Writer & Director Julie Hebért celebrates sheroes with "Look What She Did" - Hosted by Heather Lenz

Our special guest is Julie Hebért. Julie was born in south Louisiana. She has written and directed dozens of plays for some of the most daring theaters in the country including Steppenwolf, LaMaMa, the Magic Theater, Los Angeles Theater Center and many more. Her plays have received many accolades including two PEN Awards for Drama. After her musical drama Ruby’s Bucket of Blood was optioned by Showtime and Whoopi Goldberg, Julie wrote the screenplay, which was made into a film starring Angela Bassett. It was the first of many scripts Julie has written for film and television. She has written and directed for several hit television shows including Nashville, The Good Wife, Boss, Blue Bloods, The West Wing, ER, Numb3rs and most recently the Emmy Award-winning American Crime, where she is an Executive Producer. Julie has received grants from the NEA, TCG, AT&T New Plays, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Alexander Gerbode Foundation, and the California Arts Commission for writing, directing, and inter-disciplinary arts. Julie is also an activist who founded “Look What SHE Did!”, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that creates short films and events featuring female storytellers celebrating women who inspire them. Today we’ll discuss “Look What She Did” and how Julie is helping to bring to light stories of remarkable women who have changed the world. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Today, we are joined by our guest host, filmmaker Heather Lenz, best known for directing and producing the Sundance documentary Kusama Infinity. Our special guest today is Julie Abair. Julie was born in South Louisiana. She's written and directed dozens of plays for some of the most daring theaters in the country, including Steppenwolf, La Mama, The Magic Theater, Los Angeles Theater Center, and many more. Her plays have been received, have received many accolades, including two Penn Awards for drama. After her musical drama, Ruby's Bucket of Blood was optioned by Showtime and Whoopi Goldberg, Julie wrote the screenplay, which was made into a film starring Angela Bassett. It was the first of many scripts Julie has written for film and television. She's written and directed for several hit television shows, including Nashville, The Good Wife, Boss, Blue Bloods, The West Wing, ER, Numbers, and most recently the Emmy Award-winning American Crime, where she's an executive producer. Julie has received grants from the NEA, TCG, AT ⁇ T New Plays, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Alexander Garbodi Foundation, and the California Arts Commission for Writing, Directing, and Interdisciplinary Arts. Julie is also an activist who founded Look What She Did, a 501c3 nonprofit organization that creates short films and events featuring female storytellers celebrating women who inspire them. Today we'll discuss Look What She Did and how Julie is helping to bring to light stories of remarkable women who have changed the world.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Well, thank you so much, Claire, for the lovely introduction and thank you, Julie, for being here with us today. For anyone who hasn't heard about Look What She Did, can you please tell us what it is in your own words and what inspired you to start the organization?

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Oh, hi. Hi, and thank you both. What a lovely introduction. I appreciate that so much.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Oh, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

So Look What She Did is uh we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary, which we started at 10 years ago uh in my backyard. And it is a small nonprofit where we make short films about amazing women you've probably never heard of. And we do this by having a woman tell the story. So we get we find a woman, get her on camera, and she tells us the story with her own passion about a woman that uh inspires her, that has meant something very important in her life, and then she tells that story, and we do it in about three or four minutes. So we have over 160 of those films at this point, um, and we're making more. We just I I the the original vision was a thousand films as a kind of testament to female achievement through history. Um, so we're on our way with 160. So we've got quite a ways to go, but we we never seem to run out of uh material. There's we never seem to run out of amazing women who have not been properly celebrated. What started this? Let's see. So um how it started was I went to jury duty, downtown Los Angeles, in a building named after a woman I had never heard of, Clara Shortridge Fultz. So my friend Jill Klein, she'd been to jury duty recently, and we're like, who is this woman that has a 17-story building named after her? And we've never heard of her. We look her up and she absolutely blows our mind. And we can't believe we've never heard of her. So Clara Shortridge Fultz was a young woman from Oklahoma, got married, had five children, her husband carried them all to California and then abandoned them. So in the 1880s, I believe it was, something like that. Here's this young woman in her 20s with five kids, no family in a new state, um, and she decides she wants to go to law school. So she applies to law school, they um they let her in for 10 days, and then they say she's too distracting to the other, to the other students. She's too distracting to the men because she's a female. So she sues them. And it takes everything she's got, it takes like five years for the suit, but she wins. But by the time she wins the right to attend law school, she doesn't have the money to pay for it anymore. So Clara Shortridge Fultz simply takes the bar exam, passes it, and becomes the first female lawyer in California without ever going to law school. This is how bright this woman is. Um, and that's not her major accomplishment, I'll just say. That's just the landscape of Clara's life. She then gets a job as a low-level prosecutor. She can't get hired anywhere. She just like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that happened to her. But um, so she gets a job as a low-level prosecutor, and she's prosecuting debtors and drunks and prostitutes and just, you know, tiny little, and and she's putting everybody in jail, she realizes, because nobody knows their rights. They have even when they are they have the right to get away, um, you know, they don't use it because they don't know about it. So Clara Shortridge Fultz envisions the public defender program. And then she lobbies to have it turned into law in California. She lobbies to have it turned into law in New York and all across the country. Now we're in the 19 teens, and you know, she's also a suffragette, but she is basically the mother of our public defender program. Um, and that's why we should celebrate her, that's why we should know about her. She also, in her later life, in her 80s, became the first woman to run for governor uh in California. So she was an amazing woman. And and Jill and I thought, how in the world are we not? We've we've educated women, we we're we're feminists. How did we not hear about this woman? Uh, what can we do? So ultimately we came up with, well, we, it's a vast problem to adjust a history, women's history. But what we can do is start small and immediately in the backyard. We uh borrow a camera, we we get my friend uh Courtney to to join us, and I interview Jill talking about Clara Shortridge Fults, and we put it on YouTube. And that's the beginning of look what she did. Um, we we had such a good time doing this in my backyard. Just, you know, um, I don't know, it was just we just did it on a weekend, we borrowed the camera, we we had this wonderful afternoon laughing and telling this story and put it on YouTube. We wanted to do it again. So a few months later, we did it again, again with a borrowed camera in my backyard, and we invited five or six other women to tell stories of women we'd never heard of that blew their minds. Um, and uh so so what we what we don't do is tell somebody who to talk about because we want to hear about uh new women that we don't know about. So we invite them, these five or six women, and say, bring us a story of an amazing woman that really means something to you, and we're gonna tell it. And then, and then so that's what we did. And we we put that on YouTube, it started to get traction. So my friend Farrell Levy, who's a professional editor, edited these for us. We had them on YouTube and we started to get traction. Um, so ultimately we became a nonprofit about a year and a half later, so we could apply for grants and get some support so we could pay our crew to do these. Um, and as I said, now we have over 160 10 years later.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

This is such an inspiring story, and I love that you just, you know, made it happen, um, you know, in your backyard with your friends and borrowed equipment and everything. And um, these are you you well, you've talked a little bit about how many you've made, you know, by now. And these are short videos. Could you talk a little bit about the length in general, how long they typically are, and and you know, the pros and cons of making short videos?

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Sure. So um we make them, they're all under five minutes. Uh they started off at about three minutes, and over time we've grown to about four minutes, four and a half minutes, sometimes depending on the um on the film itself. So what we do is is, you know, we can we can film six interviews in a day in the backyard, first of all, because we film in daylight. So we don't have to do very much lighting setup, which saves a lot of time. But we spend about an hour on each interview. So our raw footage is somehow less than an hour. It's probably about 30 or 40 minutes. Um, and then we edit that down to uh, you know, as I said, about four minutes. And the benefit of that is more people will see short videos than and we can make, as I said, you know, part of part of my vision and intention for this is to um make a non-controversial statement about the impact of women through history. In other words, the more we can do, this wall of stories is proof that women have been making world-changing um um events and activities, they've been doing world-changing work all through history, and they have not, and they've been left out of the history books. So the short films means that we can make more of them. And uh a lot of people have come, a lot of creative people have come and sort of looked at our website and go, oh, this would make a great movie, this would make a great movie. And and I encourage them, you know, there should be a whole movie about Clara Short Rich folks and about most of these women. Um but but our intention is different. Our intention is to keep it short and so that we can say there are so many stories out there because it was born out of this feeling of why don't we know about these women? And we want to know about all of them.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

I love that. I'd and I'd also um really like to give our listeners an idea of the wide range of amazing videos produced by Look What She Did by discussing a few of them. One of the videos I really enjoyed features Rachel Feldman discussing Lily Ledbetter. And I would love it if you could just tell us a little bit about that one. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

So um Lily Ledbetter um is uh equal pay, the sort of the face of equal pay for women. She was um born in a small, very small town, uh, very poor family. Um, worked very, but she was a smart girl, wanted to go to college, nobody would let her. They said, girls don't go to college. So she started working at um uh HR block, and within months she was uh managing eight HR blocks, but they weren't paying her overtime, they weren't paying her appropriately, and she saw an opportunity to work for a Goodyear tire company and um in uh a development program where they would where they would train her to be a manager. Mostly it was mentioned Lily was the only woman who got into this program, but by this time she was married, she had two kids, and and she was trying to, she thought this could be the best paying job around. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try to do this. So she got the job. She she did went to the development program, she worked there almost 20 years. Um, and right before she was going to retire at 19 years and nine months, somebody slipped her a note that let her know that she had been paid about half what the men doing the same job had been paid for her entire career in Goodyear. And it just offended her deeply. She sued. Ultimately, she won the trial with a three million dollar judgment, but then Goodyear appealed, and uh they won. She they then by then, you know, Lily is the face of uh equal pay for equal women. Um, I mean, for yes, for equal work. And uh so the the people who are with her, the the lawyers who are with her and helping her go to the Supreme Court. They take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, um, and she lost five to four. But Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke to her from the bench and said, Lily, there's another way you can change the law, go to Congress. And Lily did. She went to Congress, she lobbied, she began, she never saw a cent of money for all the what she was owed, for all the betrayal that had happened to her. She never saw a penny, she never won uh any money for herself, but she worked tirelessly as the face of this, as a real woman, as a woman who had been grieved. Uh, and she uh ultimately when Obama got into office, that was the first piece of legislation he signed, was the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. So that's Lily Ledbetter. She uh we honored her a few years ago at a Look What She Did brunch. Um, she passed away last year, I believe. Um she was the most gracious. I mean, just such a grounded woman from a from such a sort of um, you know, a small town and and and uh without overcoming so many obstacles, never getting anything for herself or her family, and still being dedicated her entire life to uh, you know, equal pay and making that difference. She made a difference. She did it, you know. So Rachel Feldman has made a movie about uh Lily. Sorry, Patricia Clarkson is out right now, it's going around the um the festivals right now.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Well, it's such an inspiring story, but also such a heartbreaking story. And I do um commend you for for telling our story because I think it's so important for women to understand that so many of their rights are because of these activists that came before them that, you know, fought on their behalf with no benefit to themselves, just strictly for the people coming after them. So it's really just a you know incredible story. Um another one of the videos I really enjoyed. I mean, there's so many, they're all wonderful, but another one I really enjoyed was hearing Kate Rigg discuss Patsy Mink. And for anyone who doesn't know who Patsy Mink is, can you please tell us a little bit about her and about that video?

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Oh, yeah, Kate Rigg is amazing. She's she's uh she's so uh she's one of the best storytellers. She's just so dynamic. Um, she's actually done two of them for us. Um, and she talks about Patsy Mink. Patsy Mink, uh, Patsy Mink is the woman behind Title IX. Patsy Mink made Title IX happen, which has affected the lives of millions, millions of women since it was passed in 1972. Uh Patsy Mink was born in Hawaii. She wanted to be a doctor. She uh ultimately was accepted to the University of Nebraska to um as an undergraduate, um, where she was told she couldn't join the clubs with the other white students, she couldn't live in the dorm with the other whites, with white students. So she started, she couldn't be in the student union, all that thing because she was a woman of color. She was Japanese American. Um, and so she started her own student union. She got all the students, the of color, the parents of the students of color. Um, she got the uh local businesses run and owned by people of color, and they did their own student union and they fought to get the University of Nebraska integrated, and they stopped that segregation. But um, so then let's see, she goes on to in in pre-med, and but no, let's see. So here's what happens with Patsy. So she's doing all this and she realized and she applies to medical school, nobody will take her. They won't take her, they won't take her, they won't take her. She says, you know, the best thing I can do is become a lawyer and get this law changed. So ultimately she does. She goes back to Hawaii, uh, becomes a lawyer, and then because she was married in, I don't know, I think Philadelphia or something like that, they wouldn't let her take the bar uh in Hawaii because her residence was there. She just had every obstacle put in front of her. This beautiful tiny little woman uh overcame every obstacle with just, you know, I don't know, steadfastness, just determination. Um she got herself elected to Congress. She was in Congress for many, many years. That's where she fought to have Title IX passed, which of course says no one can be discriminated against on the basis of sex in any institution that is receiving federal assistance. So that included medical schools, that includes all the athletics, um, just an amazing accomplishment. Um she then, I think at some point she was a secretary um in the cabinet. She then also went back and was re-elected into Congress. She, in fact, as Kate says in this in the film, uh, the last time she was elected was after she died. That's how much people loved and respected Patsy Mink. She, just this amazing woman who has made a difference in the lives of millions of people, um, and and not a super well-known name.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, her story is also just completely incredible and inspiring. Everything that she accomplished after having doors closed in her face. And yeah, it's just amazing. And I also, although you already said it, I do want to agree with you that Kate Riggs' enthusiasm in telling the story is just absolutely, completely contagious. So, um, with that said, another great story is about Madame C. J. Walker. And in that case, the storyteller is Wendy Calhoun. And could you please share with our audience a little bit about who Madam C.J. Walker is and what made her so special?

SPEAKER_02 19:56

Madam C. J. was um a black woman born in a plantation in the South. Her parents had been enslaved on the same plantation. Um, when she was uh a little older, she moved. I don't remember exactly what happened in her early life, but she moved to be with her brother. She had a little girl who was a single mom, and she moved to be with her brothers. I think maybe in St. Louis, something they were barbers. So she was working in the barbershop with her brothers, and her hair started to fall out. Um, and she was a young woman. So she started experimenting with uh the products her brother was using to sort of you know repair and save her own hair. And then what she did was she figured it out. She figured out what to do. She has no chemistry degree, she's not really educated, but she figures out the best products for the hair of black women. Um, and then she starts her own business. She starts uh you know selling these products, she starts um using these products to help black women um have more beautiful hair. And uh basically, Madame CJ grows this business and grows this community because um what she didn't only sell, she started to uh engage the women whose hair she fixed, she engaged them to go out and sell for her. So she created this community, and Madame CJ became the first female millionaire in America, bar none. She became the first female millionaire in America doing this. Um, and then she also with this, so she had this uh this great reach. And she would convene everybody, all the black women who worked with her, she'd convene them once a year, and they would talk about they would talk about their business, of course. They were entrepreneurs, and they and she made each one of them an entrepreneur, and they would they would talk about their business, but they would also talk about their lives. Um, and so there was this this sense, even though she was a corporation, a very successful corporation, there was this sense of caring for her community. So as uh now we're again like in the 19 teens or something, and there's a civil rights movement and there's marches, and you know, she went to now as a as a sort of important female part of the black community nationally, she went with Booker T Washington to the White House to talk about anti-lynching laws. Um, and Madam CJ basically because she was wealthy, um, made a huge donation to the NAACP, the largest donation up until that point, which I think was$5,000. So she put her money back into her community. She used her brains to create not only wealth for herself, but wealth for everybody who worked for her. And then she gave it back into her community as uh, you know, I think it's a lesson for some of the very wealthy um entrepreneurs that we have today. Um, the value of giving back to your community.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Well, it's another super inspiring story. One thing I love about this video is that Wendy, the storyteller, says that it's what you do that makes you beautiful. And so we certainly see that. With her. And finally, another one of the videos I'd like to highlight is about Marsha P. Johnson. And in that case, the storyteller is Brie Geiger.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Oh, yeah. So this is one of our um more recent films. Um, Brie tells the story of Marsha P. Johnson, um, who was a uh black transgender woman born in New Jersey in the 50s, I think, and moved to New York in the 60s. And um Marsha was an activist at a time and showed such courage at a time when uh trans people were being arrested left and right, just for no other reason than they were cross-dressing in the street. So she was there with uh Stonewall riot that happened in the mid-60s. She was one of the leaders. So Marcia had the point of view that if the police and the powers that be were going to use guns and were going to use force and violence, then they were going to fight back. And they did, and she did. She also created um uh with no money either. I mean, she had no money at all and no support. People didn't even understand transgender at the time. They were um, she was simply called a drag queen and she called herself a drag queen. Um she also created out of nothing um a um uh a haven for young transgender people, young queer people who were coming to New York because they were all leaving their small towns, which is what she did. She left her family didn't understand, her small town didn't understand, so to go to New York in the hope of finding a community, which Marcia was the leader of. And she created um a place, it's called Star, S-T-A-R. Um, she created uh a place that was uh a safe landing spot for queer youths to come in in New York. Ultimately, she was um she died in her mid-40s, and there's controversy about her death. She her body was found in the Hudson River, um, was officially labeled a suicide. No one believed it was a suicide, they believed she was killed. Um, and so she is a kind of martyr to that cause. Brie tells the story. Brie is another really great person on camera, um, and uh uh tells the story about how important Marsha P. Johnson is to her. Um and she and Marsha said the P in her name, Marsha P. Johnson stands for pay it no mind. Like, leave, leave, don't, don't take the bait when it's not going to be helpful, and stand up for your rights when you need to.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Well, again, another super inspiring story. And um just because I did have a note here, um, I wanted to add that Marsha was born in 1946. And another thing I love about this video is Brie, the storyteller. Um, she says that her pronouns are her, she, queen, and anything else you can say behind her back. And I just absolutely love that. I think it's just um, you know, it's just great. So um now that we've provided listeners with a sampling of some of the great stories they can find at your website. Can you please talk a little bit about how you pick the subjects and the storytellers?

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Oh yeah, sure. So um in the beginning, I had to beg people to do it, it's actually because you know, no a lot of people don't want to be on camera and all of that. Um so we would we would sort of gather whoever we could get to show up on the weekend and and tell us about something. Um but as we grew, that changed. And people said, Oh, I've got a really I've got a I've got a woman I want to tell you about. And so, so um eventually it got to be so big we had to have kind of we would have guest selection committees and we would have people, we you know, we would um, for example, we're doing a series on um the activists in the Central Valley during the pandemic. Um, and so we had people send in just from their phones, like a 60-second um video of who they'd want to talk about, and then we had a guest selection committee go through those and sort of choose the people who would be in the series. So we've we've had to get to a point where we created a selection process. But what we haven't done is we never tell anybody who to talk about. Um, we we we find the woman who says, I want to tell you a story, and then we let her choose and tell us who she's passionate about. And to me, that makes all the difference in our films. Um, because occasionally we've had a group say, Oh, we want uh we want to raise up this woman, and we've got somebody who's gonna talk about her, and it becomes like um you know, it becomes like a little school project, and we don't want that. We want somebody to say, I love this woman because she changed my life. We want, we, and that captures the passion and the relevance of the the actions of women uh from the past and actually, you know, modern day as well, but it captures the relevance of those actions on the lives of real living women. It captures the idea that we need to see it so we can be it. And um, so so we never tell anybody who to talk about, and uh I just always try to to um put them into a very grounded, uh heartfelt situation where they can tell us the woman's story, but also tell us why she's important to the storyteller, why we need to hear about her, why she's um someone who's gonna make a difference even now. And in that spirit, um, in order to try to sort of uh ground everybody, we do it in the backyard. We try to get this feeling of um you're in the backyard, you're at a party, uh, you're hanging out, and somebody says, Oh my God, have you heard about so-and-so? I have to tell you about this woman. She's amazing. So we want to get that kind of off-the-cuff casual feeling. And that informs the filmmaking values. So I don't worry about continuity if somebody's got their glasses on and then they don't have their glasses on, or if they need to read from a piece of paper or something falls over. Um, we we let all that happen. I love that stuff. I love it when they crack themselves up or they're embarrassed about how much they love this woman. And so we we cut in um moments of no speaking, we cut in moments when they're with their hands, or that kind of thing. So I really want to get capture as a filmmaker that casual feeling that you're really talking to somebody um who's telling you something meaningful from their life.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

I love that. And um, how do you pick the directors and others who are involved with actually creating the videos?

SPEAKER_02 30:18

Well, uh in the beginning, like I said, in the beginning, we had no money, so it was all volunteer. So uh whoever would volunteer could do it. I did most of them because I was free. Um, and then we had it, we were dedicated to uh paying people. So we would, you know, we I gave chances to other people, gave chances to direct to women who had only ever directed in the theater or um to uh editors or producers, and and that they'd watched me do so many of them that they were, you know, able to do a few of them them themselves. And then as we grew, other directors came forward and they were willing to do it either on a volunteer basis or um or you know, for the very small feeds that we can offer. Um so we've grown now over the 10 years to have uh more a sort of army of women, um, you know, directors, editors, uh, sound people, all of that. You know, we've got this amazing crew that have been with us, and they they work for very, very, very, very little money, um, even though most of them are professional filmmakers. Um, and now we have um, I basically retired from executive director and artistic director in the last year or so, and we have um new leadership. Um Debra D Deborah uh JT Padilla is our executive director, and Sarah Moshman is a young filmmaker. I think you've interviewed her. So Sarah Moshman is our new artistic director. So she's taken over the responsibility of directing the films and has is doing a marvelous job. I mean, just really so happy to. I feel like I was looking for Sarah from for a long time. You know, somebody, it turns out that we started in 2014. And in 2014, Sarah was making her first documentary film, and she got a couple of women in a car with a camera and went across the country looking for stories of amazing women we never heard of. So we were basically on the same mission at the same time, and then we we sort of came together a couple of years ago when we found each other, and she's taken on the leadership of look what she did. Um, so she's she's in charge now of uh directing most of them and inviting other directors in. We've had some marvelous directors.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Yeah, and you are correct. We did uh do a podcast with her. So if anyone's interested, they could check that out. And I am wondering, um, how much do you estimate uh these days that each video costs to make? And how many are you typically able to make in a year? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

So in the beginning, as I said, we did it, we had no money. So we just sort of figured it out. I was working in television so that I could, when we turned into a nonprofit, I could fund us for a little while to sort of um, you know, pay for equipment or pay the crew and that sort of thing. But eventually we were able, after we, after we became a 501c, we were able to to apply for and start to get grants. So all of our budget comes from grants and individual donations. We do a big push for donations in usually in March and Women's History Month. Um, and so we get, you know, probably half of our budget from individual donations and then half from uh a pastiche of grants. Um, let's see, what was the other question you got there? How much does it cost now? So it um uh in the beginning it was it was so small, and then people would ask me, they said, Well, I want to fund this. How you know how much does it cost? And I would say, well, you know, we're we're making it work for you know$750, which of course is insane and and and unsustainable. So now what we've figured out is it costs about$5,000 to make each film. Um, and that includes the the payment for the crew and the payment for the leadership and all that. So if we if we get$5,000 for for each film, then we can sustain ourselves. Um and with that in mind, we make um something like 10 to 12 a year. So we do um that's what we've done last year. We just uh last summer we shot 10 or yeah, 10 or 11 um uh new films, which are in the process of post right now. Um we have a series on the Olympics, um, because the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles, and so we're getting our our series ready for that uh period, so we can promote that at the same time. Um and we um yeah, and we so we shot we did and we do that over one weekend. We as I said, we can get 10 to 12 interviews over a weekend, but then it takes us a long time to do all the posts because everybody's got other jobs, and so we're so we're in the process of that. So I would say 10 to 12 a year.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

Well, it's um you know, it's amazing, and it's great how you've been able to add to your collection, and it just gets better and better. Uh, can you please tell us a little bit about the other work you do in the creative field?

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Oh, um shifting gears here. Yeah. So I started uh I started as a playwright and a director in the theater and did that for about 15 years. Um, and then I moved to Los Angeles and started working in television, uh, mostly and did some films, but mostly in television as a both a writer and a director. So I've done that for another 20 years. Um and uh and now, given the difficulties that everybody in Hollywood is facing right now, I'm um fortunate to um have another creative line that I'm pursuing, which is I'm I'm writing fiction. I've just finished the second draft of uh a memoir. So I'm writing prose. I've been doing prose for the last, I don't know, 10 years since around the same time I started look what she did. I thought like this is all that's where I started was writing prose. And so I'm doing that now. I just finished this book, which is um a memoir about lifelong recovery from sexual assault. Um, and so I'm about to work with an editor, and then we would, you know, look for a publisher after that. But I will say that in 2014, that that's part of it, it it harkens back to look what she did because in 2014 I had done, I was uh sexually assaulted many, many, many years ago in 1977, and I had done some work uh with leading writing workshops, with survivors of sexual assault, and I had done various other things. And I was trying to figure out in 2014 what I wanted to do to help women. Um, I wanted to do something, and I somehow knew that um, I guess I thought I could be an advocate. You know, I'd worked with the rape center in um in Santa Monica, and I thought I could be an advocate and help girls and women who had just suffered this to go through the process, but I knew that would be so painful for me, and I would be constantly in that world. So, so what so look what she did came out of that same impulse to help women by doing something positive, something, as I said, it's non-controversial what these women have achieved. It can't be denied that these women did these things. And so uh that's how I threw my my energy and the you know, the love I have for women and the compassion I have for women and what they have to face in this unequal world. I put that behind, look what she did in 2014, and that became my way of um trying to make a difference for women who face just really terrible odds, lots of obstacles that um that men don't face. So it uh so that's what I'm doing. I'm writing prose. Um, I'm I'm finishing that memoir and I've um published a few short stories. I'm very interested in getting back to short story writing. I'm still answering the phone if somebody wants to call. And you know, we have I have some projects that are sort of in the pipeline in Hollywood and television. We'll see if those pan out. It's very difficult. So um, but so meantime, I'm keeping my creativity flowing by writing prose.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Wow, it's just amazing to hear everything you're doing. And I really applaud you for, you know, tackling such, you know, challenging, painful subject matter that obviously, you know, far too many women have you know first-hand experience with. But, you know, as you said, in addition, everything you've done with Look What She Did is just such an inspiring database for anyone who goes there, you can just find all these incredible, uplifting stories. So um, I'm also curious, as a creative, what is the biggest obstacle you faced and how did you overcome it?

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Oh, you know, the biggest obstacle is always uh getting funding for your projects, is is getting the gatekeepers to say yes to original work. Um, whether it's in television or getting a play produced or uh getting your book published, whatever. It's about, you know, because you can do the work and you can really believe in the work and it can mean everything to you. And it can even be excellent work, it can be the best, most original, strong work, but still having to then pitch it and and and get somebody to understand it, you know, from just simply doing a pitch or talking. That to me has always been the obstacle. Um, so over the years, I have learned how to pitch, um, as much as it does not come naturally to me. Um, and uh and so I do my best, you know, to to try to use a piece of my brain to think about how best to um convince someone to support this work that I care about so much.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Yeah, definitely getting the money, that's always such a challenge. And um, what advice do you have for filmmakers who are just starting out in their careers?

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Start small and immediately. That's that's just keep working, whatever it takes. If it's a borrowed camera, if it's your backyard, if it's your your story that you're writing that's going to get published in a tiny uh online magazine, do it. Keep working, keep, keep working. And and and you know, because it's so easy to get overwhelmed by the obstacles and the difficulty of of achieving anything. Um, just keep just just keep working. I feel like there's like a moment, there's moments in time when the spotlight of the world just just sort of may pass over you. And when it passes over you, when there's a moment where somebody goes, Hey Heather, what are you doing? You need to be doing something. You need to say, I'm working on this thing that I love so much, and here it is, and I've got this. And you can't be uh sort of waiting for the break. You can't be waiting for someone to help you, you have to be in the action of creation when the opportunity comes. And and I think that's why that there's some kind of uh uh saying about 98% uh sweat and 2% uh I don't know what the saying is, but the idea is that you have to be um creating and doing your work and growing. The process is the most important thing, and then you work for the opportunity, you work for the chance, you work for somebody to support you, um, but don't spend all your time doing that. Spend your time creating. So when the opportunity comes, you are the most fascinating thing people have seen.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Well, that is excellent advice. Is there anything else you would like to share that I haven't already asked? This could be um anything. It could, you know, and also if you want to tell us about any of your favorite videos on the Look What She Did site or newest videos or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Um I wanted to highlight this video. We have a wonderful video, it's made in Lopez on Octavia Butler. So Octavia Butler is having um a moment right now in Los Angeles because in her uh novel, The Parable of the Sower, she wrote about a firestorm in LA in 2025. And so people are rediscovering her work. Octavia Butler is just an incredible writer of visionary. Um and Maiden tells us the story of her uh in our film. So I think you should check that one out too. Maiden Lopez on Octavia Butler.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Well, I will definitely check that out, and it's certainly timely given everything going on uh that it has been going on in LA recently. Um, for anyone who would like to follow your career, can you please share with us your social media handles, your website, um, you know, personal website, the website for look what she did, anything you'd like to share?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Um, okay, sure. So my website is julieabear.com, and that's uh H-E-B-E-R-T, the real spelling of my name, Julieabear.com. And so I've got a website with a bunch of stuff on it. Um social media on Instagram, it's it's the uh it's Julie A-B-E-A-R, um, which is the pronunciation of my last name, A. Bear, Julie A. Bear, A-B-E-A-R. Um, and then on um, I think on Facebook, I have two pages. One's a professional director page, and that's just Julie A. Bear with an H, the proper spelling. Both of them are under the proper spelling of my name. And then um look what she did. We have a wonderful website where all our films are on there. You can see them, uh, lookwhatsheadid.com. We're also um on Facebook and Instagram, um, LinkedIn. Um, yeah. So it's all under lookwhatsheadid.com. Let's see. Uh Instagram is look what she lookwhat underscore she did. That's uh that's our handle on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Well, this has just been an incredible conversation, and I appreciate everything you've shared with us. I just want to give you one last opportunity before we wrap up. Is there anything else you wanted to add before we um, you know, close it out?

SPEAKER_02 44:28

Oh, I just want to thank you all for doing this, for getting the word out. Um, I I just think you're incredible and this podcast is incredible, and I I appreciate you all so much. So thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Oh, thank you so much, Julie. I mean, the pleasure is all ours. You're just such an inspiration and all these stories that you're putting out to the world, they're just also so um inspiring, and it's certainly much needed at this uh point in time for a lot of us. So thank you and you know, big shout out to your team and everyone who's contributed to your videos, you know, for all the hard work. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Ah, thank you so much for amplifying the stories of women.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Thank you, and thanks everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Bye bye.