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AGE.T
he day before her
40th birthday, Lorene
Scafaria received an
unwelcome surprise
— a call saying that
the movie she had been work-
ing on for more than two years
was being dropped by its studio,
Annapurna Pictures. “It was an
immediate existential crisis,”
says Scafaria. Like Jay Roach’s
Fox News movie that would later
land at Bron Studios, Scafaria’s
Hustlers was a casualty of
Annapurna’s attempt to clear its
slate to appease lenders after a
string of box office failures. The
project was quietly dropped in
spring 2018.
Scafaria — who got her start
penning the 2008 indie comedy
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
and has been working steadily as
a writer and director ever since
— was brought in as the project’s
screenwriter in summer 2016, a
time when Hollywood’s obses-
sion with gender-bending was
reaching a fever pitch. “I was sent
so many female-empowerment
stories over that year in which
people thought suddenly it was a
genre,” she remembers. “A lot of
them felt really manufactured.
Either the characters didn’t have
to be women at all — they just
changed the names — or they
were doing an all-female what-
ever or a remake.”
Hustlers, which will premiere
at the Toronto Film Festival on
Sept. 7 before a theatrical release
Sept. 13, was different.
Based on a New York magazine
article by Jessica Pressler, the
story revolves around a group of
strippers in recession-era New
York City who drugged and then
robbed their Wall Street clientele.
“After I read the article, I knew I
wanted to direct it,” says Scafaria,
who spent months talking to
strippers in Los Angeles and New
York for her script. But becauseHustlers is a New York-based story
of money, crime and greed, the
film’s producers, who include
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell,
first wanted to try for Martin
Scorsese. “Everyone talked about
it and said, ‘Let’s go to Scorsese
first.’ And I thought, well, that’s
fair. McKay said, ‘I hope Scorsese
passes,’ which was a beautiful
thing to say.” She adds with a
laugh, “And of course Scorsese
passed.”
By spring 2018, Scafaria had
finally secured the directing gig,
with Jennifer Lopez attached to
co-star, and was actively castingthe rest of her all-female ensem-
ble when the project fell apart.
After investing so much time
and effort in it, the possibility of
losing it stung: “I felt like I was
taking it personally.”
In the search for a new studio,
Scafaria was worried about the
possibility of story changes from
new backers. “I didn’t want to take
certain notes that would have
made it easy to understand the
revenge nature of the story,” she
says. Because the film is largely
about class, sex and power, the
filmmaker was concerned that
she would be asked to simplifyWomen’s Stories in the
Festival Spotlight
From a ’70s political thriller to the first-ever biopic about
an iconic abolitionist, films from female helmers are making
their mark in Toronto BY SCOTT ROXBOROUGHSEMI CHELLAS
American Woman
Canada-born director
Chellas, a multi-Emmy
nominee for her writing
work on Mad Men,
gives the 1970s political
thriller a feminist spin
in this fictional retelling
of the Patty Hearst
story that stars Hong
Chau (Downsizing)
and Sarah Gadon
(Tr u e D e te c ti ve).COKY GIEDROYC
How to Build a Girl
Lady Bird’s Beanie
Feldstein stars as
a sweet and geeky
teenage girl who
reinvents herself as a
mean, sarcastic and
sexually voracious
rock journalist in this
adaptation of the semi-
autobiographical novel
from feminist journalist
Caitlin Moran.KASI LEMMONS
Harriet
The director of Eve’s
Bayou goes epic with
this tale of abolitionist
Harriet Tubman
(Cynthia Erivo), who
risked her life to
become a leader of the
Underground Railroad.
Shockingly, this is the
first time Tubman’s
story has been told on
the big screen.CÉLINE SCIAMMA
Portrait of a
Lady on Fire
This 18th century
period drama follows
a female painter
charged with tricking
a noblewoman into
having her portrait
done in order to solicit
wedding proposals and
who instead ends up
falling in love with her
subject.UNJOO MOON
I Am Woman
Moon tells the story
of ’70s feminist icon
Helen Reddy, a single
mother who traveled
from her native
Melbourne to New York
City and overcame
male music industry
gatekeepers to
record “I Am Woman,”
an anthem for the
women’s movement.MALGORZATA
SZUMOWSKA
The Other Lamb
Szumowska’s English-
language debut is a
dagger into the heart
of the patriarchy: a
story of a young girl
(Raffey Cassidy) born
into a repressive
cult who challenges
its all-powerful
male Shepherd
(Michiel Huisman).Far left:
Constance
Wu (left) and
Jennifer Lopez
in Hustlers.
Left: Scafaria
(right) and
Lopez on set.some of the gendered issues she
was attempting to explore. “It’s
gender as it relates to money,” she
says. “It’s the kind of thing that
I feel like we only talk about in
terms of shopping and in terms of
spending and we don’t really talk
about in terms of earning and in
terms of surviving.”
Apart from Magic Mike and
the so-bad-it’s-now-a-cult-film
Showgirls, stripping doesn’t have
a storied cinematic history. There
was a risk that the movie easily
could fall prey to parody or, worse,
vilification. “I felt very protective
of [strippers] and the judgment
and stigma that surround their
jobs,” she says. “I was worried
about turning it into a black-and-
wh ite stor y.”
In early 2019, Scafaria got
another call — STXfilms had
greenlit Hustlers, which moved
forward with a budget of roughly
$20 million. Three months later,
the director found herself in a
strip club in Long Island City on
the final day of the brief 29-day
shoot with 300 extras, pole-dance
choreographers, a “comfort con-
sultant” and her cast, led by
Constance Wu. (Dakota Johnson
initially had been considered
for the role, but the producers
decided to stay true to the origi-
nal story, in which the woman the
character is based on is Asian.)
Among those present were
chart-toppers Cardi B and Lizzo,
whom Scafaria had contacted on
Instagram to play dancers, and
Usher, who agreed to play him-
self, circa 2007.
“I had to convince Usher that he
would look like himself in 2007,”
recalls the director of working
with the singer to re-create his
earlier look. “Obviously, his face
hasn’t changed at all, but his hair
is different. And he didn’t want
to cut his hair. So there was a day
where I was sending Usher pic-
tures of himself in hats.”