The Knockturnal got a chance to pick the brains behind the film “Equity.” Director Meera Menon and writer Amy Fox talk of aesthetic choices, challenges, and more.
Congratulations on your release! Equity will be in theaters this Friday, the 29th?
MM: Yes, in New York and LA.
How do you feel about that?
MM: We’re really excited but nervous, because that opening weekend is incredibly important to make sure that audiences go out and watch the movie. So we’re just doing as much of word of mouth, screenings, and trying to create as much buzz as possible to get people to go to the theaters. Especially for female-driven content, you really want to demonstrate that you have box office potential.
AF: It’s exciting. It’s been a long road, as these things always are, and this has been the moment we’ve been waiting for.
Of course. What was your inspiration for writing and directing a story that was entirely focused on the feminine world of Wall Street? Did you always have an interest in what goes around behind the scenes of the industry?
AF: It’s actually a concept that our producers came up with—Sarah Megan Thomas and Alysia Reiner who are also in the film—they initiated the idea. They founded a company to create more roles for women as a part of their mission, and the first project they wanted to take on was a female version of Wall Street. Then they brought both of us on in the process. They brought me on first as the screenwriter; I developed the story with them, did a lot of research, and then wrote the script. Then they brought in Meera to direct the film. So neither of us came up with the idea, but we’ve had a very interesting journey to kind of make it our own.
As a female writer and director, in what aspects do you think you were able to execute the story better, than say, if you were a male writer/director.
MM: Interesting question…
AF: I personally wouldn’t use the word “better,” necessarily, but that’s a good question… I do think that in my own (creative) process, I listen carefully and I take a lot in, whereas some writers are very very decisive, and I do think of that as somewhat of a masculine trait. Some writers come into the room and say, it’s going to be this and that way, and they don’t look back. I have a very different process. It takes me awhile to decide how I want to treat something the right way. It took me a good two months to even begin to figure out how I wanted to approach this, and I guess I could link that to a sort of “female process.”
MM: I think that’s what first comes to my mind to me as well. In your process (referring to Fox), I saw a kind of deep commitment to research, and mining for material from an authentic source. I find that reflected in my process as well. I felt obligated to understand the world and be truthful and get it right, not just get it done. That may result in deliberation, and ultimately, you get closer to an authentic experience. What we’ve heard from audiences with this movie is that, it feels authentic to the world of Wall Street, whereas other movies exist in a slightly more exaggerated or amplified tone. We are more quiet and acute in what we’re observing, such as the details in what we are trying to represent.
And speaking of details, did you have to do a lot of research beforehand? I would say most people typically don’t have much knowledge into investment banking and the financial industry in general.
MM: I love what Amy was saying this morning about the reason why she chose investment banking. Because I related to it—I found myself surprised to how much I related to investment banking, not knowing anything about it before.
AF: Well there was a lot of research. I didn’t have any financial background. And what Menon is referring to is…I said this morning, that one of the biggest decisions is that there are three big areas you can work in finance: sales, trading, and investment banking…and I didn’t even know that much when I started. So one of the biggest decisions was deciding which job our character Naomi would even have. One of the reasons I picked investment banking was because it was the one that I was able to grasp the most quickly. I still find the description of what a trader does all day long, a big hard to grasp.
MM: This business of investment banking involves salesmanship. It’s being able to sell an idea, or sell yourself as a presenter of ideas to the world, in a room. So when I first read Amy’s script, there were scenes in it that felt straight out of Mad Men, in terms of pitching to a client, pitching yourself as the greatest communicator or ideas to a client. There was something about that, that felt familiar as a filmmaker…because a lot of what you’re doing is going around and convincing people that you’re the best person in the room to tell that story.
AF: I also think that when you’re talking about sales and trading, it can be portrayed as a game or gambling with money—whereas for investment banking, it’s actually doing a service for the economy, in that startups and tech firms actually need equity to grow. So your job is to actually to see the potential in something when it’s very small, and shepherd a small company through this process to become a legitimate, profitable company. There was something in that which I liked: the sort of real purpose in society, for all the bad press Wall Street can get. Without that ability to raise awareness for companies, our economy couldn’t function.
Do you think you could have conveyed the same message that you did through Equity, not in the context of maybe Wall Street, but another industry? Maybe the TV/ Film business, which you are both a part of?
MM: Yeah, both are competitive environments that draw aggressive personalities. They’re both right for dramatic exploration.
Right, and you can make money and gain power in any other business just as well as you could in the financial industry.
MM: Right, exactly. And for most of their history, they’ve kept women in the margins, and resisted promoting them into positions of power, so there’s a similarity there too.
Which unexpected character do you think really emerged during the writing, or the shooting of the film?
AF: That’s great question, give me a minute to think….
MM: You know, Randall really emerged in the making of it. He’s Naomi’s boss, who tells her early on in the film that she’s rubbing people the wrong way and so she’s not going to be considered for the position. But how central he became…I recognized in the edit how much we ended up revisiting where we would place his scenes as tad poles to hang Naomi’s arc on. His presence became a reflection of how she saw herself, and her own progress. He doesn’t have too many scenes, so you wouldn’t expect him to have that kind of presence.
AF: I’m glad you said Randall, because for me it’s John, who is the mentor character. When we were interviewing women, almost all of them we’ve interviewed who have worked on Wall Street and have become successful, credited that to a male mentor who was much more senior and powerful, and had seen potential in them and had their back from the very beginning. I never made a conscious choice to make that character. It was one of those magic moments when I was writing and that scene just came to me in full form. I wasn’t even thinking about it. She’s (Naomi) going up to a golf course to talk to her mentor, and their relationship is so important, because she has very few people she trusts in her life, and he’s a father figure. That scene was never rewritten: it stayed the same.
So John was inspired from your interviews with women on Wall Street?
AF: I think so, yeah. Also when those women talk about their mentors…One of them talked about her mentor at a panel last night…there’s always a great deal of emotion. It’s never as simple as, this guy gave me something I needed. It’s incredibly moving to these women that someone saw potential and nurtured it. So that was moving to me, as well, and I didn’t realize I was so moved until I was actually writing the script and that character (John) emerged.
MM: Randall is also the closest thing she has to family. People really respond to their relationship when they watch the film.
Do you think their relationship was clarified in the film?
MM: This is the kind of beauty of Amy’s writing; it gets revealed in the entrance of his character. In the first scene we meet him, we realize she used to work for him, and he taught her how to play golf, and these details congeal to help you understand that he was a mentor figure who is now retired.
Right. So would you say those were your favorite relationships in the film? Or which two characters’ relationship do you personally find the most interesting, or find that it was portrayed the most accurately as you had envisioned it?
AF: I’d have to say Michael and Naomi. It’s just so much fun to write a “cat-and-mouse” relationship. There’s a seductive quality. There used to be a lot more of Michael in the script, but it was condensed because we only had so much time. And we wanted to focus on the three women, so we had to cut that part quite a bit. But I always saw it as a very complicated relationship, in which both of them are going through something.
MM: Yeah, I love their relationship because it’s like watching this complicated game, and then realizing they’re playing completely different games.
Which character do you find that you resonate with the most, solely in the context of your profession?
MM: Naomi.
AF: I think for me while writing, Samantha was the easiest to identify with; because I come from a family that really values social justice. And protesting and fighting the bad guy is in my blood. So the idea of someone who sees herself as wearing the white hat but also realizing that even that is not black and white, and that there are grey areas…She also paralleled my own journey in starting out as someone in a career not doing what I’m doing for money, and then coming to a place where I realized that to support my family, I needed income, which is what Samantha realizes.
In that one scene when Naomi finds out that the starting price for Cachet is a lot lower than what they had anticipated, there’s a moment when she’s just sitting down in a chair and there’s a shot from above. How did you want to portray her in this scene—what sort of emotions?
MM: Not just with the angle but even in sound design, we talked a lot about isolation, and in that moment, to really feel a sense of her isolation from that environment as acutely as possible. So when I say even in the sound design, we talked to the retro-sound designer a lot about making her feel like she was in an aquarium, or underwater, where the noise is happening through a barrier. That was the aesthetic motivation for that moment.
What was the biggest challenge in writing/directing the film?
AF: I’d say the vast amount of material. The writing was conceived with Naomi as the lead, but also as an ensemble piece for these two other women with very strong characters. Just finding a balance between that—not just telling one person’s story, but many people’s. It was a constant interplay of trying to find the shape.
MM: I would say the exact same thing. Keeping the heart of the story with Naomi but allowing these other characters to breathe and give them details to work with, give them moments that the audience could connect with them as well.
What is a project you would like to undertake next, even if in the distant future? What social issues/themes/genre would you want to tackle?
MM: Everything and anything. I would say for me I’m interested in immigrant identity as an Indian-American, so I’m always interested in scoping out material that explores that experience in a way that’s also genre driven. I do like genre as a way to explore issues.
AF: Something that was fun for me in this movie was that when I was young, I was obsessed with mysteries, but overtime I came to see the genre as not serious enough. I thought my ambitions had to be higher in terms of what I would write, but then I really loved writing a thriller! So I’m taking on all kinds of mystery structures now.
Did you always want to write for movies?
AF: No, I know I wanted to write, and I also wanted to act. And upon realizing that I was not a very good actress, I combined the two ambitions and started writing for theater.
M: That’s so funny, because I wanted to act too! That’s what I thought I was going to do and then I realized it was too hard, but I liked what was going on and thought I’d get behind it!
