Girls on girls on film

A surprise hit in the US earlier this year, Kissing Jessica Stein is everything that a Jewish New York comedy should be – witty, jaunty, urbane and brimming with ideas. The movie began life as an off-Broadway theatrical experiment between stars Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Jurgensen after they began to tire of the ‘Hi Honey’ roles available for working actors in Hollywood.

The plot sees a straight, neurotic Jewish single girl Jessica (Westfeldt) becoming so disillusioned with dating that she decides to answer an intriguing singles ad from the ‘woman seeks woman’ section for the goof. Ironically, the woman in question, Helen (Jurgensen), is also straight and looking for a change of pace, but the two get on so famously that they decide to give it a go anyway, and enlist the aid of a how-to manual to give them a start.

Will they ever get the hang of it? Will it all end in tears? Well no actually, because this movie is as giddy and girlie and upbeat as it gets. Basically, think vintage Woody Allen but with a sapphic twist.

Were you conscious of these kinds of stereotypes when you were writing it?

JW: “I think we were aware of stereotyping in general and while we embraced them in a way, we did so with the intention of breaking them down. I mean the classic Jewish mother here is more tolerant than her daughter, and the two gay friends of Helen have a bad reaction to her gay affair. But this really isn’t a movie just about lesbians, this is a movie about two people who get together for the wrong reasons and end up connecting.”

Two women in a writing partnership is quite unusual: how did theirs come about?

JW: “We hadn’t really planned on forming a partnership at all, it happened rather organically. We met at a workshop where actors were encouraged to write and directors were encouraged to act and everybody was encouraged to do a little of everything so we noticed that we were writing about the same themes – mainly men and women and dating and how hard it is to connect with someone of the opposite sex and we thought that it might be an interesting theme to unify a night around, say a night of theatre or a series of vignettes, and about a year after we met we did do it. Basically, I was in LA at the time and I was about to start working on my first TV show (Two Guys And A Girl), but there was a delay in shooting for two months, so there I was in LA, hating LA, with two months free, and thinking to myself, ‘I really wanna do something creative’. So I called Heather up out of the blue and said, ‘Let’s go do that thing’. So the play came about completely unwittingly – it just suddenly turned into a linear play, and then something that we were interested in beyond the comedy value of it. And then we started interviewing women – sadly, it could only run six nights in New York ‘cause I was due back in LA, but when I got off the plane my agent called and said, ‘The phone’s been ringing off the hook with people asking about this play’. So suddenly, Heather was living on my couch and we were going off and doing pitch meetings with studios.”

So how was the whole DIY indie film-making experience for them?

HJ: “How was it? Well, it added a good ten years to our lives.”

JW: “It was crazy and hard but having been involved with a studio for two years ultimately we were just so happy that we got to be in control.”

Again though, it’s unusual to see women going down that DIY route. Why do they think that is still the case?

HJ: “We often think about that and talk about it. We wish we knew. We’re not sure if it’s because culturally women are told to be less assertive than men. Men can just leap into situations with a little more abandon.”

JW: “Apart from anything else, there are so few decent roles for women. That was one of the reasons we wrote this in the first place. When I was working in LA in television, I was just doing so little, and just being there really as a foil to the guy. And that’s what it’s like in LA: if you’re not a star, you’re basically up for the role of the ‘sweet girlfriend’.”

Obviously this is a film about the fluidity of female sexuality, and it seems to imply that if it wasn’t for sex, Earth would be an entire planet of happy lesbian couples. Do they really think this is the case?

JW:“It’s a big question, but part of the kernel of the idea for the movie was that women speak the same language. And women like being with other women, and women are loving and tender. And it’s one of the reasons that straight women in particular are responding to the film. Because they’ve probably, at some point in their lives, been scratching their heads and thinking, ‘I wish I could get it up for my girlfriend, sexually, then life would be great’.”

Did they get any criticism from the PC/lesbian elite for making a gay film about straight women?

HJ: “I think a vocal minority, maybe 20 per cent of the lesbian community, had an issue with us and had an issue with the fact that we were straight, had an issue with the ending. But ultimately, in our minds, the film is about tolerance and acceptance of diversity. If you look at the film, it’s just about being in love, and being allowed to be in love with whoever you want to be. So I would say that those people need to maybe put their problems aside for a minute and look at what the film is saying. But for some people, there’s a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.”

A lot of New York-based movies had to make changes after September 11: was that the case with yours?

JW: “Well, there were shots of the towers in the film and it was up to us, and we had to think really carefully about what to do. We discussed it with a lot of people and initially we thought we should keep the shots of the towers in to serve as testament, but after we watched audiences watch the film and gasp or sometimes even get upset, we decided to alter the shots of the skyline. We just felt that it didn’t really have anything to do with our story and took those shots out.”

HJ: “Conversation kept turning to the towers, and we felt that after working five years on this, we didn’t want to rob the story of the much needed debate that the story incited. Anyway we love that city so much, and we felt that the forward looking thing to do would be to reshoot the beauty of NYC as it stands. We’ve been hurt and bruised as a city, but we still have beauty all around us and we need to celebrate that.”