Since launching her production company, Isotope Films, in 2005, Chiemi Karasawa has served as a producer on more than sixteen documentaries. Her first film, Billy the Kid, directed by Jennifer Venditti, won Best Documentary at the SXSW, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, and Melbourne film festivals. It premiered theatrically and was released by HBO in 2008. Her second film, The Betrayal, directed by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, premiered at Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009 and won the Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Non-Fiction Filmmaking in 2010. Though primarily a producer, Karasawa made her directing debut with the documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013 and was subsequently released theatrically in over 150 theaters in the US by IFC/Sundance Selects.

Chiemi Karasawa and Elaine Stritch

Photo by Jenny Risher

Prior to launching Isotope, Karasawa was a script supervisor for seventeen years. She worked on films such as Kids (1995), Party Girl (1995), The Spitfire Grill (1996), The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), Summer of Sam (1999), High Fidelity (2000), Adaptation (2002), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Romance and Cigarettes (2005), and the HBO series The Sopranos in 2006. She has worked alongside renowned directors like Spike Jonze, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Sam Mendes, Stephen Frears, and Martin Scorsese.

Karasawa currently has a full slate of films in various stages of development and production. Her offices are located in New York City, where she employs two interns per semester.

What advice do you have for someone who is just about to begin an internship?

You need to make yourself indispensable. I can tell right off the bat how my interns are going to do in a hypothetical career by their attitude and approach to work. One thing about film production is that you have to be ready for anything. Any scenario can come up when you’re making a movie, so being flexible and able to figure out how to overcome anything or learn how to accommodate—those are skills everybody should have getting into this business. The students that come to my office who are ready for anything, those are the people I know will survive the perils of production.

Did you get your start as an intern?

I did, and whatever the producer told me to do, I did it. I typed memos, I added up receipts, I drove actors to the set, filed production reports—I mean anything. It all comes down to building a relationship with someone so they learn that you’re dependable and reliable and willing. I’ve had people come in, and I tell them what the internship is, and they don’t seem to understand that doing menial tasks—or tasks that they think are menial—will gain them exposure to a person who’s producing or directing a show from start to finish. If that’s what they want to learn how to do, then they have to develop a relationship that’s meaningful to that person. That’s one of the hallmarks of getting your foot in the door—building relationships with people who will expose you to what you need to learn.

How long does an intern do these kinds of tasks before it’s appropriate to ask to do more interesting work?

I have a very small office, so we all have lunch together, and I always ask my interns questions. What do you aspire to do? What things interest you? Where are your skill sets? When somebody proves that they’re dependable and reliable, you want to make sure the relationship is giving them what they need as well, and I find that a lot of things come up in conversation.

But they’re not saying, I want to do this, or when do I get to do this? Learning how to earn the right to have those kinds of conversations is also part of the job. And for me, because I’m such a small company, whoever is here will be exposed to any number of things. Can I make them an editor by the end of their internship? Not necessarily. But could they have relationships with people who could then give them editing jobs? Yes, if they develop those skills.

You were a script supervisor for a long time before you became a producer. How did you get your start in script supervising?

I’d interned for a producer on a film called Hangin’ With the Homeboys, and then he was starting another film called Arizona Dream with Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway and Vincent Gallo and Lili Taylor. So he flew me to Arizona to be his assistant for four months on location, and that was when I decided I wanted to be a script supervisor. The script supervisor was sitting next to the director, with a book, cueing dialogue lines to actors—and in my mind, that was the center of the universe. That’s where I wanted to be to learn about directing, sitting in that chair with the best vantage point to the director. Later, I realized how much more complex the role of a script supervisor really is—and difficult.

So your work as a script supervisor led you to producing?

Script supervising was like my graduate school and master’s degree in production. I did commercials, I did major feature films, I did little independent films, I did television, I did Sex in the City, The Sopranos—I did every form of production imaginable in Los Angeles and New York and on location. And that’s when I understood that producing was something I might be able to do. Navigating relationships with crew and talent, being part of a production from pre-pro into post, turning in my script notes to the editorial department, executing a production report every night, figuring how much we shot versus how much was left—it’s all part of learning about producing.

But you went into script supervising initially looking toward directing, right?

Correct, and I still think that’s one of the best positions on a crew to learn about directing, because you’re the director’s right-hand person, besides the AD who’s managing the set and the daily functions. You actually have the luxury of wearing the headphones and monitoring the takes and printing the ones the director likes and interfacing with the actors and department heads if they need continuity information. You’re creating the script notes for the editor and taking down camera and sound information. By virtue of proximity, you’re directly exposed to the act of directing.

The list of films you script supervised is incredible. What would you say made you successful in that position?

Working in production is learning how to work with a lot of people, and after I did a couple of shoots, I think people could see that I was able to handle difficult situations. Beyond the complexities of production itself, creative people are complicated—they have a lot of quirks and issues, and you have to figure out how you’re going to make it work with them. You have to learn how to communicate well with the director, the producer, the talent, the crew—and if you can navigate that, then you start to build positive working relationships and producers pass your name along.

So when you transitioned into producing, how did you find your first film?

The woman that I was renting office space from, Jennifer Venditti, was a casting director, and she had an idea for a documentary she wanted to make, which ended up being the first feature documentary I produced, Billy the Kid. We both were very green, but by sheer perseverance of wanting to tell the love story of this 15-year-old kid in Maine, we finished the film together, and it went on to win festivals and was eventually bought by HBO. But simultaneously, a friend of mine, John Turturro, who I’d worked with when he was directing his own films, came to me with a screenplay he’d just had written, and he wanted to see if I could help him get it made. And I said, “You know who would be great for this? Heath Ledger,” who had just done Brokeback Mountain.

Part of producing is being able to put pieces together, and once I did some research, I realized that I’d met Heath’s agent when he was still a young producer and I was a script supervisor. So I emailed him until he accepted a meeting with me. I sent him the script. I sent all kinds of emails until he actually got Heath to read it.

You were persistent.

What happened was I was able to arrange a meeting with him, based on his schedule in Los Angeles. I convinced him that although it wasn’t a huge budget, it was an award-worthy role. And finally, Heath read it and wanted to do it. I had an investor interested in financing it for $6 million based on Heath’s name. This was all over the course of a year, and meanwhile I was still making Billy the Kid. But unfortunately, due to Heath Ledger’s tragic death, the movie fell apart. And then Billy the Kid won the first four film festivals it was in.

So that’s when I decided to keep making documentaries, because it was easier than spending a year and a half trying to get an actor attached and then raise the money for a major feature film. I could start and finish a documentary in that same amount of time and potentially sell it to HBO or another distributor.

Did you seek out projects at that point? Or did people bring them to you?
After Billy the Kid was released, people I’d worked for in the narrative film world, like Spike Jonze and Ellen Kuras, the DP, talked to me about their documentary projects.

So when people come to you with a project, how do you decide if it’s something you want to produce?
First, I generally try to figure out who the audience is. Who will love this movie. What is the value of it? Then, who would be the financial allies for a film of this nature? Who will invest in it? In evaluating the film, do I think it’s commercial? I go through this whole evaluation process of what I could contribute to making the film, how difficult or easy it might be, how valuable and rewarding it would be to make.

And then once I’ve decided that I can’t say no to the project, I start to figure out if there’s a like-minded film that’s already been made. And then I examine those films and figure out how they were financed. Oftentimes, because my network in the industry is so vast, I’ll know somebody affiliated with another film and can ask them directly—was it private equity or grants? Did you get any studio or broadcast money? Are there organizations out there? And then I go after similar kinds of financing.

How do you know the potential director is someone you want to work with? What are you looking for in this person?
Generally, when the director comes to me and I can tell that they have a real investment in the project, that they have a vision of what they think the story could be, that they have a depth of knowledge about filmmaking or storytelling, regardless of the genre, then I start to become inspired to support them in their endeavor. A topic in and of itself is not enough. You have to know that the person leading the creative vision already has an idea of how to tell the story, or they so deeply want to make this thing happen that you become seduced by their desire to tell a story they think will be meaningful. And believe in the message of the film.

What does an aspiring director need to know about your involvement in producing a documentary? In other words, when you say yes to something, how much of an investment of your time and energy is this?
It’s usually two years minimum, because you’re raising money, producing the shoots, finding the editor, supervising the edits—which in documentary, I’d say the average editorial time is about six months. You’re finding the tone and language for the story. Then finding the right composer, and graphic artist or title designers. You’re licensing music and archival photos or clips. And then you’re submitting to festivals for another six months and traveling to festivals and representing the film and looking for publicists or PR people. And then you’re selling the film and creating deliverables for the distributor.

One of the benefits of documentary is that it’s such a small group of people working to make a film that it’s also a very collaborative and creative process. So if there are people who you don’t think you can work with, then don’t—because it only gets worse. I had an actor tell me that getting married is like finding the person you want to mine gold with. He said in the pioneer days of the Gold Rush, you had to find this person who you thought could make the journey with you in your covered wagon, crossing rivers and unchartered territories, and going without eating and surviving all the brutal elements, and then panning for gold—and it’s all a big risk. And that’s film producing, too. You’re looking for someone to mine gold with.

Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

Elaine Stritch was widely considered a Broadway legend. She debuted in 1946 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1995. Stritch was nominated for eight Emmys (she won three), four Tonys, and one Grammy. In recent years, she was best known for her role as Alec Baldwin’s mother on 30 Rock.

Stritch during the filming of Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me

Property of Isotope Films

Stritch died in 2014 at the age of 89. From 2011 to 2013, Chiemi Karasawa shot footage of Ms. Stritch for what became the award-winning documentary, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me.

 

I love this film! What was the genesis of the project?
Thank you! I met Elaine on the set of Romance and Cigarettes, which was a John Turturro film. He cast her as James Gandolfini’s mother, and it just breaks my heart that they’re both no longer with us. But she had a day to do three scenes, and there’s just no way you can’t notice Elaine. She’s a very dramatic person, and I remember she had such a loud voice. She had this line, “Shut up,” to Steve Buscemi, and when she screamed it, it was like every sound stage in that whole studio could hear her. It was just astounding, the power of her voice, and her character.

 

Did you get to know her on the set?
A little, but not very well. But a couple years later, I saw her in my hair salon, and my hairdresser told me what a legendary theater actress she was. I only knew her as a character actor in some films and on 30 Rock, of course. And at the end of my haircut, he said, “You should be making a film about her.” And that’s when I thought, I wonder who would pay for that?

Serendipitously, a few weeks later I’m having lunch with a woman who I was a producer for on a short film six years earlier, and she asked me what I was working on. “Well, I’m doing this and I’m doing that, and my hairdresser wants me to make a film about Elaine Stritch,” and I kind of laughed. And she said, “Well, how much money do you need?”

Little did I know that this woman was a huge theater aficionado and adored Elaine Stritch. I said, “I don’t know, somewhere between $400,000 and $600,000,” and I thought that was going to be the end of that conversation. And she said, “I’ll give you $100,000. Do you want me to write you a check?”

 

That’s incredible.
Then a couple weeks later, I arranged a dinner with the investor and Elaine, and at the end of the dinner she said, “I’ll give you $200,000.” So it happened almost instantaneously.

 

What year was that?
I met Elaine in 2010, and we started shooting in 2011. She wouldn’t allow me to shoot her for four months, and I started to give up on it. At the time, she was doing A Little Night Music, and I thought it would be great to include footage of her in this Stephen Sondheim musical on Broadway with Bernadette Peters, but she absolutely refused to allow me access to her.

 

Why?
She said, “I have so much on my plate. The last thing I need is a camera following me around.” And I was crushed. I just thought, how am I going to show that this is a legendary diva if I don’t get to show her on Broadway? So I waited, and then one day she invited me to bring a cameraman to the salon. That was neutral territory, and she felt comfortable with the camera. That was the beginning.

 

Did you get close to her while you were shooting?
We became very friendly. It got to the point where she knew everything about my life, and I knew everything about her. And we would take her to the doctor—whatever she was doing. She just wanted friends, and we were handy and could hail cabs and carry groceries and help her get places.

 

How long from start to finish were you shooting her?
We shot her on and off for probably a year and a half. We’d shoot anywhere from two to five days a month. I’d be on the phone with her almost every day. It just depended on what was going on in her life, and what she would agree to let us do. But toward the end, we could come whenever we wanted. I started being able to just show up at the Carlyle Hotel and say, “We happened to be in the neighborhood. Can we come up and hang out with you?” And she’d say, “Sure, come up,” and she’d be in her underwear and her t-shirt, and we’d just shoot her reading the paper or having phone calls or doing her insulin.

 

This was just you and one cameraman?
Yes, because she didn’t like a boom operator to come around, and she wouldn’t let us set up any lights. So the parameters for how intimate it could be were very clear from the beginning. We put a shotgun mic on the camera, and then after a few months, she let me put a lavalier on her. That’s another thing about documentary—you have to let the subject dictate how you capture them. That was critical in this situation, because we would never have gotten the intimate footage if she didn’t feel comfortable.

 

How did she respond to the film when she first saw it?
Well, when I first cut the trailer, I made it very funny, and she just thought, “Oh my God, I’m adorable. I’m brilliant. I’m funny in every frame.” She kept saying that over and over, and I thought, she’s hooked! But when I showed her the final film, which was funny but also a contemplation of her life and mortality, she was a little overwhelmed. She wasn’t happy with it then. I think it was difficult to see herself playing herself, as opposed to a character.

But at the Tribeca premiere, she got a standing ovation, and I walked her to the podium, and she was in complete shock. So after that, she was grateful. I think she finally realized that audiences loved her for her—not just a character she was playing. A dear friend of hers told me she later said, “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done because it is the truest thing I’ve ever done.” I didn’t realize this at the time, because I didn’t know how much time she would have left, but it was a nice way for her to end her life. We went from city to city with the film, receiving all kinds of enthusiastic response, and her energy was failing by that time, so she just thought it was great that people would still applaud even if she wasn’t performing.

Stritch and her fans

Property of Isotope Films