Save your money - Skip film school and buy The Woman Director,

the brilliant memoir by a rising star of independent films

by Angus Atkinson

Jürgen Vsych, the writer-director-producer of 30 films, including the cult classics Ralph Nader Crashes The Two Parties and Ophelia Learns to Swim, has written her first book, The Woman Director: The Adventures of a Really Independent Filmmaker, Ages 6-36. Amazingly, this is the first autobiography ever written by an American female film director. You don’t have to have seen Vsych’s films to enjoy reading about how she made thirty movies on shoestring budgets, under often nightmarish conditions and against major parental objections.

Vsych (pronounced “Vy-zick”) must be the best-kept secret in independent films. Her memoir is as original, funny and idiosyncratic as her movies. Like John Sayles’s Thinking in Pictures, The Woman Director describes how a major artistic talent fights to shoot ambitious films with totally inadequate budgets. The book is inspiring and, at the same time, will make a lot of women think twice about aiming for the director’s chair. Vsych survived physical attacks and the kind of verbal harassment one would have hoped would have died out in the Stone Age. If things in Hollywood are better now than they were in 1973, it’s thanks to women like Vsych, who gained ground on the strength of sheer artistic excellence. Vsych’s nickname is “Rommel,” and it’s no wonder - this woman is a tank, able to take missile fire and remain on course. It wouldn’t be surprising if she becomes the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar.

As the first American woman director - and only the third woman director ever - to write her autobiography (the others are by French silent era director Alice Guy Blaché, and Nazi era director Leni Riefenstahl), this is a historic book: not just a comedic classic which describes one woman’s artistic struggles, but an illumination of the climate from 1973, when American women were unable to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and there were virtually no women directors, through 2003, when women were still only making 73 cents to a man’s dollar and women directors were still viewed as an oddity.

Vsych was born in Hollywood, but never went Hollywood. Growing up in the worst place on earth for an independent filmmaker, she eventually escaped and made films in Scotland, London, Seattle and New York. She made her first film at age six, a one-minute Super-8 film financed with baby-sitting money and edited with her father’s toenail clippers. Vsych eventually graduated to 35mm featurettes, which she financed by digging in trash cans for food, living in her car, and working as a bookseller, a butler and a bagpiper. Along the way, she became the first filmmaker to win the Prince Charles Trust Award (for her short Pay Your Rent, Beethoven). The book climaxes with Vsych gambling her life savings to make her 35mm feature debut, Ophelia Learns to Swim...only to see it go up in a puff of smoke when it premieres three days after 9/11. Thanks to DVD’s, the film is slowly gaining cult status (Ophelia, along with The Woman Director, can be purchased at her website, TheWomanDirector.com).

Vsych’s latest adventure was working as the videographer for Ralph Nader’s 2004 anti-war presidential campaign, for which she wrote and directed the brilliant 25-minute short film Ralph Nader Crashes the Two Parties (a mock debate in which Nader debated Bush and Kerry...as portrayed by two G.I. Joe dolls). It’s not surprising that underdog Nader hired underdog Vsych; a crusading presidential candidate needs a crusading director. Vsych is currently putting the finishing touches on a book about Nader’s campaign, to be followed by a feature film about Nader’s historic 1965 book, Unsafe At Any Speed.

The Woman Director is a memoir written in the rarely used present tense, which really put you smack inside this most unusual brain, and right in the roller coaster seat alongside Vsych. Vsych edited 17,000 pages of diaries down to 226 fast-paced pages. Let’s hope she one day publishes her entire diary; it would be the Pepys Diary of its day. And finally, let’s hope this book helps Vsych get the recognition, and the budgets, she deserves.

Move aside Don Quixote! by Christopher A. Driscoll (Amazon.com)

"The Woman Director" is an insider's journey through the triumphs and tragedies of film-making for the love of the art - rather than for the love of the money. Our tour guide is the archetype-incarnate of a female Don Quixote, jousting with and jutting at the windmills of Hollywood.

Along the way she has encounters with several characters you will recognize, several prima donnas, a gaggle of weasels and even a few decent human beings.

Her travels to Scotland and Seattle, attempts at finding more supportive environments for her film-making, make for interesting travelogues and could have each stood alone as fascinating peeks into the veiled culture of the independent cinematic arts community.

But it is in Hollywood where our author, Ms. Jurgen Vsych, is able to show us the biggest obstacles in the way of the independent film maker as well as giving us a look we can not get anywhere else into how "indies" are made.

Ms. Vsych brings to her story the same combination of sharp - even piercing - social commentary and zany comedy as we find in her films. This is one not to miss if you are "in to" indies or wonder why there are so few women in that field. Oh, and by the way, this book reads like a novel; each page has something to titillate your fancy and keep you reading on to the end.

First Memoir of an American Woman Director-and about time!  by Elsa Castle (Amazon.com)

The writer-director-producer-credit-card-goddess of the cult classic "Ophelia Learns to Swim" and 29 other films is the first American woman director - and only the third woman director ever -to write her autobiography. This is a historic book, a classic which not only describes her personal struggles, but illuminates the climate from 1973 - when women were unable to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and there were virtually no women directors - to 2003, when women were still only making 73 cents to a man's dollar and women directors were still viewed as an oddity.

Vsych was born in Hollywood, but never went Hollywood. Growing up in the worst place on earth for an independent film maker, she eventually escaped and made films in Scotland, England, Seattle, New York, and Washington DC, having worked as Ralph Nader's 2004 campaign videographer (she wrote and directed the brilliant "Ralph Nader Crashes the Two Parties," a mock debate with Nader debating Bush and Kerry [as portrayed by GI Joe dolls]). She did whatever it took to raise money for her films - digging for food in trash cans, living in her car, working as a bookseller, a butler and a bagpiper.

"The Woman Director" is written in the rarely-used present-tense, which puts you smack inside this most unusual brain. Vsych edited 17,000 pages of journals into 226 fast-paced pages - let's hope a publisher one day publishes the entire diary - it will be the Pepys Diary of its day.

Vsych is a true Renaissance Woman. Unlike many other memoirs, there is nothing whiney, self-pitying or self-indulgent in her book. Vsych will stand with Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Olivia DeHavilland as one of the great women artists and role models in cinema history. I can't wait for the sequel, "The Old Lady Director: The Adventures of a Really Wealthy Filmmaker, Ages 37-97."

(Incidentally, I display this book on my bookcase facing out - the photo of Vsych in her shopping cart dolly is a great metaphor for women; no matter how high we climb, we always get stuck doing the shopping.)

© Jürgen Vsych    All rights reserved

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