Maggie Gyllenhaal criticises directors who suppress collaborators, aren’t open to ideas

Los Angeles, Oct 7 (IANS) Hollywood actress-director Maggie Gyllenhaal is not really happy with filmmakers who suppress their collaborators.

The actress attended a press conference at the ongoing edition of the Busan International Film Festival, and said that the best directors she worked with as an actress, who were usually also the most successful, understood the value of drawing on the minds of the people around them.

She said, “It was the people who were very scared… or just not very smart, who tried to squash other people’s voices”.

The actress has gone to the Busan Film Fest with her short film ‘Flesh Impact’, which she has written and directed. The film stars Ellen Burstyn as Marilyn Monroe at 100 and Dakota Johnson plays the star in her youth. When she made her feature directing debut, ‘The Lost Daughter’, her main concern was that everyone on set, from the actors to the cinematographer, production designer and gaffer, felt free to contribute.

She further mentioned, “The truth is… it is ultimately up to me as the director. I have the power, so there’s no reason to squash anyone else’s voice. I mean, it’s just so obvious that the movie that I will make that includes all the minds of the people on my crew, at least as things I can draw from, is going to be exponentially better than the movie I can make trying to recreate something I imagined all alone by myself in my room”.

Maggie Gyllenhaal also said she knew Marilyn Monroe mostly through her image as a screen icon, and took a week to decide whether she had anything to say about her. She spent it reading about Monroe and watching her films.

“I don’t think that when Genesis came to me and asked for a film about Marilyn Monroe to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday that they imagined she would actually be 100 years old in the movie. I thought, ‘Okay, I have this idea. They’re never going to go for it’”, she added.

–IANS

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