Interview: Kelly Fremon Craig, Writer/Director of ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’
In Maker’s Dozen, we ask folks in and around the film industry 12 questions and have them ask one of us.
Kelly Fremon Craig is the writer-director of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and The Edge of Seventeen.
We spoke with Kelly about adapting such a beloved book, casting Margaret, pitching Hans Zimmer, her essential books for a Judy Blume Cinematic Universe, and more!
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
1. What is the Kelly Fremon Craig origin story?
I’ve written all my life in some capacity, ever since I was able to write. Then when I was in college I was doing spoken word poetry, which is more sort of rhythmic and musical, but my version of it was more like characters doing monologues. And while I loved doing it, I clearly was not gonna make a career out of spoken word poetry. Around that time I did an internship at a production company and I read my first screenplay, and I was very lucky that the first screenplay I ever read was very good. It moved me. I laughed, I cried. I don’t think it ever got made, but it inspired me and made me realize that while I was writing these monologues, here was this script where it was like these characters were talking. Maybe I could do that.
So I started to try to write and I downloaded a free script writing software and started trying. It seems like a very odd jump, and yet somewhere in there it made sense to me. And it was through the process of writing Post Grad, seeing it get made, and showing up in the theater and being like “I don’t even recognize this” that made me go, “Wait a minute, if I want to actually see what’s on the page, I have to direct.” So that’s when I got the bug to do that. But I still think of myself as a writer first who directs to protect the material.
2. What changed in you when you first discovered Judy Blume and then when you first met her?
When I first read her books, I was 11 or 12 years old and I was just completely bowled over by them, because for the first time I was reading something that felt like my life. I had never read anything like that before. All the books that were assigned when I was a kid felt very inaccessible to me. They were just different people, a different world. But this was my world and that made me want to read everything she ever wrote. So I ended up inhaling all of her books over a period of probably a year or two. In a lot of ways she’s why I became a writer. They were such a buoy to me at that age. It anchored me to know I wasn’t the only person going through what I was going through. And I still write because I want to do that for someone else. I want other people to see themselves in the work and feel like they’re not alone.
And actually meeting her in real life, she is everything you hope she would be when you’re looking at her photo on the book jacket. She really is like a fairy godmother.
3. Admiration for Judy and her book is deep and generational. How did the affection for them inform decisions made throughout the whole filmmaking process?
Doing an adaptation is just a different process because you’re serving the work that exists rather than just making it up as you go. But the process still requires an element of discovery. I think very often a too-literal adaptation betrays the book, so I found that I really had to serve the spirit of the book and let myself play and color outside the lines of the book, with the guardrails always being, “Does it make me feel the way the book makes me feel?” And if it does, then I felt like I was still serving it, even as I was adding and subtracting.
4. Abby Ryder Fortson is a revelation as Margaret. How did she come to be your lead?
It was a really deep search. We saw hundreds and hundreds of kids. And after a while when you see that many and it’s all a no, you know it just doesn’t feel right. You start to think, “Oh God, are we going to be able to make this film?” Because it’s so important that this central character of the book works and that you’re really able to relate to her and root for her. I also think this had extra pressure on top of it because so many of us who grew up with the book imagined ourselves as Margaret. So in that way she’s not only embodying a character, she’s also having to embody everybody who’s ever read it. It’s a lot.
But when Abby walked through the door, she was instantly lightyears ahead of everybody else. We knew it. Call off the search. We got it. But it was also terrifying because that was the beginning of March 2020 and 12 days later the world shut down. We were supposed to shoot that summer and she was 11, turning 12. That’s an age where you have to catch them exactly because, you know, she spends the whole movie praying to God for boobs and we were worried it was going to look like God had answered. And in fact it did when she showed up a year later in the costume room. So there’s a whole bunch of effects all throughout the movie flattening her chest. I feel like we set some kind of record there.
5. As you were thinking about and planning to shoot this movie, was there one scene in particular that you just couldn’t wait to get out of your head and onto the screen?
So many of them, but I always felt the last scene of the movie so deeply inside of myself. It’s a big reason I wanted to make the film because I got to the end of the book and I was so moved by that scene. To me, the whole story comes together in such a beautiful way in that scene. I think the moment where Rachel McAdams steps outside the door and has that private moment by herself when she’s realizing her kid is growing up and doesn’t need her in the same way. It’s heartbreaking and it’s beautiful and it’s all the things, and it just so conveyed the full complexity of what it is to be a mom.
6. What was your pitch to Hans Zimmer to compose the score for your film?
There are certain surprises in this film that just delight me. People are always surprised that Benny Safdie is in it and that Hans Zimmer did the score. I love that. I have to say he really was able to get inside it. He does do these bigger, more masculine films, but he has a real tenderness and heart, and I think he was able to deliver the film in a sound in such a beautiful way.
7. Growing up, who was your Philip Leroy and is there anything you’d like to say to him now?
Oh my God, yes I did and I will never forget it. I had a crush on him and I thought he had a crush on me. And then one day he comes up to me after school and he’s like, “Hey Kelly, I wrote you a poem.” And I’m like, “Really? Wow.” And he goes, “Yeah, I’ll recite it for you. Roses are red, violets are black. Why is your chest as flat as your back?” The wind was knocked out of me. It was just such a tragedy in my 11-year-old life. I honestly think that’s part of why I related to the book, because I too was praying to God for boobs through my whole 6th and 7th grade as I was such a late bloomer.
8. Filmmaking is a very collaborative process. Can you speak to what it means for you to share creative responsibility among a large and varied group of people?
I have to say that’s the most exciting part of directing. For instance, working with our production designer Steve Saklad and our costume designer Ann Roth, both of whom are just so deeply talented. But it was so exciting to me to grasp at words about what it should feel like, what the set should feel like, but I don’t have any idea how to. I could barely decorate my own house, you know? I have zero talent there. But then to have a very incredibly talented person take those words and ideas and turn them into something, to manifest them into something really cool—that’s the best part of collaboration. Working with people who are more talented than you in their respective fields elevates the whole thing.
With Ann Roth, she geeks out about details in a way that I so love and relate to. One day I walked into the classroom and she had dressed Margaret in one dingy white sock and one clean white sock, and I was like, “That’s what it feels like to be 11.” That’s it, you know? The care that went into all those details that everybody I worked with on it, that was really exciting. Makes it so much better than you could have ever made it on your own.
“To have incredibly talented people manifest ideas into something really cool — that’s the best part of collaboration.”
9. There’s been a lot of talk about the Mattel Cinematic Universe in the wake of Barbie’s success. In your opinion, what books are essential to the expanded Judy Blume Cinematic Universe?
Oh, that’s a great question. First of all, Forever has to, has to, has to. I think Deenie. Blubber. Just As Long As We’re Together was another one I really, really loved. Oh, and I think you have to do Then Again, Maybe I Won’t to do the boy version. I hope there is a Judy Blume Cinematic Universe. I’m ready.
10. The Edge of Seventeen was your directorial debut. What’s a hard-won lesson you took away from that experience?
I’ve been very fortunate to get to work with James L. Brooks. He produced both of my films, so I’ve been very fortunate to have his wisdom around. And one of the things he always talks about is how important it is to create an environment on the set where people, especially the actors, feel really safe and free. Because I think that’s when great creative work happens—when you feel like you have room to play, and there are no wrong answers, and you know you have permission to fail. All of those things. So I work really hard to create that sort of feeling on a set that feels really calm and a place where everybody has the room to do their best work and has room to color outside the lines.
11. What current fact about your life would most impress your 11-year-old self?
Well, my 11-year-old self would definitely just like die that I now get to say Judy Blume is my friend. The 43-year-old me still can't believe it.
12. Your film is a Cinema Sugar favorite this year. What’s your favorite film of 2023 so far?
Oh gosh, that’s really hard because there’s so many I haven’t seen yet. I really want to see Alexander Payne’s movie The Holdovers because I’m a big fan of his. I just saw BlackBerry, which I really, really loved. I thought the directing was so beautiful. I’m dying to see American Fiction. But I don’t know. I haven’t seen enough.
+1. We always end our interviews by asking our guests for a question for us. So what’s your question for us?
What made you want to do this? What made you fall in love with movies and then want to write about them and do pieces on them?
Julia: I grew up watching movies, and as an only child you end up watching a lot of movies because you don’t have a lot of people to play with. So it was always really important for me to make cinema accessible to a lot of people and to uplift various forms of cinema. To uplift things that people just genuinely love. That’s something I really want to do and want to be able to do for other people.