Joan Micklin Silver

“Great American filmmaker not nearly revered enough, I think she should be talked about alongside John Cassavetes as people who really moved the needle for American Indie Cinema, like after World War II and before Sundance.”

“We were so young and had never produced anything, and Joan was infinitely patient and remarkably assured on the set. We learned so much about movies from her. And she really knew how to talk to actors. John [Heard] could be tricky — he was moody and had a tough reputation. But he never gave her a moment of trouble. (memories of the production of Chilly Scenes of Winter)”

“Hollywood, of course, expected women to be collaborative, but had no intention of rewarding them for it. So she stayed independent. (Hollywood's ignorance of Joan Micklin Silver's talents and ambition)”

“The pathbreaking movie director Joan Micklin Silver got to have a career that almost no woman was allowed to have, and did not get to have the career that she deserved. Such is the paradox of the pioneer: You get to go where very few have gone before, but when you get there, there’s nobody to pull you up or push you ahead. You make your own way, and withstand the indifference, the hostility, the condescension, and the people who treat you as a curiosity or a slightly troubling anomaly.”

“Joan Micklin Silver was one of the most courageous artists I ever knew. She knew she could prevail at a time when women were not being taken seriously as film directors. We have all been deprived of seeing so many many other great movies that Joan was ready and prepared to give us.”

“Abstract notions of feminism never interested Joan; specific women and their stories did. Yet without setting out to do so, Joan Silver influenced generations of women to come. She was a trail-blazer, a risk-taker, a champion of other women directors. And always as quietly confident as she was the day I met her some fifty years ago.”

“It's a human truth that romantic fantasies are very hard to let go of and while it would be very nice to say Izzy, observing the difference between the two men realize that immediately that Sam was the better choice. I mean maybe you know maybe you work more rationally than than Izzy I don't know. But I mean the thing is that that you don't always do what's good for you, you know you don't always do what's right for you and sometimes you have to grow past it or go through something in order to reject it. (discussing the lead character's decision making in the film Crossing Delancey)”

“I really love being the person who in the end gets to make the decisions and have it become the way you want it to be and that urge is an overpowering urge that I have that makes me want to make films.”

“So many directors that I admire do things in two takes, like Lumet, and then there are directors like Arthur Penn, who did 40 takes. Whatever works for you, but I like to get it, and once I’ve got it move on. I don’t keep doing it to see if anything else will come. I haven’t ever had where I’ve had so much time or money where I would have had the time to do 40 takes. (as an answer to if she has a preferance to do a minimum number of takes)”

“I don’t think too many people had what I had, a husband who believed in me and who wanted to help me. (discussing the support and encouragement she received at the start of her film career)”

“My own experience with my films has been that the more I’m left alone, the better I do. It isn’t that I think I’m smarter than anyone, or anything like that. It’s just that whatever my instincts are, it’s better for me to be able to put those into play in my own work.”

“I came of age for film, at a time when the sexism was pretty strong. And although I could get work as a Writer, I couldn’t get work as a Director at all. And I had the experience of watching young men who had made shorts as I had, prize winning shorts, as I had, moving on to directing films and I couldn’t do it. And, and my husband, Ray [Ray Silver], was… became angry, and he said, “You know, maybe you can do it, maybe you can’t, but everybody should have a chance to try for the brass ring.””