Susan Seidelman on Directing the ‘Grittier’ Pilot for ‘Sex and the City,’ Casting Madonna in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’: ‘She Loved Being Provocative’
variety.comPat Saperstein Deputy Editor It’s New York City, 1989. Susan Seidelman is in the delivery room, in labor with her son. “Siskel and Ebert” plays on the TV, and in between contractions, the two critics are tearing apart her new movie “She-Devil.” “Watching them review my film literally with the doctor’s hand inside of me telling me to push was very strange,” Seidelman recalls.
That surreal scene is just one of the memorable moments the trailblazing director recounts in “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls.” By turns reflective and celebratory, the book covers the surprises and setbacks of a career carved out at a time when women filmmakers were a rarity.
When Seidelman first realized she could aspire to become a movie director, she could barely find a role model. Outside of Elaine May, there was only a small handful of women directing.
But Seidelman kept at it, discovering the revelatory work of Lina Wertmuller, then wrangling her first film, the scrappy micro-budget “Smithereens.” The young filmmaker’s career took off when she took a chance and submitted her debut to the Cannes Film Festival, where it was invited into the main competition alongside films by Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Jean-Luc Godard – the first American independent film accepted into competition.
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