maybe an assistant director observes that being a boss doesn’t mean being a jerk and they change their methods accordingly. Maybe someone will say, twenty years from now, that they once had a director they really respected both for their finished film and for the on-set experience.
When I started as a director, observing the ones who went before me, they were, without exception, white men who yelled a lot. I thought I had to be like them. But I was a 28-year-old young lady from the Midwest, soft-spoken and humble. I attempted to fit the mold but failed. In a good way. I have never yet raised my voice on set. I am always prepared and therefore approach the day’s work with as much grace as possible. I put in the time to thoroughly prepare and imagine the visual way to tell the story in the best possible way. I try to spread that philosophy by modeling it for cast, crew and administration in every episode that I am privileged to direct.
It’s been a long road. Forty-one years, over 250 episodes. But it’s not over! Today, I’m going to go direct a show. I don’t have to think much about my legacy for a few years yet. Time to get up, get going, start to tell a good story, and spread the love!
