Lesyle Headland couldn’t give a lumpy shit what bad things you have to say about female directors and she won’t stop herself from telling you so. The verbose talent provided some nasty good times when we sat down to discuss her latest film, the truly hysterical Sleeping With Other People [review here]. Leslye proved not only the most crass interview we’ve sat down to but also one of the most candid. We talk being a female director in a male world (with lion and lioness allegories), the film’s infamous bottle scene, her favorite scene that she cut from the film, casting Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, crying on set, the misnomer of improvisation, the shift from Bachelorette , movie references and what you would find in her VHS Blu-Ray player.

Obviously you’re quite a character. Talk about what it’s like being a strong female voice going and clashing heads with these Hollywood guys trying to really rigidly preserve this male-centric society that you’re obviously clashing up against. What is that, being you?

Leslye Headland: It’s funny. I feel like I enjoy it. I came up under Harvey Weinstein at Miramax and the Weinstein Company. I was in the mix of extreme alpha-male behavior. And I always sort of liked it. I didn’t really feel like it was a conflict as much as it was a challenge and something I had to think about. I loved to think about how I was gonna be a filmmaker, ‘cause that was what I always wanted to do—but it seemed a little impossible, especially for a female.

It’s not only being a director, which is already…

LH: Already hard.

You have the wrong genitalia to do it.

LH: It really is. It’s such a dude job, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, because having made two of them, I think the most maternal I’ve ever been in my life has been on sets and in the editing room, and while nurturing a project. I’m not a very nurturing person in real life. Ha, “real life”. In my social life or my private life, I’m certainly not like that. My sister has three kids; my mom had four. It’s never really felt like my bag, and yet, when I’ve been on-set, I’ve felt like, this is such a female job, because you have to corral everybody, and you have to know how to essentially run a pack the way that a lioness would. And what I think is funny is when I meet male directors, and I’ve never really hit up real obvious sexism. It’s more like dumb sexism. Does that make sense? Where you’re like, what? Do you think women think that? It’s like no, no, no. Women don’t think that way. But they do seem like these lions that are doing a lioness’s job. They’re out there with the baseball caps, and they’re like, “No one needs to know that I don’t know what I’m doing!” You’re a lot of  bark, and no bite, honey. It’s not that combative; I think it’s much more challenging, but I find it to be fun because of that. I find it to be really fun because of that.

So talking about sexism and feminism, I think that your films are really good at hedging in this transparent feminism, where it’s not beating you over the head, and you’re not like, “This is what feminism is!” It just is. Is that part of your modus operandi?

LH: I think it’s just being alive and having a vagina, honestly. It’s just stuff that you start to notice, and you’re like, “Um, I wonder if that’s an interesting thing to write about.” I feel weird because Bachelorette really came out of going to a bunch of weddings, and having people be like, “So. Have you met anyone? When are you getting married?” And my sisters who were younger than I am were getting married more and more. And it wasn’t that my sisters were mean to me, or I was mean to other women, or women were mean to me…It just seemed to be an overall vibe going on here that I don’t really feel like I’m a part of. But I am interested in asking the questions about it. And I think Sleeping with Other People was very similar. I always felt a little outside the dating game.  I don’t date that often. I feel like I’m a very autonomous kind of person. I don’t feel like monogamy is something I needed to have in my life. But I was interested in, how are people even dating now, with Tinder, and swiping left, and swiping right—I don’t even know which one is which. There isn’t a movie that hasn’t come around in the same way as Bachelorette that sort of told everybody, this is sort of what’s going on. I think the feminism ends up being built into it, because I do have a vagina. It just seems weird to me… But at the same time, I don’t feel like I have to do something because of being a woman. For example, I loved ripping that wedding dress in Bachelorette. I was like, “Fuck weddings, man!” Who gives a fuck about this bitch’s dress? Who gives a fuck about weddings? In the same way, I think it’s great that Jake teaches her to masturbate. There are a lot of women that I know—it’s not that they don’t masturbate, it’s just that they have never really gotten into the minutiae of it. So they do get addicted to men—especially young girls. That’s the thing, too. Is anybody telling a young girl what her vagina looks like on the inside? Nobody.

Just practice on a bottle.

LH: Now she can watch this movie, and her boyfriend’s gonna watch this movie, and they’re gonna be sexually active, because that’s what’s going on. But also, I remember I dated this guy in college who was a late bloomer, like Jake’s character. When Jason Sudeikis is in his college, his whole room is exactly what Patrick’s room was like, with all the computers and the Jurassic 5  t-shirt. I laugh every time watching that scene, because I’m like, “This is the guy I dated in college.” But because he was a late bloomer, he was really obsessed with the vagina. He really knew everything about it. And that’s what Jason and I spoke about before that scene. I did ask him, “Do you think it’s weird that you’re teaching her? Do you think that’s strange?” ‘Cause we met and talked about the script for hours and days before we started shooting and rehearsing. And he was like, “No, I think there’s nothing sexier than someone being good at that job.” And he’s like, I think you want to see why it’s this guy. And he also met a really good point when we were at Sundance. He’s like, “It’s two characters teaching each other how to love. He’s teaching her how to love himself; she’s teaching him to love himself.” It’s just a manifestation of that. It’s always good when Jason’s around to explain the movie to me. “What’d you say about it, Jason?”

So talking about that collaboration and the script: at first glance, you’d think that this was a movie where there was a lot of improvisation employed. And yet, both Alison and Jason were kind of protesting the fact—or at least saying, improvisation is a misnomer. That’s not actually what you’re doing. Talk about that process, and the collaboration that you have with your actors.

LH: I think this is something that comes up a little bit—I definitely want to talk about the process. But I do want to double-back roll a little bit. I do think this is where the sexism comes in as a female writer, and I think it’s a little bit the state of comedy right now, that it’s very improv-based. My fairy godfathers, as I like to call them—Adam and Will—they come from that. So does Sudeikis, and so does Brie. So it is a little bit of the state of comedy. But I noticed when I wrote About Last Night, this Kevin Hart movie—not most of them, but some major review was like, “Obviously Kevin Hart improve-ed all of this.” And 95% of it was what I wrote. I don’t know if they just saw “white girl,” and just assumed there’ s no way that Kevin would be speaking her words…there’s just no way that would happen. And I was like, “No, really, I was shocked, as someone that is such a great comedic voice, that he would actually stick so closely to my script; but he did.” So a lot of his jokes were my jokes, in the same way that a lot of Jason’s jokes in this film are my jokes, and a lot of Alison’s jokes were my jokes, and so on and so forth. But that being said, when you have Mantzoukas and Andrea Savage, and you have an extra day to shoot, you’re gonna do that. But at the end, I was like, “Just say whatever you want.” Like Billy Eichner, in the sex addicts’ meeting, I said, “Billy I’m just gonna light you.” And I gave him three sentences I needed him to say for plot exposition. And I said, “Say whatever you want after that. I’m just lighting you. Say whatever you want.” Adam Brody: there was a lot of improv in his scene, a lot of improv in his scene. I think when it comes down to it, for my process, I basically have a very, very tight memory. So I really try to remember everything that they’re doing in each take, and try to pick up the ones that I like, and sort of start to build the scene on that. Instead of just basically doing the coverage in a way, so I can just let them go. Meaning like two cameras, and then cutting them together. It’s more like, I only have one camera, and I do a rehearsal or we run through it, and I start to see, this is a good place where he can start improv-ing, and this is a good place where we can get some other stuff, so we can cut it together later.

As to you not getting a credit for writing, that’s an interesting dynamic. It really points out the inherent sexism in the film industry. The fact that we’ve seen for years men writing women roles, and there’s no issue there and then you actually write male characters really well. And I think one of the things you said at the premiere, that’s the inherent problem with rom-coms, is that the leads are so boring. Something that the woman, the Mark, is just a perfect little girl flitting around, and she hasn’t had the right penis to stick in her.

LH: I love that you call her a Mark. It’s so true. Absolutely.

What is writing that for you? When you sit down, what is your intent?

LH: I really feel like when I write a male character, they’re not that different from me. I remember, Jason did something on-set—I’ve told this story before, so I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself—I came up to Jason on-set and said, “I think you’re playing me.” And he was like, “Yeah, I’ve known this since I came onboard, that this was a version of you, and I has put a lot of myself into it.” I do think when I write men, I try to think of a woman, and then I try to imagine if she wasn’t thinking about it so much. I think women are a little too dastardly, in a way; they’re always trying to figure out—again, why I think they make great directors—I think of all the different permutations that could happen if I make this choice. Whereas I think men are a little more like, “Choice A,” and very strongly choose that. And I love Jason’s character in the film, because I got to explore what it would be like to have sex without shame, and to sort of behave like a man, for lack of a better term. And the things that he would be forgiven for that I would never get forgiven for if I did it to my partner. So yeah, it’s a little, fun version of dress-up, for lack of a better word, of trying on that male persona. And it’s in all of us. Carl Jung is like anima and animus: you have female in you, and I have male in me.

We all started out in the same pool, primordial gook.

LH: Exactly.

The shift from Bachelorette— which I’ll take  a second to say, I loved, and that’s what had me really amped for this, and I don’t think this disappointed in the least. Total flip on the rom-com. I hate rom-coms.

LH: Yes, they’re horrible.

It’s like, just fuck already.

LH: Yeah, just fuck each other. The Patton Oswalt joke. I kept thinking that every time I was editing. Echoing in my mind: is it just one of those movies?

It’s not.

LH: Oh good. So glad.

What are some of the shifts you went through, coming from Bachelorette, to doing Sleeping with Other People –what led you to hammer this down and drill out a specific point?, what was the thing that you weren’t anticipating, that was totally gonna mess it up, and then kind of came in…Or was there no issues? Was this a really smooth process?

LH: It was hard. There were 45 locations in 25 days. We were shooting in New York. It was big. It was a big movie that was shot very quickly and for not a lot of money. And it’s just so funny, that that was the case. Even though Bachelorette was less money, I guess in a weird way, just not knowing what I was doing on Bachelorette was almost like a blessing. I didn’t really know a lot until I got into the edit. I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know any of this stuff! Oh shit, Jesus, we don’t have any coverage. It was like, oh my God!” This was a better end product, meaning once I saw the assembly, I was like, “Fuck, yeah.” I think because I knew more, I challenged myself a lot more, and challenged my crew a lot more. And I was like, “We need to get this. And we need to show more New York,” like I said at the Q&A last night. And I was like, I need to make sure I get that line; and I was like, I need to make sure we get this thing. Maybe “demanding” is the wrong word. Maybe more diligent than I was with Bachelorette, where I was like, “Seems fine to me.” I had no idea what I was doing.

You also said that on-set, you would often just break down and cry.

LH: Yeah. So much.

 Is that part of your creative process?

LH: No.

Is that because it was the 45 shoots in 25 days?

LH: No, this was purely because it was a movie about love. I absolutely think that, even if I had a harder shoot—I was definitely a lot more scared shooting Bachelorette than I was shooting Sleeping with Other People, and it was because it was about people falling in love with each other. And the actors—again, as a woman and being an empath and why I think we make really great directors—I really believe in directing by energy, as opposed to telling them what to do. I’ll come in and feel it with everybody. And I think, as a result, I end up becoming energy-depleted. And so I’ll be crying because I love something so much, or because I’m so proud of them, or because I can’t believe they did that. Or I’m crying because it was so funny. But I really made myself open and vulnerable on this movie, so that the love and the romance felt as authentic as it possibly could. Because like you said, when you watch a rom-com, you want to just throw something at the screen. You’re like, “I don’t believe these people are in love; I don’t believe that they’re risking anything; I don’t believe that they’re uncomfortable with themselves, and that they’re worried to put themselves out there.” But I felt like what I could do was bring my own vulnerability, and my own heartbreak, and my own search for love in my own life, and make it personal. Even silly scenes, even the bottle scene. I was like, “Guys, when you see that look in the other person’s eye…” And Jason was like, “OK.” And sometimes I’d come in and look at Ali and start crying; and then she’d go and talk to Adam Scott. I think they were a little confused, because they were like, I think we’re making a romantic comedy, but Leslye hates romance. So I think it’s just that I wanted to bear my soul so much to them, so that they felt comfortable doing it.

More on this being a rom-com, and yet kind of transcending the genre, in that you follow a lot of the same beats, but it doesn’t feel like the traditional shitty rom-com that’s churned out over and over again, and a lot of that has to do with the chemistry between Jason and Alison. First and foremost, they’re friends, soulmates in a nontraditional sense of the word. They get along really well. Was that something that you had to manufacture, or were they just immediately like that?

LH: Immediately, they were like that. I remember, Ali came in to do a chemistry read with him. I was standing with Jason in the hallway, and we were drinking water or something. It was in a casting office. And Ali came in, and all three of us just started talking as if we’d all been talking—I don’t think they’d ever even met each other—and I’d only met Ali one other time. And we were just sitting there, and we were all talking, and it was the most easy thing in the world. And then they went in, and they did a scene, and they did some improv; and the sound of them was astounding. And I was like, “That’s it.” And then, of course, it’s not as easy as that, and yet it’s as easy as that; that’s sort of what it is.

So you drop a lot of movie references—anything from The Graduate to, obviously, Harry met Sally.

LH: There’s also a couple Jaws references in the movie.

Knowing that you are a movie nerd at heart, what are some of your absolute favorite, gluttonous summer movies that you just can’t stop watching?

LH: I cannot stop watching Gone Girl. It’s a problem. It was the same thing with Zodiac, but now it’s Gone Girl. And Zodiac is a better movie, but it’s the same kind of thing where, anytime you can walk into my house, I’ll just be on my couch watching Gone Girl. It’s just insane. I think Fincher just does that to me. Fight Club was like that before Zodiac. I don’t know why, but that’s the case. I think that—oh God, what was the movie I just watched again recently? One movie I can watch beginning to end, no problem, is The Birdcage. I don’t know why. There’s another example of a comedy that follows all the formula, all the formula, but because of the casting, because of Elaine May writing and Mike Nichols directing, it just transcends all that stuff. Because I saw it when I was very young, it was the first time I saw gay characters acting like humans. Even though it was very traditional, at the same time, it was…so that’s a big comedy one for me. I love What’s Up, Doc? by Peter Bogdanovich, That’s one of my favorite movies; I could watch that anytime. What’s another one? There’s so many; I don’t want to pick them. The one that I brought up a lot when I was doing press at Sundance was The Apartment. That’s a movie that, probably, if you sent me to a desert island, that’s probably the movie I would bring with me. That or Back to the Future I would bring with me. It’s just because they’re perfect movies; there’s nothing wrong with them; you’re never gonna receive information you don’t need. They’re not too flashy, but they’re flashy enough. They’re just perfect movies. We were walking around, and I was just talking about Kubrick. And I was talking about how incredible he is, and how I’m just nothing like him. There’s just no way that I will ever be interested in the big picture. But he saw a big picture that nobody else saw. He’s the guy who looked into the drain and saw the cosmos. Then there’s Cassavetes, who you just feel the sweat coming off the movie, like in Opening Night. Or Killing of a Chinese Bookie is my favorite of his, for no reason at all. I have no idea. I’m really a repeat viewer. For example, I’ve never seen Tokyo Story; I’ve never seen a lot of Ozu; I’ve never seen a lot of Godard. There are many big guys I haven’t seen.

A lot of homework.

LH: Lot of homework to still do. I’ve never seen Paths of Glory; I’ve seen every other Kubrick movie. I feel like I’m saving it. I’m a weird film nerd, in that sense.

It’s got to be the right time and circumstance.

LH: Yeah. Or if it’s being shown on 35 or 70, depending on what it was shot on. Or if it’s like, I mean, Raiders, Jesus Christ.

They show that at the Cinerama here.

LH: I heard about your guys’ Cinerama. I watch that every year—first of all, whenever it’s playing, I go see it—I watch it every year on my birthday. I watch all three Indiana Jones. I don’t watch the fourth one.

I’m sure that there were a lot of jokes, and maybe some scenes that were left on the cutting room floor. Do you have a particular favorite that you wish was in the film?

LH: I do, actually. I hope this ends up on the DVD extras. There was a scene where Jason was with a girlfriend, before he runs into Laney again. We just didn’t need it; you just didn’t need this scene of exposition. We’d already established it with Hannah, running through the rain after the girl; it sort of established everything, so we didn’t really knew it. There was a scene where he was with a girlfriend at an orgasmic meditation seminar. I wrote it when I was in San Francisco, and people were telling me about this thing called “One Touch,” which is female orgasmic masturbation, where you finger this woman, and you do it in front of all these other people. It’s very crazy. So Jason’s there with his girlfriend, and his girlfriend walks out on him because she’s not about him being such a slut, because the whole time, he’s like, “She’s doing it wrong. This is not how you do it.” And then he gets up, and is like, “Can I just do it?” And of course, Jason Sudeikis, of Horrible Bosses and Meet the Millers, he just had a field day with hand out of frame. This poor extra was just lying there, and he’s just making up line after line. I screen it a bunch, I screen it every week when I’m editing; and people say, that’s the scene they really wish I’d kept in. They are like, “We get why you cut it, but..”

For the DVD. For the Blu-Ray.

LH: For the Blu-Ray, yeah.