STRIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Director says an upswing in women’s stories helped her film get made
There’s a wonderful scene in the new movie Hustlers in which up-and-coming stripper Destiny (Constance Wu) meets beenround-the-block Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) on a chilly roof atop the club where the elder woman opens her voluminous fur coat and invites her in to share the warmth.
It’s a literal “let me take you under my wing” moment, and a perfect metaphor for the almost mother-daughter relationship that grows between the two characters.
“That was the first scene I wrote and the last scene we shot,” director Lorene Scafaria says at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Hustlers had its world première ahead of a general release on Friday.
“To see that happen all at once — to see Ramona open up her fur coat and then wrap her up in it like a little baby kangaroo or something — that was always the idea. To have her go from nobody to that enveloped, immediate intimacy with another woman.”
And, Scafaria adds with a grin, “I feel like if Jennifer Lopez invited you into her fur coat you’d probably do whatever she said after that.”
Hustlers, based on a New York Magazine article by Jessica Pressler (named Elizabeth in the movie and played by Julia Stiles), tells the story of a group of strippers who turn the tables on their male clients by drugging them and maxing out their credit cards. In a milieu where rich clients routinely drop huge sums on exotic dancers, Ramona argues that this side hustle is basically a “short cut” to what happens anyway. “Nobody gets hurt,” she adds, though that isn’t always the case.
As a storyteller, Scafaria isn’t troubled by the women’s shady dealings. “I think we all know the difference between right and wrong,” she says, “so I wasn’t trying to convince anyone that wrong was right or right was wrong. I didn’t want to convince the audience that they should root for them or root against them.”
But as a woman who watched several friends turn to stripping as a way to pay off student debt, she also felt a certain responsibility to be true to that experience.
“As soon as people started to pass a certain amount of judgment on the characters, I felt very personally invested in telling their story,” she says.
“I feel that female characters are scrutinized in ways that women in general are scrutinized. I felt like people were judging the characters for not just where they ended up but for where they started.” She adds: “It’s hard to judge anyone for navigating within this broken value system. I think writing is an exercise in empathy, and I like taking characters who are often misunderstood and trying to understand them more.”
After writing the screenplay, Scafaria faced an uphill climb getting the film made. “It wasn’t just getting a directing job; it was proving to people that this was a story worth telling.” But between the state of global finance and the upswing in stories about women’s experiences, “it felt like every headline ... was only making it more relevant.”
And star power never hurts. “It was a lot easier once Jennifer Lopez was attached,” she says. “I met (Lopez and Wu) separately, so I only imagined them together until the camera test when I saw Jennifer put her arm around Constance for the first time. I just got chills; I was so excited to see the two of them together.”