Allison Anders
Allison Anders
Allison Andersis an American independent film director whose films include Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca and Grace of My Heart. Anders has collaborated with fellow UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television graduate Kurt Voss and has also worked as a television director. Anders' films have been shown at the Cannes International Film Festival and at the Sundance Film Festival. She has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant as well as a Peabody Award...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth16 November 1954
CityAshland, KY
CountryUnited States of America
Nowadays you don't get to see composition in a movie because nobody ever keeps the camera still long enough to see it. Actors don't have the thrill and the power of working with space.
During the '90s, a lot of us in the indie film world were not making our money off our movies. We were screenwriters doing scripts for hire for studios.
Sundance is the only hand that feeds for women directors.
In the early '90s when the American independent movie started, it held personal vision as a premium. That was brilliant timing.
For me, the most exciting thing is that Jane Campion is a woman we can all really look up to. She doesn't have the body of work that some other directors do - no woman director does - but her work is so consistently original, wonderful, masterful.
This practice of skinny actresses donning fat suits is essentially the new and acceptable blackface in Hollywood.
You still get the movies made. A filmmaker can always scrape up money to do a movie. The passion drives it. And you'll get the money. Money's the easiest thing. But the hardest thing is finding a way for people to see your movie.
I hope the next actress offered millions to play the 'fat girl for the day' stops to think about this before she signs the contract - even if just to ask, like any professional actress would in any other situation, 'Why does she weigh 350 pounds? And why me for the part?' If the director can't answer these questions, don't do the movie.
I'd be just as happy being a midwife. That's my ideal job.
You end up giving up half your salary every time you make a movie because you need the money to make the movie you have in your head.
When I wanted to become a filmmaker, there was nobody for me to look up to.
Unless it's something very clever like 'Memento,' most independent films have a very tough life out there.
When you're traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.