It’s easy to bask in the reflected glow of filmmakers like Jean-Luc
Godard, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Richard Linklater, and learn something from
working with them. But during a recent one-on-one interview with Julie Delpy,
I asked the 2 Days in
multi-hyphenate about what she’s learned in her career from bad directors.
is taking over the directing of the film, really, and that’s when you know
you’ve got not a winner,” she says. “Because you know that the director is not
the captain, and it’s over — the film won’t have coherence. What I’ve learned
from working with bad directors is two things. Number one, it’s bad to be a director that screams at everybody,
I feel, because you lose a lot of the people that could and should be your
allies. And for me, even when people were driving me crazy — it didn’t happen
on this film, but someone was trying
at times to drive me crazy — I never lost it, I was always together. It’s
actually interesting for a woman to be a director, because we have a tendency
to be a tiny bit more emotional than men, so it’s really about keeping in check
your emotional side, and being together. The other thing is when a director is
confused and doesn’t know where he’s going… I’m not saying I was perfect, at
times I was confused and overwhelmed. But you have to make strong decisions,
and if you’re confused and you show it, it’s over.”