FRONT & CENTRE
Bruna Papandrea found fame creating femalefocussed stories with Reese Witherspoon, but has gone one step further with her new business Made Up Stories, alongside producer Jodi Matterson.
Bruna Papandrea found fame creating female-focussed stories with former production partner Reese Witherspoon, but has gone one step further with her new business Made Up Stories alongside producer Jodi Matterson. With offices in Los Angeles and Sydney, it’s a production company aimed not only at championing women on and off screen, but equipping the next generation, too.
VOGUE AUSTRALIA: Bruna, you’ve built a reputation as a trailblazing Australian in Hollywood off the back of Pacific Standard, the production company you co-founded with Reese Witherspoon that created Gone Girl, Wild and Big Little Lies. Take us through the evolution to Made Up Stories.
BRUNA PAPANDREA: “We decided to part ways when we were filming the first season of Big Little Lies. Reese wanted to start [her new media brand] Hello Sunshine and we kind of had different things going on, so I took a while to decide [my next step]. I sat down with an advertising friend of mine and he ran me through an exercise: What do you want your company to stand for? What do you want it to be? What do you want it to look like? One of the first things we did was come up with a logo. It’s a little girl in a hard hat and a tutu climbing a rope and when the logo animates she moves the letters of the word ‘stories’. It’s really indicative of what we represent. At Pacific Standard, Reese and I put women in front of the camera, but given how few women were behind the camera [we wanted to focus on that] but I also don’t want to alienate men, either. An example of that is something we just adapted, The Dry. It’s a pretty male movie, but Jane Harper created it from scratch.” VA: Did you know of Jodi Matterson’s work as a producer before joining forces?
BP: “I had executive-produced a movie that Jodi produced years ago called Not Suitable For Children. My husband [Steve Hutensky] also produced another movie with Jodi called 2.22.”
JODI MATTERSON: ”I had also tried to get the rights for The Dry and I remember calling Bruna and saying: ‘You cannot option everything! You have to leave things for other people.’ And Bruna said: ‘Let’s talk about bringing you on board [as managing director of Made Up Stories].’ R I was at a bit of a crossroads so I pitched to Bruna that we should do an Australian arm [of the business].” : BP: “I thought it was my idea!” (Laughs)
JM: “Bruna has such a capacity to have such a big bandwidth and deal with so much on at once, so was like: ‘Yes, let’s do them both at the same time.’”
VA: The Dry, which stars Eric Bana and will be released next year, was a bestseller and won Jane Harper awards and accolades. What’s your secret to identifying hit projects early?
BP: “You have to follow your gut. I’m also always interested in trying to do something that hasn’t been seen before. I’m also looking for things that are character-driven; it doesn’t matter what the genre is. Once you’re successful in buying a Gone Girl or a Big Little Lies everyone sends you everything, so you are often the first person to read something. Recently I started reading something Jodi called me about and I’d say I knew within a page that [it was right for us].”
JM: “The book is The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland, an Australian author living in Manchester.”
BP: “For me, it’s the best thing I’d read about Australians coming out of Australia. It’s extremely literary, it’s poetic and that was just one of those moments where I felt Jodi was so passionate so I said of course I’ll read it.” VA: Do you two read books concurrently?
BP: “Often. We are pretty good at communicating between countries. We don’t really bifurcate the company and we don’t bifurcate TV and film.”
JM: “It’s about what makes you excited as well, because you’re living with these projects for a long time. You want to know you’ll be as in love with something three years down the track as when you first read it.”
VA: You mention stories that are character-driven and different from what’s been seen before. We’re currently on set for Penguin Bloom in Sydney’s northern beaches, which is an inspiring true story about a magpie helping a family heal after the mum, Sam, is left paralysed after an accident. Besides characters, what else matters most?
BP: “It’s again about telling stories women want to tell or putting a different representation of women in there. And that can be dark and complicated. Movies really have the power to shift perspective and for me it’s about putting every type of woman on screen to some extent. That’s why I think it’s hard for people to nail me down. I don’t want to do just one type of movie.”
JM: “For me, Made Up Stories is also about empowerment and giving people opportunities. We have an amazing young filmmaker who just made a short film that knocked us out and we’ve been working on developing her for the last few years to make her feature debut. The editor we have on Penguin Bloom is a super-talented young girl and we want to give her an opportunity. The production designer we had on
The Dry is another young girl, incredibly gifted and it was a big step up for her to do a movie of this scale. It’s such a rewarding thing to be able to facilitate.” VA: Is this enthusiasm for nurturing young talent because you had amazing mentors yourselves?
BP: “People always say to me: ‘Are you worried other people are doing it too?’ And I’m like: ‘No, the more the better.’ I came from very humble means [but] I did have people believe in me. Like Jodi, I’m such a big believer in what we need to do more of, because it does get focussed on directors a lot – we take heat when we don’t use female directors or a female writer. But it’s not always about that. It’s just as important we are hiring female cinematographers and production designers. That’s how you grow an industry; that’s how you shift the culture.” VA: Do you tire of talking about gender equality in Hollywood?
BP: “Not at all. But for me it goes beyond just ‘women’. Jodi and I are very passionate about getting women from low socioeconomic circumstances to find access points to the business. We hired a girl recently through an amazing program in LA that funded scholarships for people from low economic circumstances. Those decisions are never that easy – you have to make a choice of: ‘I’m going to give someone a break and we’re going to mentor them and train them.’ This also creates a much more diverse culture within this company and then those women pay it forward. The same goes for people with disabilities – include them in the same way you would anyone else.”
JM: “Particularly on a movie like Penguin Bloom, it was really important for us to have people who have disabilities involved. We’ve
had an amazing director’s attachment who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair, and she’s been so incredibly additive to our process.” VA: What other projects are you developing here in Australia?
BP: “We have The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, which will be a series. We also have The Last Anniversary, another Liane Moriarty [project]. Really, one of the magnificent things about it is that it’s not just about young women – there are much older women in it. Women in their 80s who have lead roles, women in their 20s, women in their 30s.”
JM: “It’s three generations.”
BP: “It’s extraordinary. We’re producing it with Nicole Kidman and her producing partner. We’re doing this thing called Miss Universe with [actor and writer] Abe Forsythe. It’s a big international movie with Lupita Nyong’o that we’ll shoot here.”
JM: “That was our goal as well in setting up our Australian office – we obviously wanted to do Australian movies and tell Australian stories, but we also wanted to bring big international movies here that we would shoot here.”
VA: Do you think Australians punch above their weight in the film industry?
JM: “Absolutely. When you think we make maybe 20 to 25 films here a year and the number of those that get international recognition and the directors who are picked to go onto other things, we’re definitely punching above our weight. And that’s why it’s so important to continue to make these films here.”
VA: Your future projects will explore ageism and disability on screen, but obviously you brought domestic violence to light in Big Little Lies. How conscious is the decision to tackle these issues?
BP: “The material always informs you. Lost Flowers also deals with abuse … but it’s not conscious: it’s the stories that we gravitate to.”
JM: “But it’s interesting, because some people get that the wrong way around. Sometimes people will come in and pitch and it’s all about the issue. And it’s like: Well, what’s the story driving it? Where are the characters driving it? Because the issue itself, that’s not what’s going to make a great film or a great television show. It has to be story and character first. Luckily we’ve found these really interesting stories that tackle those issues.” VA: What does the future hold for Made Up Stories?
BP: “There are no borders. We have a show that hopefully will go in London next year and Jodi’s like: ‘We’ll go wherever there is stuff to be made.’ It’s always a hard thing as a company; we could employ 10 more people if we wanted to, just in terms of the volume. But I’ve seen people build companies and have them fall apart because suddenly the elephant is bigger. But we are starting to expand the company in other ways. I make the joke: ‘Would I like to publish books one day? Sure! Made Up Books!’ We’ve hired a branding, marketing woman who believes in what we’re doing and part of that is because – Penguin Bloom is a great example of this – there’s a whole side to our business in terms of having a social impact. But if you’re not set up in the right way then you won’t make the most of that. Like with domestic violence – that’s where HBO was amazing. Just being able to access those communities. Nicole [Kidman] did talks and you can’t ignore that responsibility.” ■
“You have to make a choice of: ‘ I’m going to give someone a break, and we’re going to mentor them and train them.’ This also creates a much more diverse culture”