Greta Gerwig kept her word, she didn’t make “a face.” The day before, I had run into a mutual friend of Gerwig’s and mine who inquired what I would be asking her during the course of our interview. When I told him, he made a face — more correctly, a grimace. Then, in a polite way, he told me it was a stupid question. To be fair, it is a stupid question. Of all of the interesting movies Gerwig has been in — Frances Ha, Greenberg, and her new film that opens this weekend, the Noah Baumbach-directed Mistress America (which Gerwig co-wrote with Baumbach) — I find, of all things, Arthur to be her most fascinating.
Arthur, a 2011 remake of the beloved 1981 film, isn’t a particularly good movie, even when judging it against other ill-advised remakes. But it’s Gerwig’s only real attempt to star in a mainstream studio movie. And, for whatever reason, that was it. Since then, it’s been almost a non-stop barrage of movies that wind up being critical darling after critical darling… which makes Arthur look all the more weird. (When I asked, I warned Gerwig she might make the same face our mutual friend made, again, to her credit, she did not.) That’s why it was also so surprising when it was announced that Gerwig would be starring in How I Met Your Dad, a sort of spiritual spin-off from How I Met Your Mother. A pilot was filmed, but the series wasn’t picked up – something, if it had been picked up, Gerwig admits probably would have resulted in Mistress America not even existing.
In Mistress America, Gerwig plays Brooke, a self-involved New Yorker who seems to know it all, while being a little over it all. Brooke meets up with Tracy (Lola Kirke), a college freshman (who is about to become Brooke’s stepsister) who winds up tagging along for Brooke’s New York adventures. Then, just when you think you have this movie figured out, it shifts gears and almost becomes a zany theater production that does not at all resemble the film’s first half.
Ahead, Gerwig discusses the influences for Mistress America (which, somehow, includes Desperately Seeking Susan) and what happened with How I Met Your Dad. Also: She doesn’t make a face.
The second half of Mistress America has a Clue vibe to it I wasn’t expecting.
Clue?
You haven’t heard that?
No. Oh my gosh, I’ve never seen Clue!
You haven’t?
Isn’t Madeline Kahn in that?
She is.
I’ve never seen it.
When it came out, the big thing was that it had multiple endings and you didn’t know which one you would get.
Oh, okay, right, because it’s based on the game Clue? I’ll have to watch it. If it was an influence, it was an unconscious influence.
I’ll rephrase: It goes from this movie about New York City to feeling like a stage production.
Well, that was deliberate. We had a group of influences of films – some of the influences were ‘80s movies like Desperately Seeking Susan and After Hours and Something Wild.
Why Desperately Seeking Susan? That’s interesting. That movie is great.
It is great! Also, I had seen Celine and Julie Go Boating, which it is based on, one woman dragging another woman into a lot of craziness.
Now I have “Into the Groove” stuck in my head.
It’s a great song. But the kind of character, these slightly crazy, kind of dangerous women, who are living maybe on the wrong side of the law – we are not sure — and this idea of dragging a square, straight-edged, uptown person into the underground. That was something we were talking about. And then also the screwball comedies of the ‘30s and ‘40s – even if some of them weren’t literally filmed plays, which some of them were, they had a quality of theatricality that I’ve always really responded to. And also a tip of the hat to Bringing Up Baby, when they move the entire action to Connecticut.
You might make a face when I say what I’m going to say…
No, I won’t…
To me, the most fascinating movie you’ve done, because it’s such an outlier, is Arthur.
Oh, yeah. Well…
It sticks out.
I’ve only done two studio movies, Arthur and No Strings Attached…
You’re the star of Arthur, but in No Strings Attached, you play a supporting character.
Yeah, I had a smaller role. It was actually a lovely experience making it. It’s something that I tend to walk through the doors that are open for me. I think things in my career that seem not to add up are often things that I’m just trying out, to see if it fits.
But a lot of your career does add up.
I think there’s a lot of things that do add up, but I’m sometimes less conscious of what I am and how I appear than other people are.
I think a lot people in your position are like that. It’s people in my position who are always trying to make sense of it.
In a way, I also think there was a moment when I wasn’t totally sure what form my career would take exactly. I had made a lot of independent films, I made Greenberg, and there was a moment where I thought, well, maybe what I’ll end up doing is doing bigger movies. But I think it just ultimately wasn’t the thing that ended up deeply expressing all the things that I was interested in doing in movies. You’re always stabbing around in the dark tying to figure out, “Am I this? And I that? Am I going in this direction?”
Do you still do that?
Oh, all the time.
From the outside looking in, it looks like you have a plan.
For me, now, it’s less confusing. I think there was a time when it was a little more nebulous for me and where I was going with all of it — now, I think I have a much clearer idea of the things I love to do. As much as possible, I try to not have a plan that would not devastate me that if it fell apart. But I try to know what, at any given time, I would drop anything for and drop everything for. And, right now, it’s my own work that I’ve created — and if that happen to be later in the studio system, that would be fine.
Sometimes you see the “one for me, one for them” pattern. But if feels like you did “one for them,” then that was it.
[Laughs] And the rest, for all-time, for me! No, I don’t know, it’s still unfolding for me. But, I do think there’s a balance that sometimes you get into the trap of thinking, well, I need to do these bigger things to enable me to do the smaller things, without actually questioning that logic.
Is that what you were thinking when you did the How I Met Your Dad pilot?
Yeah. I mean, I loved working on it with those people, and TV is really fun because it’s a proper job.
And time-consuming.
Yes, it’s time-consuming while you are doing it, then you have freedom.
But maybe Mistress America doesn’t exist if How I Met Your Dad gets picked up.
That’s true. I mean, there’s always a trade-off. Ultimately, I’m really happy with everything I’m doing now, and I don’t wish that I was spending all of my time making that show. If it had happened, I probably would have found a way to express myself in that. It’s hard to know what the ghost ship of where life didn’t take you would have been like.
People had mixed emotions about you doing that show.
[Laughs] I didn’t know everybody would get so upset!
I saw a lot of people concerned that you wouldn’t be making movies that they liked anymore.
I think I’ve also, maybe, I think I always underestimate how actually weird I am. I always think, I’m a girl from Sacramento; I’m completely un-strange. But then I look at it and I’m like, “No, you’re incredibly weird and hard to categorize and you don’t fit in the pre-set boxes.” I think that’s something I’ve discovered about myself as an actor.
But it feels like, more and more, the pre-set boxes are going away.
Yeah, it’s great. It’s a really exciting time. It feels, in a way, when, in the ‘70s – which I was not alive for – but have you read that book Pictures at a Revolution? It’s so good. Anyway, it’s about all the movies that were nominated for Best Picture the year The Graduate was. It’s so this moment where these people who were not typical movie stars: Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman – actor actors. They were Jewish, they were Italian; they weren’t what you expected and weren’t “a type.” I think something similar seems to be happening in movies for women and television for women. And I think that’s really great because it feels like a whole door is being swung open for people who, 15 years ago, had no lane. And now there are opportunities and I think it’s great – and it does feel like that same sense of embracing.
And you play a big part in that.
I feel I’ve been very lucky, and feel I’m constantly inspired by the people – and not just women, also men – who are making these really independent, interesting, rigorous films. And I think they always make want to do better and try harder and push more — and maybe because it’s also because I’m very competitive [laughing].
But that’s a good thing.
I spent a lot of time trying to not be competitive, but, ultimately, if you’re competitive, just go for it …
Thank you for not making a face.
No worries. The Arthur question didn’t make me make a face!
You did not make a face. Though I prepared you not to make a face.
Okay, that’s true. I set my face.
Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and New York magazine. He is senior entertainment writer at Uproxx. You can contact him directly on Twitter.
