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LT (cont'd): So, I built that scene because some of the people I started to work with, and some of the younger actors, were going, “What's the big deal anyway?” There's another character whose entire line got cut. The book has a bookend character and his name is Mar, and he's an 18-year-old who's a friend of Hilary's, and he's really struggling to come out in 1964. And everybody saw him as sort of weak. What's the problem? Why can't he come out? What's wrong with him? And I said, “You really don't understand what just happened, what era it is that he's trying to come out in.”
So I wrote that scene so it would link, so people would have some kind of understanding about why it was so hard for him and why everybody had gone underground from the thirties. Because they were saying, “If there was this great visible culture in the thirties then how come this guy in the sixties was so afraid?” So I kind of had to explain the fifties to some people.
AE: So, what made it come together in '87?
LT: We started shooting again. We had shot all the Lucy scenes, the interview, and all of the Mar stuff—the stuff that we could shoot that was from 1964. We shot that all in 2000 and sort of spent all of our money and were looking for some more money. And I was just getting ready to shoot again in September of 2001, and we'd just raised some more money. In fact, someone told me, “Why don't you call me right after Labor Day?” And, of course, the Tuesday after Labor Day was 9/11. So I waited a couple of weeks and then I called this woman who was going to help us with our funding, and she said, “There's no way we can do anything now. You're just going to have to forget about it for a while.”
AE: So, you had to endure the Gulf War, 9/11…
LT: Yeah, all of these interruptions. Finally in 2003 I said, that's it. Oh yeah, and the economy took a huge turn right after we shot stuff in 2000, when the dot com money… We were kind of on a roll. We were just moving forward and I had all these millionaire dot-com people who wanted to put some money into it, and suddenly the dot-com industry went belly up. So then I lost my funding again. So, we were just getting rolling again in 2001 and the 9/11 happened, and I said, “That's it. I don't care. We can go to war, do anything. I have to finish my film.”
AE: I've heard that the novel is semi-autographical. In what ways is it autobiographical and what ways not?
LT: I think it's fairly autobiographical in terms of the relationships that she talks about. I think the semi part is that she set it in a different time period, so she made the character be 20 years older than she was. But I think it holds up in terms of the kinds of relationships that she had with women. I'd be hard-pressed to say who exactly was who, but I think that essentially the quality of the relationships that she had that were major were all there. But the time periods aren't entirely consistent, and the places where they found each other and themselves in were not consistent. In that regard, it isn't exactly a physical match for the autobiographical material, but more of an emotional match.
AE: I've heard you say that the film isn't really about coming out but about “embracing the whole self.” What did you mean by that?
LT: I think that even Sarton felt that it wasn't a coming-out novel, even though it's proclaimed as her coming-out novel. She did come out because of the novel in 1964/65, and because of the time period, there weren't very many novels, if any, in the main press that had lesbian characters as the main characters. But I think that what she was really talking about was a lesbian being just a character. This is splitting hairs in some ways.
I'm sure that we have this discussion amongst ourselves a lot, about whether something is a lesbian thing or just something with a lesbian character. And maybe it doesn't really matter. But what essentially matters for her is that the wholeness of this woman as a writer, as a lover, as a person who grows and develops through her life, who's a considered person, creates a whole being.
And that wholeness is essentially what she's all about. That really is to understand oneself enough that you have a total grasp of your own humanity, and therefore a great deal of respect for yourself and respect for others. So, I think that she's really talking about how we learn to be compassionate people on the planet. And the place that we have to start is compassion for self. And in order to have compassion for self, we have to have created a whole self, and that self has to include our strengths, our weaknesses, and—particularly if you're female—it has to include your power. But sometimes power isn't an aggressive power; it's the power to be open, to be vulnerable.
So she talks about a place of mystical vulnerability, that when you really embrace that whole vulnerable self and live your life at that intuitive place of understanding the self, then you've really embraced yourself, then you'll really be open to all other people and to all other experience.
In some ways there's a kind of mysticism that goes through the piece, and that's really at the core of what Sarton is trying to talk about, and what I think I'm trying to talk about in terms of how do we find that, how do we get there…To accept other for who they are in the same way that you accept yourself. Not at the level of sexuality, but at this really deeper level—this place of being magnificent and vulnerable people all at the same time.
AE: Well, thank you so much for talking about all of this with us.
LT: Thank you.
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