Sigourney Weaver in My Salinger Year. Photo / Supplied
Before Sigourney Weaver became an genre-defining Hollywood A-lister, she had literary yearnings, she tells Joanna Mathers.
Team Hemingway. Team Fitzgerald. Stanford University in the early 1970s was a clash of (literary) titans, with followers as ardent as any college football fans. Contemporaries and rivals in the early 20th century, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were the twin flames of Stanford's English Department, their relative merits invoking passions in febrile undergraduates. Everyone picked a side.
Before she was a kick-ass, genre-defining A-lister, Sigourney Weaver was a dedicated member of Team Fitzgerald. The bookish English major adored the lyrical and poetic style of her favoured author. "He wrote an elegant sentence," she explains "and could encapsulate what was going on behind the facade of a 'perfect' life."
It's a (somewhat surreal) thrill, talking 20th century literature with cinema's pre-eminent sci-fi heroine. But in her recent movie, My Salinger Year, Weaver gets to channel the life that preceded her Alien legend, playing Margaret, the 1990s literary agent for J.D. Salinger.
Based on an autobiographical work of the same title, My Salinger Year documents the experience of United States novelist Joanna Rakoff, who worked as an assistant at Harold Ober Associates.
The "Margaret" in My Salinger Year, the film, is based on Phyllis Westberg, Salinger's agent and a key protector of the infamously reclusive author. Rakoff ( "Joanna" in the movie) is played by rising star Margaret Qualley, a young woman who takes it upon herself to answer the letters of Salinger fans.
Weaver has first-hand memories of the world. "Growing up in New York, I remember the literary world as being so alive. Writers such as [Norman] Mailer, [Kurt] Vonnegut and [John] Updike were huge stars."
As a young woman, she spent time in the presence of such women, due to a friendship with an employee at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing company. She remembers characters like Westberg as the high priestesses of this rarefied literary world.
"I remember them being very elegant," she says. "They would read the New York Times wearing white gloves."
And although it didn't pay well, work in publishing was considered a great privilege - and they didn't suffer fools.
"You had to be on your toes when you were around these people. They had great style, presence and confidence. [New York publishing houses] were famous for their amazing lunches and cocktail parties. I had such great admiration for them."
Weaver shines in the role of Margaret (dressed impeccably by Academy Award-winning costume designer and friend Ann Roth). Her role in My Salinger Year can be viewed as one of the pillars on which she has built her career. While her art house roles, including The Ice Storm (for which she won a Bafta in 1997), have allowed her to reveal her great depth as an actor, it's those sci-fi roles for which she is best known.
Alien (1979) was her breakthrough. The Ridley Scott-directed, chest-exploding sci-fi masterpiece introduced her to the world; a female hero in a male-dominated (and often misogynist) genre. Her character, Ellen Ripley, set the standard for female protagonists in action movies, and is still considered one of the greatest heroines of cinematic history.
A retrospective of her role on website IndieWire provides an excellent summary.
"Scott's choice to ultimately centre his film around the strength of a female character was hardly the kind of thing that other late-70s action-driven blockbusters dug into. A female badass like Ripley was something new, something bold, and Weaver and Scott made good on the promise of such a character — and she's still one of the most memorable and enduring heroines ever."
She would be nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her reprise of the role in Aliens in 1986. This was a golden age for her, two years later she would receive two Golden Globes, one Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, for Gorillas in the Mist, the second for Best Supporting Actress, for Working Girl.
But for all her kick-ass cred, Weaver's early days gave no indication of the character she would become best known for.
The daughter of English actress Elizabeth Inglis and broadcasting executive Pat Weaver, the (then) Susan Weaver was raised by a series of nurses in New York. She would roam the New York 1950s streets, her parents going to parties and entertaining celebrities, leaving her, for the most part, alone.
In an interview with Museum of the City of New York, she recalls that she was "quiet, uncommunicative." When sent to an elite boarding school, she broke out in hives, and cried every day. But at the all-girls' school, she discovered humour and acting: taking the role of a fairy, throwing stardust (baby powder) at schoolmates, bringing panache to her first "role".
She would go on to soak up this privileged education; sharing that it taught her about her own on intrinsic worth, both intellectually and creatively. Weaver loved books and writing - she wanted to be a writer for a time - but discovered the joys of acting and was accepted to Yale University School of Drama. And we all know what happened next.
Interestingly, Weaver chose the name Sigourney after reading The Great Gatsby (it appears, briefly, in the story). Her Museum of the City of New York reveals that by the time her career was launched in New York, Susan had become Sigourney.
While not a mononym (like Prince or Madonna), it's unlikely you'll picture anyone else if you hear the name "Sigourney".
Back in the 21st century, it's interesting to note that while My Salinger Year is firmly ensconced in 1990's New York, the movie was actually filmed in Montreal. The director of the movie, Philippe Falardeau, is French-Canadian and the lovely Canadian city was an excellent choice for atmosphere and cultural resonance.
Women headed all the departments in the film: "Philippe gave the whole thing to a great female crew. This allows for a kind of mentorship [for younger women in the industry], which us older women see as a great blessing," says Weaver.
Even post #MeToo, there are still a dearth of women behind the camera. Weaver says that she found being filmed by other women "more natural and appropriate" than the status quo of male-dominated sets.
"Having women in these roles allows you to feel the wind beneath your sails," says Weaver. "There is a great crisis in film-making; not enough women and people of colour are being trained up to work as members of film crews. But everyone is supportive of this changing."
Speaking of change, Weaver was coincidently at the geographical forefront of the biggest game-changer in living history, Covid-19. She had been in Milan for a film festival just before the virus swept through Italy.
"My daughter and I left Milan the morning that the infections became public in Italy," she says.
Then she returned to New York, which was extremely hard-hit by the early stages of the virus. But it was an experience not without its joys, for Weaver at least. She was able to spend 2020 with her adult daughter in a locked-down and quietened city. "It was a very interesting experience, spending a year with a grown child. We would not have had this experience without Covid-19."
New York, like so many great cities, has been subject to a process of gentrification that has seen many young, creative people barred due to the prohibitive expenses, especially in housing. In My Salinger Year the protagonist Joanna (played by Margaret Qualley) inhabits a world just before gentrification, slumming down in an affordable, if squalid house in the city (with an annoying Marxist boyfriend played by Douglas Booth). He works in a Marxist bookshop, she quits her job to become a full-time writer.
I ask Weaver if this would still happen in New York City? Can young people still seek their creative redemption in the Big Apple?
"Yes, I really think they can," she shares. "There are young people doing amazing things in all the boroughs-Brooklyn, Redhill, Queens. They have turned into creative watering holes for a whole new generation of people."
She says that Covid-19 has had a huge impact on the city, but reports of people deserting the city in droves are overstated.
"Sure, some people are going to the smaller areas, and there are opportunities there. But New York is still somewhere people come to, because of the incredible history."
Weaver is currently in Sydney and, when we chat she was in quarantine, after arriving from the United States. She is filming The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart for Amazon Prime (another book dramatisation), based on the bestselling novel by Australian Holly Ringland.
This seven-part dramatisation is quite different from the book, Weaver shares, which is about a young girl who loses both her parents then goes to live with her grandmother on a flower farm.
New South Wales is easing restrictions incrementally (its first round of restrictions were eased as the state reached 70 per cent vaccination rate) and New York opened up in June, also after a 70 per cent vaccination rate.
Weaver says that she believes that it is possible to stay safe and live life in our new Covid world. She believes that New Yorkers have exercised great care and caution and she believes that this will continue.
"There is a real sense of community and we all look after each other. We are all learning to negotiate with each other and learn how to manage this together. With common sense and forbearance, we are able to get on with our lives."
My Salinger Year is screening as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival in 12 centres around the country, visit nziff.co.nz for more information
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