Filmmaker & Director Martha Coolidge On Making Valley Girl And What Women Need To Thrive In Filmmaking Today

… What I think is very important is that you sort of either got it in your personality to be a director or you don’t. I know that I knew very early that I was a director. I just knew it because of me. I like to think big and I can. I also am very involved in empathizing with people and telling stories. All of that is part of being a director, as well as the visual presentation and all of it. So it’s something that completely kept proving itself to me as time went by that I really was a Director. I knew it from the beginning. It was just a matter of proving it.

As a part of our series about pop culture’s stars, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Filmmaker and Director, Martha Coolidge.

Martha Coolidge is an American filmmaker who achieved commercial success directing films often underlain by a feminist perspective.

Coolidge’s father was a professor of architecture at Yale University (and third cousin of U.S. Pres. Calvin Coolidge), and her parents encouraged her to be an artist. She pursued a career as a folk singer but, unsuccessful, turned to acting, which eventually led to her interest in directing films. She enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where she studied directing and produced an animated short for her first film. During the Vietnam War she moved to Canada, where she worked for a daily children’s television program. Upon her return to the United States she studied at New York University’s film school, the School of Visual Arts, and Columbia Graduate School, both in New York City. She then began to make highly praised and personal documentary films, including Not a Pretty Picture (1975), her semiautobiographical film about date rape. After failing to complete Photoplay, a film on which she had worked for two and a half years, Coolidge again went to Canada, where she directed a television miniseries.

Back in the United States, she achieved her first commercial success. In 1983 she became one of few women ever to direct a teen movie with the highly successful Valley Girl. Two years later she directed her first major Hollywood studio movie, Real Genius. Her other feature films included Rambling Rose (1991); Lost in Yonkers (1993), based on Neil Simon’s award-winning play; Angie (1994), a feminist film that examines the friendship between two women as one of them faces single motherhood; Out to Sea (1997), starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon; The Prince & Me (2004); and Material Girls (2006). She also directed the made-for-television movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) and episodes for a number of TV series, including Weeds, Psych, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Madam Secretary, and Angie Tribeca.

Coolidge served on the boards of several film organizations and was instrumental in the founding of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. From 2002 to 2003 she served as the first female president of the Directors Guild of America.

Hi Martha, I’m really excited to chat with you today.

Oh, thank you.

You’re originally from Connecticut. Is that true?

Yes. It’s not the biggest film town of course, but it is. It was a great place to grow up actually. Really great.

Did you always know that you wanted to be in the business?

No. I actually didn’t. Everybody I knew wanted to be in the business and I thought, geez, I don’t wanna do that. But I ended up being in it… a couple others did too, but mostly it was me.

Yeah. It’s a tough one. It’s definitely tough. I know when I was young I wanted to get involved. I guess being an actress was the thing, because I didn’t know anything else. I didn’t know women could produce or direct or do any of those things?

Well yeah, but they couldn’t unfortunately. It’s changed a lot, everything.

It really has. I guess the big question is, How did you fall into it? How did you become the director that you are?

Well, it was not a fall into it. That’s for sure. I went to Rhode Island school of design, which had film because they included it in their early introduction to the arts and they had a teacher in first year who taught you various things on camera with camera moves and camera position. We also did animation with our cutouts from magazines and drawings and whatever we wanted. So that was all good but then we got more serious and started having assignments to make movies about and that was a lot of fun and it really kind of swept over me. I loved it and really wanted to do it. So I took on a sort of a personal inquiry into that area.. And so, I became a film major. It was a sort of an extension After my third year I was so serious that I actually took a leave of absence and went to New York to continue my studies in film and then I took a job actually in Canada, which was great. That was the Canadian National Film Board. That’s where I wanted to go, but actually I got a job in television. And that was really interesting too. The whole thing was interesting.

Yeah. You learned something new everywhere, I guess. It’s all different.

Yes, I did.. and I then went back to NYU because I got accepted in the graduate program. So I went, I went back and went to NYU and that was fantastic. That was a great program, very intensive two years and when I got out of that, I started having films in film festivals. So it was really, really incredible. I mean, there were people who backed me who were in labs and this and that and they’d give me keys and I’d go in, learn how to run a camera. Wow. It was, it was incredible. It was a very interesting time to be coming into the business.

Yeah. So back then, I mean, there weren’t very many women. I’m trying to think of who else there is?

Oh, no, there weren’t and that’s why it was so great. We were all right there in the same building. We all had offices there…Barbara Copel and others, and there were so many of us, and we started The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers. We started lobbying. It was amazing. We started lobbying in Washington and we just learned a lot about it, because we weren’t represented. Nobody was really paying any attention to us, So we became represented and all three of us of course have ended up as filmmakers, long time. So it’s very interesting. I see them. I’ve even run into them at the Oscars.

So it is like having gone through a long introduction and working experience and we came from three different directions. So that was good.

Yeah. So you were in New York and then at what point did you decide to go out to LA?

Well, I decided when I started making picture, in fact, I made Not a Pretty Picture in New York but I got a big grant from AFI and a, a private backer matched it and so I had over $50,000 to make that film and I made it, and then I was editing it and I had connections with AFI. They opened the film at the Kennedy Center in Washington. So I decided to come out and I applied for an internship with Bob Wise and I got that. So I came out to LA and lived in a hotel and went down to this big picture and it was great. I met all kinds of people. It was really a great way to get to know some people and then you’re right in a working environment and it, it was, it was really, really good and, and at that moment, MGM was very busy so we, there, I was with a lot of films shooting on the lot and it was terrific.

How fun. I have to tell you, I moved to LA in ’99. I think it was and I moved to the valley, so I moved to Sherman Oaks. I remember so vividly renting Valley Girl. I think it was on VHS from Blockbuster probably and I remember thinking, this is so cool. I love the 80’s and it sort of set the tone for living in the valley for me. .

It’s seriously, still active.. people love it…

Cult classic. Yeah. So what do you think it was about that film that just kind of made it so amazing and that people are still talking about it?

Well, personally, I feel that I’m very connected to the drama and comedy of teenagers’ lives. I mean, it is a very important time of life. And the story was very simple, so I could elaborate with characters and all that stuff and then I got Nick Cage in it, which was great. And the other actors were all fantastic and we had a great time. I shot it in a very short period of time. Yes, it was, well, we had 20 days.

Wow, that’s not long…

Two of those days, the equipment broke down, so we had to have 22 days because I had to make days and that was short and then I had to cut it and I, I cut it with an editor. So the two of us edited and it was, it was great. The whole thing was quick and I then went through the whole discovery process of putting together a soundtrack, and the music.

Which was incredible and sort of invented that, bring everybody in on a record deal and, put ’em on the movie track and yeah, it was, it was great. I mean, I love the thing we put together and then the record company didn’t come out with it because they had a fight with the distributor and, but then later they did, a company came out with the soundtrack, with the original track song.

Oh, I bet. When they saw how successful it was, I’m sure they did…!

Very, very, very successful and all. Yeah and it was the whole thing was a glorious adventure

I’m sure, and it has great locations, everything in it. I mean, I love the valley. I know it still probably gets kind of a bad rap, but…

Well, I guess it does, but it, God knows it does, as you say, the valley has lots of locations..I mean, every kind of location. So I live in the valley and I have horses and there’s rivers and yeah.

It’s beautiful.

Streams and forests. Oh, it’s incredible. Even quicksand.

Hey, you never know what you might find in this valley. I like it. Even when I go to LA now I visit the valley. I go there and stay in Agoura Hills or Studio City..it’s fun. So what was it like working with Nick? This movie, I mean, pretty much launched his career, right?

Oh yeah and I didn’t know him before, which I surprised myself about, because literally I’d been in the business for several years and I knew everybody, I thought, but I didn’t know him and he’d been there when I was there. So it was funny that we didn’t know each other but he’s, he’s brilliant. I mean, he’s very brilliant. Very funny and a very interesting character. He was the youngest person in the movie.

Was he really, he was the youngest one.

Interesting and he always looks the oldest, but he was the youngest and he was, very creative. I just loved working with him and he also, even at one point started living in his car. Cause that was sort of part of his character and I got really mad cause we didn’t have car phones then. I mean, you can’t live in your car. It was one of those kinds of arguments but it was great and he was terrific in the movie. I loved his enthusiasm and his attachment to everyone and how we go and have these nighttime talks at, at Deli’s in the middle of the night?

Oh, sounds fun. I love the delis in the valley. All of them are great.

It was great. We really got to know the music scene really well. I had a kid design the costumes for the punks because he was a real kid and his mother was a costume designer. So he had the discipline and knew what had to be done.

He knew what was cool.

Together from actual people on the street. I mean, he got the stuff together. So we had an incredible time putting this whole thing together.

Amazing. I actually met Nick very briefly. I was thinking about that yesterday. . Just out, somewhere in LA, maybe at The Sunset Marquis and he was, he’s very sweet. He’s very tall. Remember him being very tall.

He’s very tall. Yeah and he’s very sweet.

Very sweet. Yeah.

I had to tell him to stop working out cause he was so built up. It was incredible. So he did a little. He’s just a really, really good guy. I loved working with him.

So, when you think back, you’ve really worked on so many wonderful things.What are the moments you remember? . I’d be here all day asking you about each one of them, which would be fun, but it would take a while. So which, which ones kind of stand out to you the most?

Oh God. Every one of them has things that are really attractive to me. Valley Girl was very important because it did introduce me to Hollywood. It was a big transition film, very big. So I knew that was there and then I did one after that that was more a throwaway. That was The Joy of Sex and it’s not a great movie, but I did use a lot of great actors and, it was, it was something and then I went into real genius, which was a huge amount of fun. That was great. And again, I had a newish new guy Val Kilmer in it, and that was amazing. So that one went on longer because it was sort of a bigger film with, and it had visual effects in it and all kinds of stuff. Then from there, I think I went to Lost In Yonkers, which was a more mature movie. It was with Neil Simon and it would shot both out of town, on location and back in town for the studio it was more, again, more intensive had some incredible parts and it, it was, it was, it was really great and it, it was trying because it was bigger and that brought in a lot more active people and all of that taught me a lot about that part and there have been so many since that. Another very important one was Introducing Dorothy Dandridge for HBO, which was a huge movie and I really wanted to do it because I really had a vision about that movie and I felt very empathetic toward her and other beautiful women who somehow were subjected to pain in Hollywood. And that it was really an incredible experience to make that film and I’ve done some since, but the one, then I got more active in television just because there was less film work being done and I did quite a few CSI’s and I loved doing that show.

That’s a great show. I worked on a few of those.Yeah.

And then when I did this new movie, I’ll Find You, which is a love story set before, during and after World War II in Poland. It was such an experience as an American. And we shot in the real places that people would come out and say, oh, I remember when it was just like this and it was, it was incredible cuz it answered so many questions that I had always had about world war II and that we can’t really get answers that easily over here. But it was, it was really right there that you could get the answers from people you’d just turn around, talk to them, the local standing there. And that, and then it was, it was an incredible experience. It really was.. making that kind of a film and it was an independent film financed by an individual guy in Europe. It was a big, big picture and it, it really, it, it really went in so many directions and was filled with music, which was really incredible. And I had some wonderful actors and that was incredible and it just took forever. We’d take a break while he’d raise some more money. Because he never really got all of it and…

It’s an expensive thing, movie making.

Yeah. It went like that. Stop and start, stop and start. Oh then we finally finished and then of course I’m not even talking to them. It’s sort of over for you and they’re the ones that are trying to pursue distribution, but that was in the middle of COVID. All of it was very discouraging. We’re so happy. It got released.

Yeah. I need to see that.

Yes, the cast is great.It’s actually streaming. It did show in theaters. I don’t know if it is now. I can’t tell you, but you could find out in your area. Yeah but it is streaming. I think it’s on HBO and maybe some of these other ones, like Hulu.

So one last question. What advice would you have for women out there who are thinking about directing and maybe new to the business, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I think that, that isn’t gonna hamper you. What I think is very important is that really, after all these years, I can tell you, you sort of either got it in your personality to be a director or you don’t. And it doesn’t mean you don’t wanna try and maybe you’re sort of halfway there and you can do it like that. I know that I knew very early that I was a director. I just knew it because of me. I just way I was with people and I like to think big and I can. I also am very, very involved in empathizing with people and telling stories. All of that is part of being a director, as well as the visual presentation and all of it. So it’s something that completely kept proving itself to me as time went by that I really was a Director.

You felt it, you just felt it …

I knew it from the beginning. It was just a matter of proving it.

And doing it and getting out there. Probably just the more you did.

That’s right. Absolutely. Yeah

Well, Martha, this was so awesome. Thank you for doing this with us..

You’re welcome and thank you.