“Did I have to make a movie saying: let’s all accept death? No!!”
Interview with Jan Oxenberg,
director of Thank You and Good Night and A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts

Ｑ：In the early days of your career, you made a series of short films including A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts. Can you tell us about in what context you decided to make this film ? 

This film was made a long time ago, 1975. I have grown up with terrible images. If there was anything called lesbian or queer, you never heard about it, but when you did hear about it, it’s in very bad context. I remember when I was little, sitting on the floor, watching The Children's Hour on TV. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn are business partners who owned a girl’s school in the film. One of the girls started to rumor that Shirley MacLaine’s character is a lesbian. It's not true, but for Shirley MacLaine, it’s true inside. She has never admitted to anyone. In one scene, she finally confessed to Audrey Hepburn by saying “I feel so sick and dirty.” And then in the next scene, she hanged herself. So this is my introduction to what life would be like as an educated lesbian. Even if you are very successful at your career, you’ll get to hang yourself.

Years later, when I got to the film school and experienced the time of feminist revolution, everybody wanted to turn everything upside down, making thing right that have been so wrong. I wanted to really ridicule the stereotype of lesbianess. You know there were people saying, “please accept us, we are just like you,” which was good, but I wanted to make an entertainment for lesbians, and could be seen and enjoyed by anybody else. And the film would satirize the stereotypes of being a child molester, a wall flower, or becoming a lesbian because men rejected her, so on and so forth. That’s where it came from.
 

Ｑ：Now looking back, how do you perceive this film and these stereotypes now? Concerning the social environment nowadays, if you have a chance to remake the film, what will you change or add?

I saw this question, and thought it’s really provocative. Because at this time, we have been so many changes. LGBTQ+ people are somewhat seen as people who have a range of characteristic like anybody else, can be good person or bad person. But obviously the hate joke exists. In my country, hate or resentment of people who are considered “woke”. The idea of “you should be positive about LGBTQ+ person” is now used by the right wing to stoke resentment.

The first thing came into my mind about what stereotype that I add now was a super “woke” queer person who “cancels” people or who has things to say about anybody who does wrong. And I realize that’s kind of scary. Because that’s what the right wing in my country is doing, to promote a very scary time.

Speaking of Thank You and Good Night, it took 12 years in the making, and really stood out as an remarkable example of independent cinema, co-produced by James Schamus. Can you share with us how this project came together and what made you decide to make this film?

Yes, James Schamus, the co-producer of my film, as you know, has worked with Ang Lee. They have worked together on a classic film The Wedding Banquet.

But Thank You and Good Night is a film that has every buzz word that makes you not want to see a movie, like documentary, grandmother, starring a cardboard cutout, and yeah! It’s about death. And cancer. Let’s not forget cancer. So it doesn’t really seem a good idea to make a movie about that. But I didn’t know what I was doing, maybe that’s what makes things original. Because I wasn’t trying to make a certain kind of movie.

It started when I found out my grandmother had cancer and I thought I would like to do a tape recording with her, so I can have that for myself. In my family, we have taken her for granted very much. She belongs to a generation of women who did not have a lot of opportunity to have a career. My mother was always rebelling against being like her, and I was always busy with rebelling against being like my mother. When I put a lot of attention on my grandmother, I discovered that she had ideas and this great sense of humor. And she was willing to talk about contemplating dying in a way that was very captivating. And one thing led to another. With a bunch of friends, film equipment, we shot a little bit of time before she died, and a little bit after she died with my family. I had no funding and I had no idea what to do with the footage. So I ended up writing the script over a few years after my grandmother died.

A script in which I made a cardboard cutout figure of myself as a five-year-old girl experiencing these events. With the idea that, when someone dies, time kind of collapses. Every time that you know that person, it’s all the same. It’s all present. My five-year-old self, loving my grandma, was the one who was there feeling all the feelings, so intuitively I just made this cardboard cutout character, who will guide us through these footages, asking the big unanswerable questions that death brings up.

Believe or not, there were some people who were sure that this was going to work as a movie. So I started filming some scenes when I got to receive some financing. Foreign television and some art organizations are really helpful. You don’t really want to hear what happened during the course of 12 years, do you? So long (laugh).

I didn’t give up, that’s how it got made. Thanks to people like James Schamus, Lynn Holst, as well as Sandra Schulberg. The film was finally able to finish with American Playhouse and premiere at Sundance.

I also have to say that I am incredibly lucky that Sandra Schulberg who was part of getting the film financed at the first place started the IndieCollect, started restoring films made on 16mm, 35mm in the early days. She was responsible for my films and many others, in order to get them revived and re-appreciated.

Ｑ：How did the idea of cardboard cutout come along?

I was influenced by this 7-hour film called Our Hitler by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, a meditation on how Germany got Hitler. It has all kinds of elements: drama, puppets, documentary footage, theater, etc. Seeing that movie, which was philosophical in a way, and Thank You and Good Night is a family movie that asks about a big subject, death and love. Because anything about death is really about love. I guess I was influenced by seeing that film.

It all started out as one scene in the movie theater. She took me to see my first movie and felt like she was all around me. So to have all these cardboard cutouts, and I would be a cardboard cutout too. But looking back on it, the impulse partly has to do with the fact that a cardboard cutout doesn’t die. I portrayed myself as a child in this cutout character. Well, that’s the child inside me that is losing my grandma, and that has lost my sister, which also comes up in the movie. My sister never got older than 7 years old.

It's also lucky for me to come up with this idea of having a cutout character, given how long it takes to finish this film. if I had an actor, who would be up for doing another job! My cutout character did not have another job (laugh).

Ｑ：Can you also share about the filming process? Some of the scenes are really intense…

First of all, very little footage was shot, so it wasn’t a situation where a large film crew followed the family for 24 hours. Every scene that we shot, there was a piece of that scene in the movie. We did film my grandmother when she was in the hospital in the last days. It’s tough to watch. I made the decision. It’s tough to be there. It’s hard to watch someone you love deteriorating. At that time, I felt like she didn't have any choice about being there. She was alive, and that’s what she was experiencing. The choice is either leave her alone, not be with her, or to find a way to be with her. The film was almost like a crutch for me, to be able to spend that time with my grandmother. Having a camera, having a “reason” to be there. And it gave her a chance to say goodbye. She said, “are you ever gonna take this movie out and show them, Jan?” She clearly loved the idea of being immortalized in some way, and I am sure she cannot possibly have imagined that one day I’d be able to talk about her to someone in Taiwan! She’d say, “how you gonna take this movie out and show them Jan?” (laugh).

Ok, we are, grandma, we did!

And she is an ordinary person. She is not someone who made a quilt that is 100 miles long (laugh). She had a family and loved her family. So that’s what I wanted to do. To make a tribute to everybody’s loved ones, everybody’s grandma.

Ｑ：One thing I am curious about is that we truly see the strong bonding among family members, but we also see some of the really difficult questions asked in the film. So how did the family member take on that?

My family is very lively. We talked and argued. I have a brother who turned out to be a philosophy professor at the university who asked philosophical questions in a very intense way. He was a little bit mad at me when the film came out, because I did the cardboard cutout character shooting herself while he was talking. I was sort of made fun of sibling relationship. I love my brother, and I am really glad that people who have appreciated what my brother added to the film, in terms of being willing to ask big questions. Anyway, he did feel mad at me for a little while, but now he is proud of it, and proud to show it to his son.

Sadly my mom died three years ago, but she got to see the revival of the film. She was a big fan when it came out originally. She was there when the restored version premiered at the Queens World Film Festival. Richard Brody of the New Yorker gave this amazing review, which helped it get in The Criterion Collection, and get shown all over the world again. Since then, she passed away, which I don’t like either!! The film was a kind of protest against death!! It’s not like, “let’s all accept death…” I mean we have to accept death!! What choice do we have!! And I have to make a movie saying “accepted”?!! No, my movie is more like, “no!!! I don’t like death!” But then it’s kind of futile.

But, after she died, I found in her condo, she had a full cabinet full of every review, now I am starting to cry. Every flier, everything written about my movies. She saved it all.

Ｑ：Your first short film Home Movie and Thank You and Good Night are both dealing with family topics. Can you comment on that?

It's true that my first short film Home Movie and first feature work Thank You and Good Night are similar stylistically, what you might call it personal essay films. Home Movie has me as a child, when my brother was born. He was an infant in Home Movie. And I am imitating my mother holding him. I had a doll, feeding the little doll. And then I looked at the doll and threw it across the room, and started dancing. And there was me being the cheerleader. I talked about coming out, about how I became a cheerleader so I can be with other cheerleaders. My mother wasn’t so accepting when I first came out to her, but she is trying to be a good sport. When I made Home Movie, I didn’t know about any critics. We made a flier for the film, and we need some quotes of review. So I asked my mother to give me a review. So she did, saying “Home Movie is sensitive and well-made. I think my daughter Jan is a talented filmmaker. I hope she will go on to other subjects.”

Ｑ：That’s how you start the journey! It’s incredible all along the way, Home Movie is now regarded as one of the first feminist lesbian films. You also present the first kiss between two lesbian characters on American primetime television in Relativity (1997). How did you take the first step when there were not so many people doing that at that time.

There are people who have been real pioneers doing what no one else was doing. I was able to do what I did, because I had a community. Back in the 1970s, there was a tremendous women’s community. Here I was watching Shirley MacLaine hang herself in The Children's Hour. But later I was among the community who shouted, “we are lesbian, we are queer, we are dykes!” Raising every word that has been an insult. Along with the feminist movement, that’s really the context of why I was able to do this.

Even in terms of Thank You and Good Night, I was with a group of independent filmmakers in New York City who weren’t imitating the mainstream or Hollywood success possibly because it seems so far-off. And we all supported each other to do something different. Yes it did take courage to do all these things, but it really helps if you have a community around you, even if it’s just a couple of people.