Claudia Weill on 1970s Hollywood sleaze: ‘They’d never seen a woman direct’ - The Guardian

Her debut film Girlfriends is required watching if you want to work with Lena Dunham.

Girlfriends, her 1978 debut about two young female New Yorkers being pulled in different directions was a tiny independent film, but its influence has been rippling out ever since, detectable most notably in the work of Greta Gerwig and Lena Dunham.

“I did that eventually, but it wasn’t the path I was on at all.” The film was Weill making peace with who she was while everybody around her was shacking up.

She hustled Girlfriends into the Cannes film festival and then, off the back of that, cold-called some studios.

“I didn’t understand that an important part of being a director in Hollywood was political,” she says.

“I certainly didn’t want to continue making films in Hollywood!

“I didn’t really miss making a feature film,” she says.

Lena Dunham had met Weill at a 2011 screening of Girlfriends, which had bowled her over.

And I’m working on this TV series called Girls and I feel like I must have seen your film before because it’s all about that.’ And then she would give it to her cast and crew before a shoot, as reference.

It’s very reminiscent of Weill’s debut.

Dunham has praised the film for “the complex relationships, the subtlety, the odd comedy that was awkward long before awkward was cool.” And of late it has enjoyed a resurgence.

Last night Quentin Tarantino screened it at his cinema in Los Angeles, a double-bill of Girlfriends and It’s My Turn, and it was way sold out

It’s very gratifying that this little film you made so long ago is still speaking to people