Booksmart
Total Film|December 2019
The Lady Bird team reunite to create another relevant, fresh study of young womanhood – but this time with petticoats. Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan talk the modernity of Little Women, chasing down Florence Pugh and sockskating with Timothée Chalamet. If you’re sitting comfortably, let us begin…
Jane Crowther
Booksmart

Jo was my North Star,” Greta Gerwig tells Total Film in her idiosyncratic breathless, sing-song cadence that makes everything sound giddily exciting when we catch up with her for a brisk October walk through New York. “I think it’s almost indistinguishable for me – wanting to be a writer and a creator, and my love for Jo. I don’t know what came first.” She’s rhapsodizing about Jo March, the gusty, uncompromising, direct and honest tomboy in Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel following four Victorian-era sisters through adolescence to adulthood via joy, heartbreak, death, and singed skirts.

Jo – with her lust for the arts, clear-eyed sense of self and ear for language – is a character who could be Gerwig after last year’s triumphant directorial debut with Lady Bird, which took her all the way to the Academy Awards. And it’s especially true of the way Gerwig went after Little Women, demanding a meeting with producer Amy Pascal in 2016, sure she was the person to interpret a new, pertinent version despite having never directed before. “I went in, and I said, ‘This movie is about art and women and money, and it’s about the impossibility of all three. It’s about: how do you become an adult, and keep the part of you that was a brave girl alive?’” she shouts over traffic. “I said I should [direct]. And in [any] case, I was able to write the script. So I wrote the script. And then I went away, and I directed Lady Bird. By the time I was done with that, they said, ‘We’re interested in making this movie, and you can direct it...’ The day after the Oscars, I went to a cabin in the woods with all my research and I spent two weeks there alone, trying to figure out if I was true and worthy of this task.”

This story is from the December 2019 edition of Total Film.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the December 2019 edition of Total Film.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM TOTAL FILMView All
Back With a Vengeance - Sir Ridley Scott returns to the Colosseum with Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to the greatest historical epic of this century. Total Film meets the director and cast to discover how Maximus' legacy is echoing in eternity.
Total Film

Back With a Vengeance - Sir Ridley Scott returns to the Colosseum with Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel to the greatest historical epic of this century. Total Film meets the director and cast to discover how Maximus' legacy is echoing in eternity.

Ridley Scott is not a filmmaker to repeat himself. It's a trait that's all the more remarkable when you consider how prolific he's been over the nearly five decades since his feature debut, 1977's The Duellists. Alien prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant are the only times he's gone back to the same world, and those films are radical departures from the original.

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
Bad Romance - Timestalker Alice Lowe falls in love with the wrong man time and time again...
Total Film

Bad Romance - Timestalker Alice Lowe falls in love with the wrong man time and time again...

Her antidote to that? Timestalker a dark not-quite-romcom set over the course of centuries. Her protagonist Agnes finds herself attracted to the same man, Alex (Dunkirk's Aneurin Barnard), in every lifetime as she's reincarnated in the 1680s, 1790s, 1980s and the 22nd century. As romantic as that may sound, there's a bit of a catch: 'He's sort of a dickhead. On the surface he's appealing, but under, he's not.'

time-read
2 mins  |
October 2024
McQueen & Country
Total Film

McQueen & Country

A moment of national pride and terror comes to the screen with World War Two historical drama Blitz. Total Film speaks to writer/director Steve McQueen and his stars Saoirse Ronan and Stephen Graham about uncovering the truth and celebrating the triumph of a defining moment in modern British history.

time-read
7 mins  |
November 2024
'I WAS, AND AM STILL, SURPRISED BY EVERY OPPORTUNITY. I'VE BEEN CONTINUOUS AND FEEL AT THE TOP OF MY FORM' JEFF GOLDBLUM
Total Film

'I WAS, AND AM STILL, SURPRISED BY EVERY OPPORTUNITY. I'VE BEEN CONTINUOUS AND FEEL AT THE TOP OF MY FORM' JEFF GOLDBLUM

Seth Brundle. Dr. Ian Malcolm. Grandmaster. Jeff Goldblum has played some titanic characters over his 50-year career, and is celebrating a half-century on our screens by going bigger than ever. First he played Zeus in Netflix show Kaos, and now he's the Wizard of Oz in Wicked. Total Film meets the man behind the curtain...

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
STICKY SITUATION
Total Film

STICKY SITUATION

Seven years on from his last big-screen appearance, marmalade's biggest fan returns for Paddington in Peru. Total Film talks to director Dougal Wilson, actor Hugh Bonneville and the visual-effects wizards who make the magic happen...

time-read
9 mins  |
November 2024
BORN TO BE WILD
Total Film

BORN TO BE WILD

BROTHERS IS THE MOST SURPRISING ACTION COMEDY OF THE YEAR, AND NOT JUST BECAUSE JOSH BROLIN AND PETER DINKLAGE PLAY CRIMINAL TWINS. TOTAL FILM ROUNDS UP THE STARS TO TALK ABOUT DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, THE 'HARD AS NAILS' COMEDIES THEY GREW UP WITH, AND MASTURBATING MONKEYS...

time-read
10+ mins  |
November 2024
TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC
Total Film

TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT Payal Kapadia's film shows the Mumbai you've never seen...

time-read
2 mins  |
November 2024
HUMPH DAY BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES
Total Film

HUMPH DAY BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES

Behind every great man is a great woman. Or in Humphrey Bogart's case, four great women...

time-read
2 mins  |
November 2024
CALLING THE SHOTS
Total Film

CALLING THE SHOTS

NEVER LOOK AWAY Lucy Lawless directs a bio-doc about a trailblazing camerawoman...

time-read
2 mins  |
November 2024
A FAMILY HEIRLOOM
Total Film

A FAMILY HEIRLOOM

THE PIANO LESSON Malcolm Washington's feature debut is all about family...

time-read
2 mins  |
November 2024