Q&A WITH FILMMAKER/AUTHOR MARJORIE SHORT

Q & A WITH FILMMAKER/AUTHOR

MARJORIE SHORT

Q:  Making Mischief: The Intern Diaries is a pretty unusual book. Why did you write it?

A: Actually, it was never intended to be a book! It was a journal of my experience as the Academy/AFI Directing Intern on the feature film Mischief in 1984. By the end, I had five notebooks of entries. I had to turn all that into a report to the AFI assessing my experiences.

Q:  What kinds of things did you write about in your diaries?

A:  When I first got to location, it was conversations, meetings, conflicts, gossip, and various goings-on. Once we started filming, I took notes on every camera setup that I observed. Crew comments  and the director’s comments. Issues with cast members; the motion picture studio; gossip and rumors. I even wrote about the weather! Believe it or not, weather plays a crucial part in pictures that are shot on location. I wrote about my own experiences on the set, advice I was given, lessons I learned.

Back home, I completed AFI’s exit questionnaire, and started typing up my notes for my report. In early 1985, I moved to Los Angeles. By then, I had over two hundred typed pages, but life intervened and I had to put all of that aside. Aside lasted nearly forty years!

Q:  So how did it end up as a book?

A:  I owe it all to Nat Segaloff. We were friends in the Boston and Cambridge film community back in the day. In 1990, and gave me an autographed copy of his first book, Hurricane Billy. The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin. I finally read it in the summer of 2022. Of course I had to let him know, but we had fallen out of touch.

Q:  How did you find him?

A:  Through Facebook, which led to a very long phone call. I mentioned the directing internship, and read him my summary statement from the exit questionnaire. He absolutely loved it and said, “This is a book!” Turns out he does editing for Ben Ohmart, publisher of BearManor Media. Nat offered to pitch it to Ben, which he did. Ben loved it, and offered me a contract, which we signed in November 2022.

Q:  You weren’t just the directing intern. You also worked on the hair and makeup crew. That’s pretty wild. How did that happen, and what did you do?

A:  The hairstylist on the picture needed help to prepare hundreds of extras for large crowd sequences. Mischief was set in 1955, and the hairstyles had to be accurate for that period. So she asked the director to let me prep extras for those sequences. He agreed, and they found a way to pay me for it. I cut and styled the hair of hundreds of female extras from then until the end of the shoot.

Q:  Did working on the set as a directing intern change your view of Hollywood?

A: Yes. I saw how hard it is to direct a feature film, especially a studio picture. There were conflicts and power struggles. I saw the daily deluge of decisions about every aspect of the production. The wear and tear of shooting on location—long hours, day and night, in all kinds of weather, and away from home and family.

But there were lighter moments. Silliness and slapstick that would erupt between takes, usually in the middle of the night. Fun outings on our free days. The experience of being “foxhole buddies” with crew members. And the solid friendships I made.

But it’s fair to say that any illusions I had about Hollywood were gone by the end of the shoot. Overall, it was rough, tough, and could get really ugly. But I’d say the good outweighed the bad.

Q:  As a young woman on the set, did you have any issues with male crew members?

A.  Yes. I experienced persistent hostility and resentment from some of the all-male lighting, camera, and grip crew. They made it clear that I was a nuisance, a pest, and mostly in the way. Also, my note-taking made them uncomfortable and suspicious. It wore me down, and took an emotional toll. Luckily, other men on the crew were accepting and supportive.

Q: Was the internship a stepping stone to your future career as a director?

A: That was a core idea of the internship program, and I wish I could say it worked for me. It did lead me to the Directing Program at the American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that was not a good experience. So I branched out into other aspects of the industry.

Q:  How did it feel to look back at this chapter of your life after so many years?

A:  It was a revelation and surprisingly emotional. I hadn’t laid eyes on any of the material since 1985. But once I started typing it into Word, everything came back to life. I was surprised and impressed that what I wrote was so detailed and so vivid. My young self had written this, and it was good!

I began to realize that it wasn’t just an insider account of this movie being made. It was my own story. My feelings, hopes, observations, struggles, and insecurities. It was also a tribute to the art and science of making movies, and the dedicated, talented, hardworking people who create them. I look forward to sharing it all with my readers!