The director Greta Gerwig was too scared to swear in front of: “He’d look over at me, horrified”
Greta Gerwig has had one of the most versatile and eclectic careers of any modern performer, making her start in the mumblecore movement with films like Baghead and Hannah Takes the Stairs before moving on to higher-budget pictures and eventually directing her own projects.
During the in-between phase of her career, Gerwig worked with the likes of Noah Baumbach, Mike Mills and Todd Zolonodz, collaborating with many of the misfits and weirdos of Hollywood before becoming one of the most celebrated and successful modern directors following the release of Ladybird and Barbie. However, by working with people who don’t fit within the box, she has had some strange creative experiences that no doubt influenced her own directorial style and free-spirited nature on set.
Whit Stillman occupies a niche spot within the film industry as one of the few directors to focus on such a hyper-specific group of people in each of his stories, creating films like Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco that critique the yuppies of New York and upper-class socialites. His observations about class and privilege are wry and scathing, with hilarious commentaries on the occupations of this social group and the emptiness of this lifestyle.
Gerwig worked with Stillman on his 2011 film Damsels in Distress, which follows a trio of girls who attempt to modernise their dated American university with the help of a new transfer student called Lily. It sticks to many of Stillman’s trademark qualities by mocking the pretentiousness of the characters without ever being pretentious itself, satirising their conceited nature while also making you sympathise with them.
After working with Stillman, Gerwig revealed one strange rule that the director enforced on set, saying, “I tried not to swear because Whit doesn’t like it. I wouldn’t say I’m some hard-talking dame, but occasionally I would accidentally swear, and he’d look over at me, horrified”.
There have been many rumours about Stillman’s banning of swear words during his productions, which seems contradictory given the subject matter of his films. All his stories are based on tightly controlled people who maintain an illusion of respectability and order because of their social status, and the no-swearing rule seems to enforce the idea of presenting yourself in a respectable way.
There are many directors that make specific requests of their actors and crew, with Christopher Nolan famously banning the use of chairs on his sets and Tarantino celebrating each time a roll of film is used by drinking mimosas.
Gerwig has honed her own unique working style over the years, too, with the director famously having days on the set of Barbie in which everyone would wear pink (you might think that this was every day given the colour scheme of the film, but surprisingly, it wasn’t).
Many of us define our own creative style through our experiences of collaborating with other people, and after working with so many legendary directors and people with distinctive voices, there is no doubt that this later influenced her own perspective, no matter how weird some of these experiences might’ve been.
