spotlight


HOME IS WHERE THE TRUTH IS A CONVERSATION WITH WASH WESTMORELAND


COLETTE by joel martens wash westmoreland


was a maintenance engineer on power stations mending pylons and things. He was obsessed and would always show us films he liked and explain, “This is a master shot, this is a close-


up” and “The actor actually said that line over five times.” He had a Super 8 camera and would always take home movies of our family holidays. When I was about 10-years-old I developed an interest, so my dad and I started making films together. That is really what got me started. Did you study filmmaking in school? My understand- ing from doing research on you is that you majored in politics and Asian studies, which is quite a leap from what you’re doing now. I didn’t see film as something that


would even be possible to study—it just didn’t seem like an option—like


Oppression can take many forms when you’re naive


to its power. Coming to terms with that fact can be difficult and rising above can happen at great cost, though many of us are willing to pay it. Breaking the bonds of convention is something


most LGBTQ people are familiar with too, and it is a weight women have had to contend with for centuries. The journey out from under and then to rise above isn’t a story that is told enough, but luckily we’re starting to hear and see more every day. The filmColette illustrates the real-life story of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, a gifted French novelist who learns her craft penning stories under her hus- band’s name, a man fourteen years her senior. The four Claudine stories she pens,Claudine à l’école (1900), Claudine à Paris(1901),Claudine en ménage (1902), andClaudine s’en va (1903) are semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age stories of the titular character that become best sellers in turn-of-the-century Paris. Colette comes to understand she writes under the weight of an oppressor, in the form of the very husband who took her from obscurity and introduced her to the Parisian literary world. When she ultimately demands freedom and then recognition of her work, “Willy” locks her in her room until she relents. The couple eventually separates, but because her husband owns the copyrights to her novels, she is denied access to the money generated from them. As a means of income, she cultivates a stage career in the


music halls across France, often play- ing the character Claudine from her own novels, earning little and often hungry and ill. She writes about her experiences and continued to produce works in the form of plays, opera librettos and multiple novels, eventually earning a Nobel Prize nomination for Literature in 1948. Her most notable beingGigi, which went on to be the hit Lerner and Loewe musical starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan. A fact few know, and unfortunately representative of the little recognition given to one of the most gifted novelists of her era. That’s about to change with the new filmColette,


Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer’s biographi- cal drama about the irrepressible French woman played by Keira Knightley. She breaks the bonds of convention and finds her way home to herself, a place she fabricates from the ground up in a world that fights against her independence every step of the way. Colette is a firebrand, a trailblazer, one of many and


we’re excited that her story is being told. Westmoreland sat down withThe Rage Monthly


to talk about creating a film and to tell her story.


Were you always interested in filmmaking, or was it something you figured out later in life? I was. I grew up in a very ordinary family, my dad


I didn’t think being gay was an option. When I was older, I realized it was something anyone can do, you just have to work out how to get access to equipment.


When I was going to university, I studied politics and I took an option for East Asian studies because I wanted to go abroad for a year to Japan. I love traveling and being immersed in the


culture of another society, to me, is the greatest education you can have. I came back and didn’t want to immediately work translating Japanese or be involved in a British financial company, it just wasn’t appealing to me. It was around 1990 and HIV/AIDS had become a really huge social-political issue and I was so inspired by what was happening in New York and San Francisco. I wanted to emulate ACT UP tactics and Queer Nation tactics and bring it to the north of England and really fight for the rights of LGBTQ people. It was a catalyst for so many things at the time. Unfortu- nately, it took millions of deaths for awareness to take hold. Is that around when you came to America? I came to America in 1992 and the first place I went


was New York. It was a dream and I was so excited to be there because so much was happening. For the first year, I barely stepped off of Manhattan Island: just living, working, and breathing and having the greatest time in the city. I read that when you came to L.A. you got involved in the gay adult film industry. I’m interested to know how that ended up shaping you as a filmmaker?


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RAGE monthly | SEPTEMBER 2018


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