Susanna Fogel, co-writer and director of The Spy Who Dumped Me, attended a screening of her 2018 film at FilmScene on Thursday, March 28th. Fogel previously found herself in Iowa City for Refocus with her film Cat Person. Jakob DeLong and Erika Chagdes, two Bijou members, sat down and curated a series of questions for Fogel about her career and its trajectory. Kat Trout-Baron assisted in transcribing and adding a few comments.
EC: As a graduating cinema student, I am curious to hear about how you broke into the industry. Did you have any connections?
SF: I really love to talk about my mistakes, how insecure I was, how much I did wrong, and how many times I had to start over-- people don't talk about that as much as they do their greatest hits. I was 21, I moved from LA to New York-- the industry was much more centralized at that point, and if you wanted to work in film, you moved to LA. When I moved out there, I took a writing class to find friends who were interested in being writers. I wanted a community, and that one thing is extremely important. Form a community of people who are talented and want to help each other. Whoever I met through a favor-- those relationships didn't pan out as much as the ones I built from the ground up.
EC: What was it like starting out? What were your first jobs like?
SF: In my writing class, I befriended another girl and began seeing movies and writing with her. We both had temp jobs-- I was the assistant to a Hollywood Producer at first. I found it very taxing to work for someone in the industry-- I wasn't there to be an aspiring writer, I was there to answer phones. I became too invested in my boss's life and doing a good job, so I couldn't check out. You need to ask these question-- what's the way you can be least emotionally attached while still paying your bills? You need to find that answer, if your reason for being there is writing.
My friend and I began regularly making videos outside of our jobs. We taped big video cameras to the dashboard of my car, and the sketches were about two super co-dependent twenty-somethings bickering. We started posting them online, and eventually, someone took noticed and offered us money. Soon, I shot a trailer for a movie we wrote together-- someone in the trailer had a roommate who worked for a producer, and that producer watched our trailer, giving it to a manager. She helped us start our careers.
I met her through generating art and asking for favors. You have to do that a million times until that one hit.
JD: Where do you see yourself now?
SF: It's never easy because the bar keeps moving. I've made four movies-- if you told me in my twenties I'd made four movies and several TV shows, I would've thought that sounded great. Now, however, we're coming out of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes-- it's hard. I'm back to writing scripts like when I was young. What I've learned is you have to get comfortable with the discomfort. There's so few times where you make something and everything goes right-- reviews, distribution, longevity. All you can do is control your own mind and keep yourself motivated.
JD: Would you say you still struggle with confidence in your work?
SF: Not in the same way. At first, I just wanted to be a full-time writer and quit my day job. Now I'm a full-time writer and people ask me what I'm making-- nothing is being made. I'm a writer, but I make potential outlines that don't get made. There are many times you are trying to pull it together-- you get something made, but then you aren't sure what comes next. There's always something to be angsty about-- why isn't this making money? Why is this other film being seen and not mine? You have to keep a positive attitude and make yourself a strong community.
JD: Many of your creative breakthroughs seemed to happen in a moment of frustration. You faced a job set-back and wrote The Spy Who Dumped Me with your friend. You felt stagnation and wrote a one-act play which became your first feature. What do you think of this pattern?
SF: It's never the things I thought. When I came out here, I thought I was going to get a job writing for a sitcom, later coming back to my directing dreams. Instead, I tried and failed to get jobs, almost went down an executive path, and instead ended up in an office job.
With The Spy Who Dumped Me, I lost a job and my close friend had a disappointment in his career, and we’d write with each other every day. We got together, complained we weren't being seen the way we wanted to be seen, and wrote together. We ended up with that film.
My first film was a one-act play that my friends and I produced just to have work being made. Someone from Sundance Lab saw it and asked us to make it a screenplay-- that became my first feature film.
JD: Speaking of first projects-- you had a short go to TIFF at fourteen. What was that like?
SF: It was 1995. I always forget about my teen filmmaking enterprises-- I wrote a lot of sketches as a kid. I grew up on the Brown campus due to my parents-- we didn't have a commercial cinema, only two arthouse theaters. My formative films were 90s indies films like The Piano. I wrote a short script after seeing these films and asked my mom to drive me to the Rhode Island commission, and asked the guy there if he knew anyone who could help me film a project. He introduced me to an experimental filmmaker. I had my two best-friends come over and act with me in it-- the plot was about three girls gossiping. When a girl left the room, the two remaining would talk badly about the one who left the room. I sent it to TIFF with blind confidence-- and it got in. When I went to TIFF with my parents, I didn't want people to know I was fourteen, and I made my parents stand in the corner as I walked around. I was then invited to the Berlin Film Festival-- it wasn't a great film, but I think they were curious about the fourteen year-old submitting more than anything. I'll always remember this woman who came up to the mic and trashed the film. I was fifteen and tried not to cry onstage. It made me realize I'd much rather have someone say they hated something than "it's okay".
KTB: I hate when people say "I liked it" about a script-- it says nothing.
SF: I want people to feel strongly about a film. People responded to Cat Person intensely-- I know many people who loved it or hated it. Too many TV or Film projects made are safer these days. It's on us to make interesting stuff.
EC: If you could make your dream project right now, what would it be?
SF: I spent six years trying to make two films-- those are now completed. Now, I need to have a different answer-- I think I'd like to make another big movie. I had a big budget on The Spy Who Dumped Me, and if I had a do-over, I'd know how to do it perfectly. I have experience now. I think of directors like David Fincher, who do everything and complete their art at the highest level. I want to make original, smart, big budget films. We need those.
KTB: The Spy Who Dumped Me is a big-budget action film. What kinds of films are you drawn to in that genre?
SF: Bourne films, Bond Films, and the Wick movies. Also, Out Of Sight and Hanna. They are ridiculous but amazing. I like when action isn't bonkers, but rather realistic. I want the film to be fun, but the action to feel gritty.
JD: It seemed the first scene in The Spy Who Dumped Me was inspired by Bourne.
SF: It was-- the stunt coordinator actually worked on the Bourne films. For each of the action sequences, we picked a similar film-- we used Mission: Impossible, John Wick, Skyfall, and other films.
JD: The action genre is often perceived as male-centric. How did you feel making a female-led action film?
SF: After years of women being objectified in the action genre, there's now countless of films where the women aren't people but symbols of strong, female characters. They feel like robots, and I didn't want robots in my movie. I wanted my characters to feel dynamic. We wanted to make a movie about friendship, with grounded female characters. I'm working on a film right now about inter-generational female friendships and rivalries.
EC: We don't often see inter-generational stories about women. There's a concern in Hollywood with ageism and the treatment of older actresses.
SF: There aren't. I love the idea of having an older woman look at a younger woman and wonder What If? What if I could have had mentorships and connections that took me somewhere grand? I think of myself as a filmmaker now, looking upon younger generations. I see a number of fellowships opening up for women, and I see younger filmmakers as lucky. A lot of older female filmmakers weren't open to mentoring my generation-- I try to be someone that offers advice and assists those coming up.
EC: How do you feel the industry has progressed in terms of representation and opportunity?
The times have changed a lot-- it is a totally different landscape than before. Sexism has taken on a new form-- it used to be really overt. You can't begin to imagine what people said or did back then. I had male friends who never directed anything being offered big-budget films. I had to beg for work then, even when I had credits under my belt. Now, it is more nuanced-- studios have pigeon-holed female creatives into a specific space. I am sent primarily woman stories where their biggest problem is their womanhood. I don’t want to tell stories like that– it’s in the ether of all our stories, it is implied, but I don’t think that’s where our story ends. I know male directors sent everything, but women just get sent women stories.
KTB: It makes me think of Elaine May and her films delving into the male perspective. There's an infuriating assumption you can only make movies about what you know.
SF: I don’t want anyone to tell me the only thing I understand is my experience as a Jewish Girl from the Northeast. Everything I do is a leap into something. I just try to make experiences as human as possible. People want to be displayed as deep, complex people rather than representative of one thing.
JD: Would you say then writing a character is more about the psychology?
SF: Yes! And sometimes you need to make shit up, which can make things difficult. When I made the film Winner, I was working with a real woman. I met her a couple of times, as did the actress. We’ve stayed friends– I’m actually going to Texas to celebrate Passover with her. Reality is a great character-- certain aspects of her life and characteristics make for a good story in film. When you make a movie, you have to change details-- we gave her a love interest, someone who got under her skin and got to know her.
JD: Did Reality ever see Winner?
SF: No. She wants these movies to be made, and she wants these movies to be out there, but she’s self conscious. She says "I want the world to be outraged, but I don’t need to see it".
JD: Cat Person and Winner are both about real-life scenarios. Do you find yourself drawn to adapting non-fiction?
SF: Sometimes. I read a lot– but people are so afraid of original content. Cat Person was a rare IP that had momentum and a name but wasn’t a superhero thing. Now, I think if I feel there’s something different about it than I find it interesting. I don’t want to tell the same story that’s been told before– with Cat Person, I wanted a film about weird romantic and sexual encounters that is neither love or assault. All the good stories are not binary– there are good stories in the middle. With Winner, I wanted to do a film with a woman who starts out with extreme confidence, and the world humbles her in this extreme way that is upsetting. Sometimes there is no comparison– and that’s why I want to do it.
JD: Returning to the question about psychology. Do you feel the impact of your parents as doctors?
SF: For sure. There’s always an effort to analyze the psychology of people and why they do things, and who they are versus who the world thinks they are. In film, you can use costuming as an example-- in Cat Person, Robert thinks he’s really cool in his jacket. But we can see it’s not quite cool, it ruined his vibe. Little decisions change the nuances. In the writing, it is the showing not telling of it. Get into the voices of the person– who they think they are, what are their tics, if you were to do an impression what would be specific about them? What’s annoying about them? What’s the comedic game of them? Everyone should have one in all of your scripts.
EC: As a woman entering the industry, I'd love to hear more about advice you have for female filmmakers.
SF: Don’t limit your community to other women. We silo ourselves into our own micro-communities– I have a distinct memory of going to panels with other women where they’d be like “let’s do our own thing” and I’d meet male screenwriters/filmmakers who wanted to assist women. Don’t leave all the support on the table– take the victory of allies.
KTB: I've experienced in workshops people singling me out as representative of my identity as a woman or a lesbian. It can be tough to consistently be perceived as the indicator of goodness for a community.
SF: When I made Life Partners, I was working with my friend who was a lesbian. We made a movie about a triangle of people who were conflicted about the promises they made about love. It is inspired by the promise I made to my own friend-- that I wouldn't get married until she could legally get married. Life Partners had a storyline about gay marriage being legalized, and the day we did a test screening, Obergefell v. Hodges passed. We removed the plot as we felt it was now outdated-- but I think the film became more progressive. It was about friendship.
JD: Do you feel that your approach to your career has shifted over time?
SF: I don’t remember what precipitated this shift. I was competitive. Seeing people rewarded for mediocre to bad work and being irritated about that– it made me approach movies differently. I think I always felt like I had to come prepared, more than the men in my life. Men have more room to be insecure in life without it affecting their willingness to invest– but not women. Women have to harbor their insecurities but men don’t. I don’t have that anymore. Now, I’m just annoyed at the industry that things aren’t getting made, and I'm determined to get them made.
KTB: A lot of people create an exact timeline for their careers at our age, saying they'll make it by a specific age.
SF: There is no time. It is your personal threshold for pain. You don’t know about the timeline and its success until you’ve made your mistakes. I waited a long time to have security because I was in that zone.
EC: Any final word of advice to screenwriters at Iowa?
SF: Everyone I know who has a base-level of talent who is writing and doesn’t get hung up on scripts and meets people has a career. There’s nobody who has done those things and had to quit. It’s up to you to decide if you want this lifestyle– if you want to work, you can work.
