The film intercuts the intellectual explorations of the interview with the more sensual recollections, spanning several eras, of the woman being interviewed.

AfterEllen.com: I understand you've been traveling a lot recently. Has that been related to your film?
Linda Thornburg: Yes. I was in D.C. at the Reel Affirmations Film Festival.

AE: So, how did that go?
LT: It went fabulously. We had a great crowd, and Lucy Brightman, who plays the 70-year-old Hilary, was there and got us a standing ovation. It was really great.

AE: That's fantastic. She's from D.C., right?
LT: Yeah.

AE: It's amazing what kind of time period your film spans, and you captured that very richly, although it does seem like that would be next to impossible to do on such a small budget.
LT: It was less than $300,000, so I really feel like we worked a major miracle. Nobody else will try to take that on, I think. I was very fortunate, because I happen to live in a town that has a lot of Victoriana in it. There are wonderful old structures here—houses and restaurants—places that are beautiful. So I just had some access with very little money. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do it.  

AE: I read that you met May Sarton in 1983. 
LT: Yes, I did. Actually, I was teaching at the Evergreen State College, and I was seeing somebody at the time who actually wanted me to make this picture, and I really wasn't interested in it. I thought that's going to be too hard to make. That's really a tough movie. And May Sarton showed up at a bookstore for a reading in Seattle and a book signing. So my girlfriend at the time said, “You're gonna go and meet May Sarton.” So she kind of made me do it.

I'd been teaching all day and I was teaching a studio production class, and we'd been doing lighting that day. So I was just abominably dressed. I'd been working all day, and I didn't have any time when she came to get me and said “you're gonna go.” So we jumped in the car and we raced over to Seattle from Olympia and just got in line to say hello to May Sarton. And I happened to have a pretty dog-eared copy of Mrs. Stevens, and I said, “I'd really like to make this into a movie. I gave her a resume and some reviews of some of my other work. I asked her if she wanted to go for a scotch and she turned me down. [Laughs] But she did write me back right away, like within two days.

She said “I think you're the one to do this. I've had a lot of people ask me but I think that you're the one that should.” Then it took us another year to sort of hammer out the details. She said, “Why don't you just go ahead and do it and not worry about paying me at the moment.” And I said, “Oh no. I don't want to get into this and then have someone else buy it out from under me.” So I negotiated a contract with her because I wanted to have everything really clear and quite legal. Because you can spend a lot of time working on a project and then have someone else buy it. Not a good idea.

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