(STILL) Desperately Seeking Susan
Director Susan Seidelman’s New Film Explores Life After 50
By Debra Kamin

Susan Seidelman has one proud mama.
The Academy Award-nominated director, best known for her stint at the helm of the 1980’s cult classic “Desperately Seeking Susan,” has a new film about to hit theaters. And get this: it was produced, and partly scripted, by her mother.

“Boynton Beach Club” is a bittersweet comedy that follows the second-time-around dating escapes of a bereavement group in an “Active Adult” Florida retirement community. Seidelman’s mother Florence, who hails from Boynton Beach, crafted the first draft from personal experience. The two collaborated on the final product.

Speaking on the phone from her New York home, Seidelman, 53, chatted about being female in Hollywood, the experience of directing the ladies of “Sex and the City,” (yes, she did that too), and what it’s like, after decades in show biz, to still take orders from your mother.

DK: You were inspired to make this film by your mother, correct?
SS: I was, yes.

DK: What role did she play?
SS: Well, the original idea came from her in the sense that my parents about seven or eight years ago moved down to an adult community in Boynton Beach and they started, my mother started, to hear stories about people she knew who suddenly found themselves single. You know, whether it was because they were widows or because they were divorced or whatever but suddenly there was a lot of singles that she would hear stories about that were looking to date again.

DK: And how did you make the characters authentic? Did you go down and do research?
SS: Well, I knew Boynton Beach because I went down there to visit my parents over the past couple years. But what I realized is that, you know, I kept meeting people, as well as hearing stories from my mother, that there were kinds of scenes running through these stories. All the women who suddenly found themselves divorced, or guys who had been married for a long time and then were suddenly widowers and had never dealt with any household stuff and were trying to learn how to take care of themselves again at the age of 70. And it just seemed like there were certain kinds of themes that were very real and universal to a lot of people.

DK: It’s funny as well.
SS: Well, it’s funny and I think there’s this kind of teenager inside all of us, whether we look in the mirror and see wrinkles. That ther person. And that experience of trying to meet new people, and feeling awkward and first kisses, and awkward dating conversation all that is kind of universal, whether you’re twenty or whether you‚re seventy.

DK: When you sat down to write it, did you intend to make it a comedy?
SS: Well, I wanted it to be funny, but also moving. You know? And that was the tricky thing, trying to balance the sad parts because there are sad parts because it is about loss- but it’s also about starting over and kind of discovering yourself. And there’s some funny stuff in that. But I think the best humor comes out of real situations, and sometimes dramatic situations. But I think you can say a lot of dramatic stuff by using humor.

DK: Absolutely. It can be the most effective. And how long were you working on this?
SS: Well, it took about a year to develop the screenplay. You know, it went through various drafts. And the first draft, kind of what happened about a year ago my mother approached me with an idea. I was in the process of finishing up another project, and I liked the idea but I didn’t have time to really focus on it. So I said to my mother, why don’t you go write a script? And I didn’t really think she‚d go out and do it, but she did. So then, about three or four months later, she presented me with this screenplay she had written, and she had never written a script before. And it was kind of, you know, it had great characters, it felt very authentic, but it was kind of a mess structurally. So I asked her, would you mind if I took over your script and kind of re-write it with this partner of mine, Selly Getlow, and try to make it into more of a professional, structured screenplay. But it was really her initial idea and her kind of, clunky script that really was the genesis of everything. And I think that that’s why it, or we hoped it would feel authentic, because she really knew these characters.

DK: So the characters that she developed are the ones that ended up staying in the film?
SS: The essence of those characters ended up staying in the film. The specifics changed, and some of the actions changed and some of the plotlines changed, but the kinds of characters. The helpless guy whose wife suddenly dies. The flamboyant interior designer characterthose are characters that were in her script. The kind of ladies man, older guy. The essence of those characters were definitely in the original script.

DK: What was it like working with your mother?
SS: It was great. I haven’t worked with her on anything besides homework 30 years ago, 35 years ago. So it was really kind of an interesting process because after a while I stopped thinking about her as mother; she was one of the producers. And we really relied on her to do things like help us get extras, and we needed a lot of extras for some of the scenes, and also to help us get locations because we were filming in Boynton Beach, and so we needed somebody to actually approach the different communities to get permission to film. So she really had a lot of responsibility and so I really had to I couldn’t excuse her as, ‘well, she’s just my Mom so‚ you know,’ I really needed to rely on her. So after awhile I really was thinking about her as being Florence. You know, not Mom.

DK: How old is your mother?
SS: My Mom’s turning 75 in two weeks. At the time she was 73.

DK: And Susan, you directed the pilot for “Sex and the City.” How does that compare, you know, the younger, “hipper,” sort of dating scene, compare to this kind of a film?
SS: Well you know, in a weird kind of way, that sort of prepared me for this.

DK: I thought you would say that.
SS: Because “Sex and the City” is very much an ensemble series, I mean of course Sarah Jessica Parker was the main character, but it was really an ensemble series. And the way that it was structured there was always sort of an A, B and a C story that wove itself throughout the episode. And I think that was kind of not really a structure I used but I think that, you know, “Boynton Beach Club” is an ensemble piece, so there was some practice that I had in being able to take 3 or 4 different stories and weave them together and hopefully, you know, work in a dramatic build so that its satisfying at the end. You know having stories intersect and then kind of dance around each other?

DK: Yeah absolutely. And you’ve had such a phenomenal career, and your resume is so varied. What are you most proud of as a director?
SS: Oh it’s so weird because I’m just proud of being able to direct movies after 22 years. In Hollywood, A.) Being a female director, and B.) being somebody over 35, you know Hollywood tends to be very male-dominated and also very youth-oriented. So being an older girl, an old woman, and still being able to work, is satisfying.

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