SIFF: Interview with Jenni Olson

Jenni Olson has been writing about and studying lesbian, gay, bi and transgender cinema for almost 20 years. She is well-known as one of the world's leading experts on LGBT cinema. Olsen is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Lesbian and Gay Film and Video and the Queer Movie Poster Book. Her first feature film, The Joy of Life, debuted at Sundance Film Festival in 2005, and recently showed at the Seattle International Film Festival.

Cinematical sat down with Olson for a little virutal chat about her movie and what's up next for her.

CINEMATICAL: You've been called a "queer pop culture archaeologist", and you're best known for curating and studying queer film history. What led to the decision to make an experimental film? And how did your background as a film historian influence the writing and filming of  The Joy of Life?

JENNI OLSON: I’ve been passionately interested in the power of LGBT film since I read Vito Russo’s book, The Celluloid Closet back in 1985. Since then I’ve been fascinated by the history of gay portrayals in film and sort of addicted to unearthing those portrayals and finding and preserving and exhibiting actual film prints and related marketing materials like posters and trailers.

But the truth is, like most people whose careers involve watching hundreds of (mostly very conventional) movies every year – you can’t help but become interested in filmmaking that challenges those conventions or tries to use the medium in some more innovative way. Experimental film as a whole is just the most interesting genre there is because it shows us that there are so many different ways of utilizing cinema as an artistic medium.

CINEMATICAL: Your movie is listed as a documentary. Is the story the narrator tells literally the story of Jenni Olson? Did you pull the screenplay from personal notes, journals, and memories? Or is it a fictionalized account roughly based on your own experiences?

OLSON: The film is a hybrid of different topics that I’m interested in exploring, and a hybrid of storytelling forms – so, it’s both documentary and fiction.

CINEMATICAL: Tell me about the poem in the second half of the film. Was it written expressly for the film from the start? Or did that arise later, out of a need to blend the two halves into a cohesive whole? And how did Lawrence Ferlinghetti get involved?

OLSON: I always wanted to have some kind of archival audio section and explored many different possibilities before discovering this piece at the Poetry Center at SF State. I contacted Mr. Ferlinghetti and he graciously gave me permission to use it. I’ve never actually met him but he did see the film and in his characteristically whimsical phrasing, told me, “I was joyed.”

CINEMATICAL: The Joy of Life is dedicated to your friend, Mark Finch, who committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. What made you decide to combine a documentary about suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge with a story about a lonely butch dyke searching for love? And what made you decide to use the title The Joy of Life? Is the title intended to be a touch ironic, or does it express hope in the face of loneliness, isolation and loss?

OLSON: The original manuscript I wrote for the film was called Fuck Diary. After considerable thought I decided this might be a bit of a liability when it came to fundraising.

The title I eventually landed on came from an old cigarette advertisement. This gigantic ad for Omar Cigarettes was painted on the side of a hotel at Mason and Ellis downtown San Francisco (as of late 2004 it’s still there). There is a brief shot of the sign in the film itself.  I used to walk past this building a few times a week on my way to lunch and was always so excited to see the tagline: “The Joy of Life.” The phrase made me feel simultaneously happy and sad every time I thought of it so it seemed like a good title for my film.

Most people imagine it must be an ironic title, especially since the film deals in part with suicide. The truth is, I arrived at the title long before I decided to explore the history of Golden Gate Bridge suicide. There is no irony intended at all. For me, it conveys my aspiration to be fully alive and in the moment.

The title also hints at something else I hope people will appreciate about the film and that’s the fact that it’s ultimately a melodrama—in the sense that melodrama is all about a heightened sense of emotion and taking things really seriously.

I also like that The Joy of Life evokes the schmaltzy Frank Capra classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, which is referenced in the film in my capsule production history of Capra’s other great suicide-themed melodrama, Meet John Doe.

The final quote at the end of the film (which also references “the joy of life”) fortuitously arrived in my e-mail In Box on our last day of picture editing. It’s a quote from Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther which came to me as a result of having subscribed to the  www.the-sorrows-of-young-werther.com daily email newsletter in the course of my research for the suicide section of the film.

“Whatever be my fate hereafter, I can never say that I have not tasted joy — the purest joy of life.”

CINEMATICAL: Let's talk about queer culture in mainstream film from your perspective as a filmmaker and a historian. Are the barriers coming down? Or are the barriers still there, but in different ways than they were in earlier decades of filmmaking?

OLSON: There has been so much progress in terms of mainstream representation of LGBT characters and themes. Really spectacular progress — where you have a steady stream of mainstream and indie films showing complex portrayals of LGBT life. It’s very exciting to see.

And yet, those mainstream images will always be limited, and inherently more conservative, simply because they are made for a wider audience. So, although I’m pleased by that progress I will always look to independent film and videomakers for the most exciting images and stories. I’m most excited by these creative people who are precisely not concerned with any kind of commercial appeal or wide audience. For the most part I think they have far more important things to say, and infinitely more interesting ways of saying them.

CINEMATICAL: As a writer/director, do you see yourself ever trying to break out of the LGBT niche? Or are you happiest bringing that unique perspective into the cinematic spotlight?

OLSON: Three primary interests have always driven my creative work and career: LGBT issues, formal experimentation, and historical documentation.

As I get older I become less interested in making film work about LGBT identity per se and more interested in storytelling forms and the obscure histories of the world around me that have nothing to do with being queer. I think I will always alternate amongst these three priorities. At the moment I’m dying to make a non-conventional documentary exploring the history of urban planning in San Francisco.