blogging » and another thought

Not unlike many moms, I traded the office job for the mommy job. I envisioned days full of reading by the window in the sunshine, creating multitudes of handmade kid crafts and learning together on our many discovery walks. Then day two of the mommy job arrived.

I’m not saying I don’t do these things with my kids, but there’s so many unplanned (and sometimes not so fun) things that seem to fill our day also: trips back and forth to school, toilet training, grocery shopping, laundry, overdue library books, and so on. I sometimes feel like I accomplish nothing.

I think that’s why the soon to be released movie Motherhood interests me, appeals to me, draws me in. Like Eliza (played by Uma Thurman) I turned to blogging as a way to continue writing, express myself creatively and connect with friends and family (and now it seems, total strangers). I discovered blogging gives me a way to retain the other parts of me that sometimes seem lost.

In the movie Motherhood (in select US cities Oct 23), Eliza has given up her writing career to spend more time with her two young kids. She turns to blogging as a way of maintaining her writing and keeping connected to the adult world. The film focuses on one day in Eliza’s busy life, a life that seems misunderstood by her husband, a life that seems to be on the verge of being lost in mommydom. As if things weren’t crazy enough, Eliza decides to enter a writing contest to answer the seemingly simple question “What does Motherhood mean to me”. But it’s Eliza’s struggle to find an answer to this question that enables her to discovers what is truly most important in her life.

Click to see the movie trailer for Motherhood

I think because this movie is focused on a mom and a mommy blogger specifically, I love that the promoters of the film have been so active in the social network, connecting on twitter and facebook and through Eliza’s blog. They’ve even organized a few conference calls, giving mommy bloggers a chance to talk to those on or involved with the film. (Michelle, founder of Everything Mom, participated in an earlier call with Katherine Dieckmann, the film’s director.) I was fortunate enough to be invited on a call with Uma Thurman.

I was so excited, beyond excited. I’d seen the movie’s trailer and viewed Uma Thurman’s interview with the Sundance Channel and now I would have a chance to talk to her and ask her my own question. The morning of the call, pacing with nervous energy and excitement, I made sure my two youngest were sequestered in the living room with  the television. My excitement climbed as the call started. I loved that I could tweet and connect with other callers using the hashtag #motherhood.

Then Uma Thurman joined the call and the questions started. And there were some great questions. When Margaret Andrews (Nanny Goats in Panties) asked if Uma Thurman had any funny stories from making the film, none came to mind but she did talk about enjoying being transported back to that baby stage:

I’ve never played a realistic, life drawn mom like this and I loved working with the children. I have to say I think I threw my lower back out doing those endless pounding up and down the stairs shots… It’s been a few years since I had that backpack on. And I never liked those either they make you feel like the baby is like a very unwell secured packed bowl of ice-cream on a kind of somewhat broken wafer cone. It’s quite nerve wracking how sort of spindly and top heavy you feel with that on. So I really enjoyed all the going right back into that time, which is a few years ago for me now, not too far away, just in a different phase, I don’t have a backpack baby.

Then Beth Gasser (Confessions of a Mom) asked a question most moms struggle with, how to balance being a mom with everything else and specifically in Uma Thurman’s case, balancing it with a production schedule:

It’s really hard to do. Basically I don’t work the same or as often as I use to…It’s just a matter of when things get tough like that you try to do everything, you try to forgive yourself if you miss out on anything because as much as you want to be in eight places at the same time you can’t. You know sometimes you’re stuck with only one body and one self but I try to make up for it by having a very rich and warm family life with all the time I do have. You just try to balance.

We know the movie Motherhood is obviously based on just that, motherhood, but Jennifer Gerlock (Hip as I Wanna Be) asked how is it authentically portrayed in the movie and will it draw us, the audience, to want to watch the film:

This is a story where the mother is actually essential to the experience where she is the one being seen for her actions. She’s not there to focus your attention in the role of how the mother relates to the person of interest who is either a man or a child which is kind of how mothers are often used in narrative, filling in the blanks per say about another character but it’s not really about them themselves… I think Katherine’s character was so honest, she’s someone who’s chosen to be a stay home mother and yet she’s struggling with that decision and feels fulfilled and but at the same time compromised in a way at time by being in total baby land, not stimulating other sides of herself…I like she has flaws. I like that she has anger issues yet she still loves her kids. She’s funny and charming and she’s just so real.

And on the topic of motherhood’s portrayal in movies, Lara DiPaola (Chicken Nuggest of Wisdom) asked if Uma Thurman thought Hollywood intentionally overlooks motherhood in films and why:

I think that motherhood has always been given, been put on the third shelf…I had one woman say to me ‘why would I want to watch a movie about my own boring life?’…you mean we’ve so discredited ourselves and our experiences…that raising human beings…is so unimportant? … What that experience is like and how we consider it is who we are as a people. And it’s very interesting thing to see what people’s reactions are…they think it’s not worthy of consideration or they really appreciate it if they see it.

Since the call was full of mommy bloggers and the films character, Eliza, is a mommy blogger herself, I thought Jennifer Gerlock’s question of why Eliza blogs and what she’s trying to get out of it, was quite fitting:

She’s a writer and she’s somebody who studied to be a writer…and has chosen and dedicated herself to wanting to raising her kids. Mommy blogging is a way to exercise her creativity that fits in with her life as a mother because it’s what she’s chosen to be focused on and is living with…It’s her transport, her voice so to speak outside of this isolating experience of raising your kids on your own.

The entire movie Motherhood was filmed in New York City so Roni Jenkins (The Three Tomatoes) asked Uma Thurman what her favourite and least favourite things are about filming in New York:

My favourite thing is how close it is to home. My least favourite thing is how noisy it is. That’s always the biggest challenge, the sound challenge.

But wait, I almost forgot my question because I too got to ask one. As you may be aware, the movie Motherhood takes place within a single day, unlike many other movies. I was curious if filming the same day, over and over again, was harder:

In a way it’s very tricky because in a way you can get kind of confused as to where you are…You’re working it for a couple of months and you can easily get lost in it…you seem to be in the same clothing and it’s the same day but time’s going by… It requires a lot of kind of focus and being aware of the piece. I’ve seen a couple of movies that are a character study that happens over one day. I’ve also liked them very much…It’s kind of a neat device, one day in someone’s life, not about them necessarily collecting the Nobel Prize you know but actually just one real normal day. It’s an amazing way to kind of see a person’s character kind of grow a bit open. I found it kind of tricky and fun.

Now of course these aren’t all the questions and doesn’t include all the ladies who were on the call, but these were some of my favourite questions. I thought they were nice and varied. The one thing that impressed me about the whole conference call, besides the fact that I didn’t pass out when it came to my turn to ask a question, was how polite and friendly Uma Thurman was. She greeted everyone and apologized for the many times her call was dropped. It was really nice. And if I wasn’t already excited about seeing this movie, whenever it does make it up here in Canada, having participated in this call would have certainly won me over.

I think if we as moms want to see more movies like this, about women, strong real women, and more movies by women, then we need to get out and support them when they do come out. Will you?