The 33rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival celebrated the five Academy Award-nominated directors – Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Jordan Peele (Get Out), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread) – and honored them with the Outstanding Directors of the Year Award for 2018, at the Arlington Theatre on February 6th. With Lady Bird, Gerwig paints a painfully beautiful family portrait that showcases an artistically inclined 17-year-old girl (Saoirse Ronan) coming of age in Sacramento, Calif. in 2002.

During individual panels and a group chat, these directors discussed pushing boundaries in their storytelling and how they are inspired by the work of their colleagues. Gerwig talked about how Lady Bird evolved into what it is now, whether she ever considered acting in the film, that she’s not Lady Bird, putting together such a terrific cast, and whether acting or directing is her priority. She also talked about meeting her fellow nominees and seeing their films. Here are the highlights of what she had to say during the Q&A.

lady-bird-greta-gerwig-saoirse-ronan
Image via A24

Question: How long did you know this was a story that you wanted to tell and did you always know that you wanted to direct it?

GRETA GERWIG: It’s hard to know exactly when I started writing it, but I had a draft of it, at the end of 2013, which was very long and it’s sitting on my computer. It’s 350 pages, it’s called Mothers and Daughters, and it’s extremely boring. I tend to write into hunches. I don’t know what the thing is gonna be until it’s actually completed. Part of that mystery keeps me interested in what it is. I knew I wanted to make something about Sacramento and I knew I wanted to make something about a mother and a daughter, but that was all I knew. I worked until I had a draft that was a reasonable length of 120 pages. I’ve always wanted to direct, but because I didn’t go to film school, I spent a lot of time doing anything I could to be around film sets. I wrote, I acted and I produced, and then I had this moment where I was like, “I don’t think you’re gonna learn any more by not doing it. I think now is the time. You either jump or you don’t.” When the fear of not having tried becomes greater than the fear of failure, that’s when you decide to do it.

Did you ever think about playing a role in the film?

GERWIG: Oh, no, I have no interest, actually, in directing myself. I’m amazed at the people who can do it. I’m not the kind of actor that I think would be able to accomplish that. I would be bad at both things, at once. One of the greatest pleasures I have ever had is watching great actors make my words come alive when they had been words on a page and now they’re people living in front of me. Even selfishly, I wouldn’t want to rob myself of that experience.

lady-bird-saoirse-ronan
Image via A24

You were born and raised in Sacramento, educated in Catholic school, dated boys who turned out to be gay, and went to a top east coast college, which are also all true of Lady Bird. Are you Lady Bird?

GERWIG: No. I’m from Sacramento and all those things are correct. I don’t know how you know they were gay, and I’ll say it didn’t end in high school, but that’s neither here nor there. In a way, I was the opposite of Lady Bird. The circumstances are similar, but I was a really rule-following, people-pleasing kid. I never made anyone call me by a different name and I never dyed my hair bright red. I wanted a gold star, and I worked for it. In some ways, writing this character of Lady Bird was creating a heroine who’s incredibly flawed, but also incredibly courageous and who did things that I had absolutely no ability to do. I imagined her, and then it wasn’t until I saw Saoirse Ronan do it that it was like I was getting to meet this person that I’d been hoping to meet.

Aside from having a great cast who are all top-notch in your film, they’re all New York theater actors. How did that happen?

GERWIG: I really drained Broadway for a few months. No. I live in New York and I go to the theater, all the time. It’s such a luxury to be able to go and it’s something that I love to do. It’s one of my favorite ways to see actors because there’s nothing between me and them. I can just watch them work. I’m a theater nerd, so I was like, “Let’s call all of my heroes.” And then, they all said yes. 

sam-levy-greta-gerwig-lady-bird
Image via A24 and Merie Wallace

Where do you go from here? Are you going to continue to act, or are you going to solely focus on directing?

GERWIG: I love acting. Acting was such a big part of how I came to understand filmmaking, as a whole, and I’ll never stop. For me, it’s always important to know what you’ll drop everything else for, and at this point, writing and directing my own work is the priority. I would like to make a lot of movies, hopefully.

You’ve been making the rounds, as a nominated director, this awards season, along with Guillermo del Toro, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jordan Peele and Christopher Nolan. When did you guys first meet?

GERWIG: Because it’s our writing and directing debut, I feel like I’m often turning to [Jordan] and saying, “Can you believe this?!” I met [Paul] on a set. I made a film with Rebecca Miller, and one day she said, “Oh, that’s just Paul by the monitor,” and I was like, “Oh, no!” I was nervous, but then, I got over it. I met [Chris and Guillermo] during this time.

Since you’ve probably gotten to see them, by this point, what was your impression of your colleagues’ nominated films?

GERWIG: For me, there are all of these moments. Guillermo’s movie transported me and made me fall in love with love. It did this thing that only movies can do, where you love the lovers. I don’t know that anything else can do that. It was the moment after the water goes out [of the bathroom] and Sally Hawkins is behind the creature, and the look on her face, when she looks at Richard Jenkins, is this look of, “You cannot shame me because I am in love.” It makes me tear up, just to think about it. It’s the most beautiful thing. In Dunkirk, there are so many moments to choose from. The moment that was the most emotional for me is the moment that happens after Cillian Murphy asks, “Is the boy okay?,” and he says, “Yes, he’ll be okay.” And then, he shares a look with Mark Rylance, and Mark Rylance gives him his approval. It’s a lie, but it’s for the good. Also, just the very beginning of it, where you’re instantly in the confusion of war. They’re children, and it’s just utterly confusing. That made me cry, instantly.

With [Paul’s] beautiful movie (Phantom Thread), the scene after he recovers from his first illness and he comes in and asks her to marry him, it’s both perverted and sublimely romantic. It’s so beautiful and so funny, in a way, and twisted, and she’s silent for awhile. She doesn’t answer him, and he’s like, “Why won’t you answer me?!” And I saw [Jordan’s] movie (Get Out) in the best possible way. I saw it in a huge theater in New York City, and everyone was screaming at the screen and to themselves, and everyone was terrified and laughing, and then people started crying. It was like being in a collective experience, watching everyone go through their emotions. For me, it was Daniel Kaluuya’s face when he says, “No, no, I’m not gonna talk about that,” and you see this well of pain that he can’t even articulate. It was this tender detail, in the middle of a genre film.

lady-bird-saoirse-ronan-laurie-metcalf-01
Image via A24