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AE:
So would you like to mostly films in the future, or keep
writing for television, or both?
MM: I
would be happy if I were a feature director for the rest
of my life, but I also know that it would be really exciting
with all the things I now know about making television to
make television with all the other fabulous writers and
directors I know who don’t have enough work. TV’s
great in terms of having a regular job, so if I could create
something that would allow us to continue working and take
a few months off every year to make movies, that would be
my ideal life, it would be glorious.
AE:
You were involved in ACT-UP for many years in the 80's…
MM: I
was. That was the central formative experience of my life.
AE:
Has the considerable grief you experienced during that time
manifested itself at all in your work? Because most of your
work is on the lighter side…
MM: No
it hasn’t. Maybe it will later. I think because I
feel that what I went through and that experience was intensely
private, and because by my nature my way of handling difficult
emotions and issues is to frame it in a comic way, it’s
just my translation process. I have close friends left over
from that experience with whom I still am very close to,
and always will be because of what we went through during
that very profound period.
When
you’re writing, ideas just come up, you don’t
know why, but so far it has not come as an organic or natural
impulse to want to understand my experience [with ACT-UP]
through filmmaking.
It’ll come when it comes, if it comes at all
AE:
Larry Kramer once told you: “Your unconscious mind
came up with all of these things, and now your challenge
is to use your conscious mind to make them make sense”...
MM: Yes,
he said that after reviewing my first script in film school,
and yes, it’s still true. It’s very exciting
when you don’t know why it works but the actors read
it and it’s like “wow this totally works!”
And then what you are demanded to do as a director, or even
as a writer, is give the actors answers to their questions
as if you really did consciously know what you were doing.
It’s really hard, and I’m still learning, but
Larry did send me on a good path in that respect. I have
to say now that I have more experience what he was trying
to get across to me is that this is a craft, and a craft
demands a certain kind of discipline and a capacity to look
at your work in a dispassionate way, and it requires that
you move back and forth between your conscious and unconscious
mind.
AE:
You used to identify as a lesbian; how do you identify now?
MM: I
don’t really identify as anything. I have a boyfriend,
but I never say anything about what that means. It’s
not really a privacy issue to me, it's that my relationship
to my sexuality and to the community I’ve been involved
with is very complex, so I don’t know what the right
words are. I love this one man I’m with, and I don’t
know what that means. (laughing) But I’m not married
or anything!
AE:
By the time you attended Smith College in you late teens,
you had already lived in Washington D.C. and West Africa,
and after college you lived in Rome for awhile before settling
in New York City. Where
do you see yourself in 5 years?
MM: (laughing)
I am such a bad person to ask because I’m the one
who said "I will never go out with a man" and
then did, who said "I will never move to L.A."
and then did, "I will never do television" and
then did, "I will never do another low-budget film"
and then did. It sounds like I live in a constant state
of “I won’t” but I don’t know what
“I Will” either. I hope that I’m home
– back in NYC – and part of a larger community
of artists and filmmakers, but beyond that..
AE:
Can we safely say you won’t be bass fishing in Alaska?
MM: (laughing) I think we can safely say
that, but I have surprised myself so many times I’d
rather not bet on it.
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