Marielle Heller has built quite a reputation as a director based on two films; Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) and Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018). We attended a talk at the Tribeca Film Festival in which she was interviewed by the writer Jo Piazza. They talked about how she started as an actor and her transition to writing and directing. Of course she mentioned her next project, scheduled to come out later this year, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers in the film, but Heller was adamant that it’s not a biopic. She said it's a story about fathers and sons and based on journalist Tom Junod (Matthew Rhys) profile of Mr. Rogers.
“Mr. Rogers is not the lead character. You can’t create a narrative around Mr. Rogers because he’s too good...”
Heller talked about how she first adapted the graphic novel Diary of a Teenage Girl into a play. She played the lead part of Minnie (Bel Powley in the film) on stage.
Eventually I realized I wasn't done with that story. I wrote it as a screenplay and I wasn't planning on directing that at first. I thought I was going to write it and somebody else would direct it. And the more I went, the more I was like, I can't let anyone else touch this. This is my baby. I spent all told about 10 years on that project between adapting it for the theater, adapting it for the film, and then getting all of the work it took to get the movie made and finishing it.
It sure paid off as that film launched her career as a director and led to Can You Ever Forgive Me, a departure from the very sexual story of Diary. Yet she was fascinated by the writer Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) and her story and wanted to make a film set in New York, her adopted home. Heller grew up in the Bay Area where Diary is set.
I think nobody knew what to expect about what I would want to do next. But the fact that I wanted to make a movie about a 51 year old lesbian cat lady with no sex in it. There was something about Lee, I just knew her and found her to be so relatable. She's so smart and so funny and just somebody who you would pass on the street and you wouldn't give much of a look to. I lived in New York for 14 years, so I felt like I also longed for this time in New York where artists could actually afford to live in Manhattan.