Lana Wachowski: As the creator of "The Matrix" became herself
Lana Wachowski first time appeared in front of the camera on July 26, 2012: a charming woman with bright pink dreadlocks and in a translucent dress smiled and said: "Hi, I'm Lana." "Hello, I'm Tom," "Hello, I'm Andy," - Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski, sitting on the sides, introduced themselves. For the greetings, the three of them needed two doubles, which could easily have been hidden on the montage - but no. There is a feeling that one of them just liked the sound of her name, so why not say it twice.
The world looked at them with a drooping jaw - until recently, Lana was known as Larry, and they with Andy in Hollywood and the press were called exclusively "Wachowski brothers" and "creators of" The Matrix "." Now, along with Tom Tykwer, who joined them, they presented a long trailer for their "Cloud Atlas" - a phantasmagoric nonlinear epic according to best-selling David Mitchell about the fact that everything is connected and good is more evil. The directors obviously felt the need to explain themselves, but only about the film: all three (and the producers who had invested in the ambitious project) were concerned not what they looked like, but how to explain to the viewers of Atlas what they were about to see. A few months later, Lana Wachowski will come to the premiere of the film with all the same fuchsia dreadlocks, in a fitted dress and funny pantyhose in peas - and this will be her first exit on the red carpet in twelve years.
Eighteen years earlier, Larry and Andy Wachowski tried to explain and sell the scenario application called “Connection” to producer Dino De Laurentiz - neonuar about two risky girls and a suitcase of money. Later, Svyaz will become a cult and become a gay classic, but in '95, the seventy-six-year-old De Laurentis squinted slyly: "Are they lesbians?" - and the actress, intimidated by agents, flatly refused the devil knows what roles in the first movie the devil knows who.
As Lana will later recall, the studios vied with the young directors to advise one and the same thing: to change the sex of one of the heroines to the male and turn the film into a conventional thriller about adultery - then everything will be fine, no one will faint. There are still not so many films in Hollywood, where the passion of two women was not filmed from a male gaze position, and the actresses still suffer from a lack of bold leading roles - so you can imagine what sort of insolence the script of "Connection" looked in the mid-nineties. Fortunately, Gina Gershon subscribed to the project, which was nothing scary after Shougelz, and, after much persuasion, Jennifer Tilly. Show off "Hitchcock", "Connection" begins with a claustrophobic plan in the closet with an associated woman. This straightforward image, according to Larry Wachowski, symbolized the simplest idea: we all hide to some extent behind the closed door, not only gays and lesbians - and we all need to find the courage to get out of there.
The only transgender female director in Hollywood made a coming-out, seemingly without the slightest effort: she just changed her pants to her skirt, dyed her hair, and began to smile
Svyaz was the first and last Wachowski film (until recently) that they were interviewed for. Having experienced the first side effects of fame, the directors prescribed in their next studio contract that under no circumstances would they communicate with the press, attend premieres and spend several months of their lives moving from one day talk show studio to another. This contract was attached to the promising fantasy project "The Matrix", so that the bosses of Warner Bros., satisfied with the way Svyaz entered, shrugged and agreed.
The problem with Wachowski, except that they almost did not give interviews and did not appear in public, has always been inseparable from one another. Yes, they looked like a comic duet of extremes - a modest bespectacled man and a fat fellow. But everyone who had dealt with the brothers noted that they did not just pick up each other’s cues, and often simply spoke in unison. Their father recalled that in childhood one always thought out insane tasks, and the second how to translate them into reality. It is not difficult to guess that Larry was the first. But in all that related to the worldview, these two were surprisingly unanimous: they could discuss with equal enthusiasm a new copy of The Godfather with a pint of beer with Roger Ebert, who was accidentally met, and were never caught snobbery, even if their interlocutor did not know the films neither Roy Andersson nor Apichatpong Verasetakun. Very non-Hollywood, very simple - such was the verdict of all who came across them.
Industry and journalists took such a disregard for Hollywood etiquette for being unsociable, and even the cliché “pathologically shy” appeared in the press. In fact, the Wachowski brothers simply wanted to have the opportunity, as before, to go to the favorite comic book store on the corner - without fear that they would immediately line up to see what they were eating for breakfast. The Egalitarian demarche of directors, as well as quotes from Baudrillard, packed with guys in the Hoodie into the main blockbuster of the 90s, were, of course, interpreted as manifestations of strangeness, which must necessarily come bundled with some shameful secret.
If at that time it was accepted to crack archives of major studios, then we would surely have learned many unflattering epithets and amazing opinions about the eccentric directors with whom the producers, the stage workers and the pool of Hollywood reviewers exchanged behind their backs. While the directors were silent, their names in various ways were bowed down in the columns of professional gossips. The culprit was the painful divorce of Larry Wachowski with his school love, Tea Blum (in addition to concealing income, she accused him of "deception throughout family life"), and the allegedly convincing evidence of eyewitnesses who contradicted each other.
The boom broke out after the premiere of "The Matrix Reloaded", to which Larry Wachowski came with a noticeable make-up, female earrings and his future second wife Karin Winslow (her then-husband, with whom she was holding the BDSM club, sarcastically noticed that under the trousers of the director probably there were lace panties). Everybody, from the columnist Chicago Sun-Times to the visitors of the IGN gaming forum, became desperately worried - was it true that Larry Wachowski decided to cut off his dick. At this point, Wachowski was already Lana for loved ones: the panicked fear of the coming out was left behind, as was the prolonged depression on the set of the sequel to The Matrix, when Larry left to swim in the sea every morning in the hope that he would be eaten by a shark. Cherry on the cake was a snapshot of the paparazzi at the Los Angeles airport, where Lana got into the frame in infantile culottes and with a clarified square.
The only transgender female director in Hollywood made a public coming out at 43, seemingly without the slightest effort: she just changed her pants to her skirt, dyed her hair, and began to smile. Exactly the same in the early 2000s, plucking up courage and talking to anxious parents, Lana came to the set of "The Matrix: Reboot" in a dress - as if nothing had happened, not a single facial muscle showed how many years of fear, deception and bitterness was worth it. Suddenly it turned out that the world would not collapse from this, and those who turn away or snort "and what was silent for so long?" Simply have no heart.
Lana Wachowski speaks at the Human Rights Campaign
It seems that their movies are exactly the same ease given to them. If you don’t look behind the scenes of their films, Lana and Andy’s career seems to be a steady success story: they recently painted walls for money and read Roger Corman’s memoirs “How to make hundreds of films and not lose a penny”, and now spend hundreds of millions on a breathtaking parable where Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Ben Wishaw portray a chain of rebirths through the ages.
In fact, this is a story of overcoming - both personal and professional, which for Wachowski are obviously inseparable (in order to remove the Cloud Atlas, both laid their own houses). Lana spoke openly about her childhood, search for gender identity and experienced traumas only a couple of years ago, after long hesitations, giving a stunning half-hour speech at a charity dinner organized by the Human Rights Campaign. In fact, she talked about how difficult it is to find your voice and speak to them in a world where everyone has a label for you in advance. In a world where the potential of films is measured through existing and similar ones, Wachowski fundamentally wanted to shoot like no one else had ever shot, and in spite of the system they were looking for ways to tell stories that no one believed. Studio bosses didn’t immediately accept even The Matrix, a film that is now being studied in camera faculties and which immediately after its release, put the main pop philosopher of our time, Slava иižek, on the shelves.
Tomorrow, Lana and Andy Wachowski's Climbing Jupiter will be released worldwide, which you can roll your eyes to beforehand, but you can understand it, especially in the context of all their work. Throughout her life, Wachowski is filming that everything is not as it seems - it does not matter whether it is the story of a fatal gangster girlfriend who fell in love with a girl immersed in artificial sleep of humanity or a hereditary transgalactic princess in the form of polomoyki. And the fact that opening your eyes is sometimes painful, but very important, and by sacrificing yourself (or, for example, the secret of your personal life), you can help thousands. And if you look closely, everything is connected, nothing disappears forever, gender and genres do not matter, and love always wins. And even if all this seems silly, it’s enough to look at Lana Wachowski: she knows what she is talking about - so why don't we listen to her.
Photo: cover photo via Shutterstock, 1 via Flickr