Nancy Meyers: 'Women Can Direct Dinosaurs. Believe Me.'
Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway in Nancy Meyers’ new film ‘The Intern’ (Warner Bros)
Nancy Meyers thinks more women need to make blockbusters — though she’s not interested in directing one herself. One of the few female directors to sustain a long, successful Hollywood career, Meyers — who wrote and directed The Parent Trap (1998), Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, and this month’s The Intern — told New York magazine that the Hollywood culture is undeniably biased towards male filmmakers. “Big movies are reserved for the guys, no one says it, but that’s the way it is, right?” Meyers told the magazine, adding, “Let’s not assume women don’t want in on those kind of movies. Women can direct dinosaurs. Believe me.”
With more women moving into the executive ranks in Hollywood, Meyers said she’s optimistic that more films by and about women will get made in the future. However, when it comes to multi-million-dollar movies about velociraptors or caped crusaders, Meyers is happy to pass. “I’m sure some women want to jump into those. I don’t. I can’t imagine it appealing to me,” she admitted. “It’s a huge chunk of your life … the work is so consuming that you really can’t turn it off when you walk in the door at home. I tried. When you have little kids, you have to. But you dream about it every night.”
Nancy Meyers at the Final Draft Awards in 2014 (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
That’s why Meyers has remained focused on films that are personally meaningful to her — like The Intern, which she sees as somewhat of a next-generation Baby Boom (the 1987 Diane Keaton comedy that she wrote, but didn’t direct). “You know, Baby Boom came out in 1987,” said Meyers. “My daughter was born that year. So, in that movie the mother was torn. It was hard on her. She was an employee… This is 2015, and in 2015 I would not have thought of making [Anne Hathaway’s character] an employee. I wanted her to be the CEO. She’s got a stay-at-home husband, and some difficulty there, but there are no issues at work. To me, we have moved beyond that.”
The Intern, starring Hathaway as a fashion website director who hires a 70-year-old intern (Robert De Niro), is a break from Meyers’ signature genre of romantic comedy. “I didn’t want to write another romance. I never wanted to write another scene in a restaurant between a man and a woman,” she explained. However, because the film didn’t fit easily into a marketable genre, it almost didn’t get made. “My last movie was in 2009, and it’s just been a giant change between 2009 and 2015,” Meyers told New York. “I come along with a movie about a 70-year-old man working for a 30-year-old woman. You know, I can’t get Channing Tatum in this.” After “a couple of years” of rejections from studios, Warner Bros. decided to greenlight The Intern — just as Meyers was ready to give up and literally bury the script in her backyard.
Watch a trailer for ‘The Intern’ (in theaters September 25).
While this new film isn’t a romance, it is Meyers’ romantic-comedy heroines, with their aspirational beach houses and dinner parties, that still make moviegoers fall in love. Recently, the director found out that a group of young women were throwing a Something’s Gotta Give-themed bachelorette party. “So I Facetimed with them, and they were all in their turtlenecks,” said the director. “They rented a house for the weekend. They made everything that’s on the menu. So there was roast chicken. And I think they tried to make lavender ice cream or something from It’s Complicated. They were adorable, these girls.”
Another fan of Meyers’ films is Hillary Clinton, who told the director that she enjoyed It’s Complicated — and whom Meyers enthusiastically endorses for President. “I can’t think of anyone who has a better chance of actually, for real, changing the way we think about gender equality,” said Meyers. “By being President Hillary Clinton, the message is undeniable. The impact so enormous. So, yeah, I want this to happen because she’s a woman but also because she’s this woman.”
For the full interview with Nancy Meyers, pick up or download the new issue of New York magazine.
