{"id":8883,"date":"2022-03-03T07:23:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=8883"},"modified":"2022-03-03T07:26:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:26:05","slug":"day-four-of-sidetracks-and-detours-inaugural-heres-to-the-ladies-in-print-festival-featuring-minnie-driver-a-no-nonsense-conversationalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2022\/03\/03\/day-four-of-sidetracks-and-detours-inaugural-heres-to-the-ladies-in-print-festival-featuring-minnie-driver-a-no-nonsense-conversationalist\/","title":{"rendered":"Day four of Sidetracks And Detours\u00b4 inaugural Here\u00b4s To The Ladies in-print Festival featuring MINNIE DRIVER: \u00b4a no-nonsense conversationalist!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Day four of Sidetracks And Detours\u00b4 inaugural Here\u00b4s To The Ladies in-ptint Festival featuring <\/strong>MINNIE DRIVER: <\/strong>\u00b4a no-nonsense conversationalist!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman Warwick follows sidetracks & detours of what was said<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

when she spoke to Alexandra Pollard for The Indpendent.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As she returns in the Amazon hit series Modern Love, Minnie Driver recently talked to Alexandra Pollard<\/a> (left)<\/em><\/strong> , an excellent writer for The Independent, about the harsh reality of casting, why she could never be a method actor and why there\u2019s never been a better time to be a woman in film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00b4It\u2019s not a meritocracy and it\u2019s not a level playing field\u00b4,<\/em> says Minnie Driver<\/a> (right)<\/em><\/strong> . She\u2019s talking about Hollywood, the industry with which she\u2019s had a love-hate relationship for three decades. Roles have rarely come without a fight. She broke out as a dowdy Irish student in 1995\u2019s Circle of Friends, despite initially being deemed too streetwise for the role; two years later, she was \u00b4not hot enough\u00b4, according to one producer, to play Matt Damon\u2019s love interest in Good Will Hunting. She ended up getting an Oscar nod for that. In the years since, she has bubbled just beneath the surface of super-stardom, every yes followed by at least twenty no thank yous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Oftentimes, people would just rather cast exactly what\u2019s been written\u00b4,<\/em> explained Driver, who has a face too vivid for any screenwriter to conjure up, \u00b4than take a chance on somebody being able to morph into something else.\u00b4<\/em> The exception, she says, is bankability. \u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4If an actor is bankable enough, and it\u2019s written as 5ft 6in but you\u2019ve got a 6ft 3in, dark-haired movie star who\u2019s willing to do the role, believe me, that role will be [re]written to be 6ft 3in and dark haired. But in terms of seeing people outside the box\u2026 it does take a vision. So you take the hits, and you appreciate the stuff that comes your way. And then you fight for other stuff.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she manages to not get frustrated when she loses out on parts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4No\u00b4,<\/em> she said, without a pause. \u00b4I\u2019ll always be frustrated by it. But I think I\u2019ve learnt to go, \u2018OK, well, that\u2019s that. I can either let that ruin my day or I can go and find stuff that is going to work.\u2019 I used to get much more mired in the unfairness of things, and now I just haven\u2019t got any time to waste. If that\u2019s not going to work out, good to know, moving on. Don\u2019t waste time.\u00b4<\/em> She shrugs. \u00b4It\u2019s easier as you get older\u00b4,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dressed in a red gown in a New York hotel room, Driver is a no-nonsense conversationalist. English people have a reputation for extreme politeness \u2013 for skirting around the point to soften it \u2013 but there is something very English, too, about Driver\u2019s bluntness. She is never nervous to speak her mind. Take the time, in 2017, when her Good Will Hunting co-star and ex-boyfriend Matt Damon (left)<\/em><\/strong> put his foot in it over the #MeToo movement, criticising what he called a \u00b4culture of outrage and injury\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Go\u00f3d god, seriously?\u00b4, tweeted Driver, before suggesting that men like Damon were \u00b4systemically part of the problem\u00b4.<\/em> She has that same direct nature on screen, her performances concise, emotionally open, never showy. Think of her quietly declaring \u201cyou\u2019re a psychopath\u201d to her former high-school sweetheart, tears rolling down her cheek, in 1997\u2019s Grosse Pointe Blank. Or the dirty joke she tells, using a swig of Guinness as a prop, in Good Will Hunting. Or the way she stomps out of the reading of her dead lover\u2019s last will and testament in Will and Grace. Sure, her turn as a Russian lounge singer in Goldeneye didn\u2019t give much room for nuance, but she made even that role count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her episode of Modern Love<\/a>, she had to cram a whole lot of emotional heft into 30 minutes. The anthology series, based on true stories from the New York Times column of the same name, returned for its second season on Friday. It\u2019s always been a starry affair \u2013 Anne Hathaway, Dev Patel, Cristin Milioti and Tina Fey have all had their turn \u2013 but there\u2019s something old-school about its tone, each episode a plinky plonky Nineties romcom squished into a bite-size chunk. It is, inevitably, hit and miss, some episodes a little slight, others a little cheesy \u2013 but Driver\u2019s got me by the end. She plays Stephanie, a widowed Irish doctor who goes for long drives in her spluttering old sports car. Her new partner thinks she needs to sell it, but we gradually gather that it belonged to her late husband and that she talks to him aloud while she whizzes through the winding County Wicklow countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she\u2019s not talking to the spectre of her husband, Stephanie\u2019s Skyping her daughter, who\u2019s away at university, and who she misses terribly \u2013 a reminder of how we\u2019ve all had to communicate during the pandemic. Her partner doesn\u2019t get it. \u201cSkyping every night and physically looking at each other, it just makes the separation harder,\u201d he says. \u201cFor all these advancements, the 21st century just messes with things.\u201d Does she agree with the sentiment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4No, I totally disagree with that, 1,000 per cent\u00b4,<\/em> she says, emphatic as ever. \u00b4John Carney [the director] wouldn\u2019t let me more vociferously disagree with that. I thought it was a load of bollocks. And it was also, I felt, a very male perspective: you put things into compartments and you don\u2019t engage with the emotion if you don\u2019t have to. I actually really wanted her to go, \u2018I don\u2019t agree.\u2019 But John had her agreeing with him\u2026 which just says more about Carney than it does about me\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driver \u00b4didn\u2019t really do any research\u00b4<\/em> for the role. \u00b4Having loved and lost in my life was all the research that I needed\u00b4,<\/em> she told Pollard. \u00b4Being human and showing up for the myriad vagaries of being alive and of grief and love and how those exist together in every person\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She knows even more about loss now, though. When Driver was first sent the script for Modern Love, her mother, the model and designer Gaynor Churchward, read the script over her shoulder and loved it. When she was driving around Ireland, filming the scenes where she chats to her husband, she had her mum on FaceTime on the dashboard, hidden from the camera. A few months later, in March, her mother died. She never got to see the finished episode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Before she died, I asked my mother how I would manage without her\u00b4,<\/em>  Driver tweeted at the time. \u2018You will work,\u2019 she said. \u2018You will work at living, and you will share what you create.\u2019 This is me sharing, while drowning in a grief I barely know how to navigate\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driver\u2019s mother wasn\u2019t married to her financial worker father, Ronnie; he was still married to another woman. When Driver was six, Gaynor left Ronnie, moving the kids to the middle of nowhere in the English countryside. It was a big change from a life hopping between Barbados and London (her father, a multi-millionaire before his insurance company collapsed catastrophically in 1990, owned fancy houses in both locations). To retain custody of the kids, Gaynor had to be married, have the kids in school and have a home of her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4She started by walking into Bedales\u00b4, Driver recently told The Wall Street Journal. \u201cShe said, \u2018You\u2019re going to take my kids and then we\u2019re going to figure out how I\u2019m going to pay you\u00b4.  The school \u2013 a posh boarding school also attended by Lily Allen and Cara Delevingne \u2013 agreed. It was there that Driver developed the acting bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I had three really incredible English teachers\u00b4,<\/em> she recalls now. \u00b4And they just enforced reading, and then in class, breaking down character and story and really bringing those things alive. That was the basis of all my acting. When you read something\u2026 you feel a character. You feel it. There\u2019s no other way I can describe it. Obviously there are skills and things \u2013 if they ride horses, if they surf, if they ski, there are things that you have to learn to do to play a character. But the essence of something, you feel around for it. I\u2019ve been playing around with emotions my whole life. That\u2019s my currency<\/em>\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She could never be a method actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4To have to stay in that all the time would be unbearable and psychologically impossible. But I do love people. I am very interested in how different people belly up to all of the messy business of being alive, of love, of grief, of parenting, of working. You become a magpie, watching how different people metabolise all the same stuff that we all have to metabolise. It\u2019s just an extension of dressing up and pretending, and I still feel that. It\u2019s the same joyful thing from when I was a kid of just putting on funny clothes that weren\u2019t mine and pretending to be another person\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her interviewer wondered how actors go so deep into the skin of someone else and manage to emerge unscathed at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Yeah, I mean, for the most part we are fragile nutters\u00b4,<\/em> says Driver. \u00b4You have to be staunch and also fragile\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women in particular. While preparing for this conversation, Alexandra Pollard came across an interview Driver had given twenty years ago. When the journalist had asked why there weren\u2019t more films in which two women star, she had responded, \u00b4Because usually they don\u2019t make money. Buddy films for actresses just don\u2019t, that\u2019s all. The industry doesn\u2019t value funny women\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank goodness, then, Ms. Pollard suggested, that things have changed in the years since: Mean Girls, Bridesmaids, Girls Trip, Booksmart and Ocean\u2019s 8 have all done big business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Television has improved, too: Driver herself was a sober TV actor in the ingenious improvised sitcom, Web Therapy, with Lisa Kudrow (left)<\/em><\/strong> ; the no-nonsense mother of a teen with cerebral palsy in the ABC sitcom Speechless; and most recently had a small but delicious role as a conceited publicist in Rose Matafeo\u2019s Starstruck. So, does the industry value funny women now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Definitely, definitely, definitely\u00b4, says Driver. \u00b4I think funny women [used to be] the adjunct to the beautiful, not-funny romantic lead, whereas now they\u2019re at the absolute forefront and epicentre. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s actually been a better time for funny female writers, actors, directors\u2026\u00b4<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She would like for it not to even be a talking point for much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I hope it just becomes more typicalised and less sensational\u00b4,<\/em> she said. \u00b4That we\u2019re not noticing diversity and inclusion, but rather it just becomes our typical, normal reflection of who we are. We just carry on telling stories that are everybody\u2019s stories, and everybody gets to tell those stories. It doesn\u2019t have to have attention drawn to it that somebody is, whatever, not white or not straight, it\u2019s not the central part of the narrative. I do believe that\u2019s how change starts to become systemic \u2013 when we stop having to point towards it\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She name-checkeds Tiny Fey, who wrote Mean Girls and created and starred in 30 Rock, and Amy Poehler, Fey\u2019s comedy partner and star of Parks and Recreation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4They really were huge architects of this way forward. They were just so undeniably brilliant. And they carved out shows. \u2018OK, if you\u2019re not going to cast me, then I will write the show myself. I will be in it. I will produce it.\u2019 Women, as usual, have had to work harder to get to where their male counterparts got, but they\u2019re there\u00b4.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The primary source for this article was  written by Mark Beaumont for The Independent.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our occasional re-postings Sidetracks And Detours are confident that we are not only sharing with our readers excellent articles written by experts but are also pointing to informed and informative sites readers will re-visit time and again. Of course, we feel sure our readers will also return to our daily not-for-profit blog knowing that we seek to provide core original material whilst sometimes spotlighting the best pieces from elsewhere, as we engage with genres and practitioners along all the sidetracks & detours we take.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was collated by Norman Warwick, a weekly columnist with Lanzarote Information and owner and editor of this daily blog at Sidetracks And Detours.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norman has also been a long serving broadcaster, co-presenting the weekly all across the arts programme on Crescent Community Radio for many years with Steve Bewick, and his own show on Sherwood Community Radio. He has been a regular guest on BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Merseyside and BBC Radio Four.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a published author and poet Norman was a founder member of Lendanear Music, with Colin Lever and Just Poets with Pam McKee, Touchstones Creative Writing Group (for which he was creative writing facilitator for a number of years) with Val Chadwick and all across the arts with Robin Parker.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Monday to Friday,<\/strong> you will find a daily post here at Sidetracks And Detours and, should you be looking for good reading, over the weekend you can visit our massive but easy to navigate archives of over 500 articles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

e mail logo The purpose of this daily not-for-profit blog is to deliver news, previews, interviews and reviews from all across the arts to die-hard fans and non- traditional audiences around the world. We are therefore always delighted to receive your own articles here at Sidetracks And Detours. So if you have a favourite artist, event, or venue that you would like to tell us more about just drop a Word document attachment to me at <\/strong>normanwarwick55@gmail.com<\/strong><\/a> with a couple of appropriate photographs in a zip folder if you wish. Beiung a not-for-profit organisation we unfortunately cannot pay you but we will always fully attribute any pieces we publish. You therefore might also. like to include a brief autobiography and photograph of yourself<\/strong> in your submission. We look forward to hearing from you.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sidetracks And Detours is seeking to join the synergy of organisations that support the arts of whatever genre. We are therefore grateful to all those share information to reach as wide and diverse an audience as possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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songfacts                                           en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/SongFacts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s actually been a better time for funny female writers, actors, directors\u2026\u00b4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8892,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions\/8892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}