WORKING WITH FRIENDS
It’s obvious the Wine Country gang enjoys each other’s company ... a lot
“We’ve had like 20 years of rehearsals,” Amy Poehler said by phone. She’s surrounded by her longtime friends, comedic powerhouses who form a crew so tight they can finish one other’s sentences while provoking snorting laughs as they chat about their new movie, Netflix’s Wine Country.
It’s an easygoing comedy, but Poehler’s directorial debut also taps into the inner lives of grown women and long-lasting adult friendships — themes that Hollywood, in its obsession with younger audiences, has given little attention. Wine Country, now streaming, follows a group of middle-aged friends travelling to Napa Valley to celebrate the 50th birthday of Rebecca (Rachel Dratch). But it found inspiration in the actual vacations Poehler and her friends take.
Q Amy, you’ve talked about how there just aren’t enough films taking advantage of what it’s like to be this age, to be around women you’ve known for a while and you’re not competing with one other. What do you wish the world knew about being a woman in her 40s and 50s, that you just don’t see represented in popular culture?
Amy Poehler There’s not a singular experience. Everybody’s experience is very personal and different, and so that’s important, even just that, right? That there’s not the typical female 40-year-old or 50-year-old experience. But one thing that is just unmined territory is long friendships that go deep and the way that women of a certain age
interact with each other, because I think sometimes we don’t show enough how we are each other’s kind of chosen family and also how we challenge each other, too.
Ana Gasteyer As a performer, yes, the window does seem to close in terms of breadth and depth as you age, and one of the exciting opportunities behind this movie is that it’s a conversation that’s a little bit less about the ways that our culture in general still thinks of women aging as a depressing — I don’t what’s the word, how to say this properly ...
Background Journey? Gasteyer Yeah, a journey that just kind of reaches — wait, were you joking?
Background No! (Laughter)
Gasteyer ... reaches not an expansive experience. What actually ends up happening when you turn 50, and I’m 51 now, there’s so much cultural mythology about you sort of being at the end of the road. To think about Gloria Swanson actually only being in her early (50s) in Sunset Boulevard, and our cultural perception being that she’s at death’s doorstep. I think it’s actually the opposite as you start to get older and less confined by babymaking pressure and societal norms, you actually get to dive a little bit deeper into what you actually like and concern yourself less and less with what you should be doing or what people think of what you’re doing.
Paula Pell I was just thinking of Betty White when you were saying that, how when she hosted (SNL) we actually had meetings where we were like, “Are we really pushing her too hard?” And then we get to the after-party and it’s like, “Oh, no, Betty’s not going to, she can’t, she’s not going to come,” and then she showed up an hour later, like in full regalia, and stayed for quite a long time, longer than me, I think. So I think comedy is, you can be a hand reaching out from the soil in the graveyard and still be doing your bits.
Maya Rudolph I think about this age in our lives as being one of the elements of where we are in our lives right now, because it’s certainly not the thing I think about when I think about this group. And I think about our history. I think about the choice that we’ve made to be a family, in some way. I think about what we’ve learned together as a group.
Liz Cackowski That’s the hope, that the doors are opening to have many more voices heard now. What you want when you watch something, is not necessarily to see yourself reflected, but just to see somebody’s truth told and maybe a story you’ve never heard or seeing something either that you relate to or don’t relate to, but then learn from it.
Pell If you allow someone that’s not been allowed to tell their story, that’s always got a closed door, and now they’re telling it, they’re also going to hire people that kind of understand their story. And then those people will tell the story. It’s got a cyclical, what’s the ...
Rachel Dratch Ripple? Pell Ripple effect!
Dratch That was Rachel Dratch who said “ripple.”
Background (Laughter) Pell But it really does, it does have a ripple effect of creative people around it, of people shooting it or people casting it, it just starts to feel more inclusive in a really, really great way.
Q Ana, you mentioned how popular culture has often depicted
growing older as a woman as a negative thing, but women in my real life have told me that life just continues to get better with each decade. What do you all wish you had heard at 25 or 35?
Dratch Enjoy that bod is what I would say.
Background (Laughter) Gasteyer If we’re going to be very surface about it, it’s true that if you knew how great you felt about every picture you were going to look at retroactively, in the moment, you would have taken far more Polaroids.
Poehler Can I ask how old you are?
Q 34. Poehler How do you feel, because I think that in every generation you learn something about the generation before. How are you feeling different about your 30s than your 20s? Q Oh, I love it and I’m looking forward to my 40s and my 50s. Poehler Right? Yeah!
Cackowski When I was in elementary school, I had to do a project where I had asked a bunch of people what’s your favourite age, and a lot of people were saying teenage years or 20s. And then my mom’s hairdresser, Nancy, she said 40, “because it’s how old I am right now. I love this age because I know myself and I like myself and I’m not stressing about it anymore.” And I was in elementary school, and now that was my favourite answer and I kept thinking I can’t wait to be 40. And you’re right, I wasn’t seeing that on television, I heard it from the hairdresser. But maybe this movie will make a younger generation go, “Oh, I can’t wait to turn 50. Look how awesome this is!”