Our Mama-of-the-Moment this week is Amy Miller Gross, writer and director of new film, "Accommodations," which is now on showtime and showtime on demand and coming to other platforms shortly!
Describe yourself in three words...
On my best days, I think I’m curious, excited, and adventurous, and on my worst days, I’m anxious, perplexed, frustrated.
My kids described me as loving, weird, fun, sympathetic, and adventurous, and my husband described me as creative, loving, and thoughtful, and on my bad days, bossy and demanding!
What inspired you to become a writer and director?
When I was growing up, my father constantly took me to see Broadway shows and showed me all the old movies he loved as a kid, and I became totally enamored with that world. I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 15 years old, and so I studied film and theater in college, but then for decades I wrote things I never completed and seemed to have preferred dreaming about writing more than actually writing, because it kept me safe from having to put anything out there and be criticized. I lived in LA after college and worked in production, but eventually quit to become a social worker because I found the entertainment business to be too challenging of a path. I moved back to New York, and worked as a social worker and in real estate but could never really shake feeling regretful about giving up my filmmaking and writing ambitions. Then, after I had my third child, I was 36 years old, and within a six month period, six women I knew who were around my age all died of various cancers. It woke me up to the reality that life is fleeting and playing it safe no longer felt right to me. I found a woman named Joan Scheckel who teaches a filmmaking method called, The Technique, and I studied with her on and off for six years in LA and NYC and started writing again. Joan was the person who suggested I direct my own material.
What really got me to commit, though, was that I finally thought I had a story worth telling. Once I got married and had children, I started to really lose my own sense of self and found myself letting my ambitions slip away so that I could be a good mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and community member. I unpacked all that accommodating and wrote my way through to a more balanced existence by making the film, “Accommodations.”
How have your children influenced your career path?
I wanted to lead by example rather than try and make them into the person I wished I could be. I very much felt on a mission to show them that anything was possible.
What values do you hope to instill in your girls?
I want my girls to cultivate curiosity, thoughtfulness, be kind, and have a sense of adventure. And I want them to get off their phones!
How do you balance being a mother of 3 and a film writer? How do you carve out “me time?”
The writing part is easy to do around my kids and their schedules. I included them in the films and always had them on set but the hours were honestly brutal and we all had to accept that I needed to spend real time away when I was filming the movies. The editing time is also a huge time suck away, but luckily these things are somewhat short-lived and then I can go back to being more on my kids schedules. I’m lucky I have a supportive, involved husband and a very hands on mother and they have given me the freedom to have some guiltless me time. I balance it all by doing a lot of therapy and exercise and allowing myself adventures and time with friends and my husband.
Pay it forward, and name your mentors and favorite films...
I love everything Jill Soloway does and especially loved her first feature, “Afternoon Delight.” Greta Gerwig is always an inspiration. I love Crystal Moselle’s documentaries especially “The Wolfpack.” My friend Tiffany Shlain is a genius at making short films that are incredibly inspiring and a wonderful feature, “Connected.” Josephine Decker makes amazingly unique and special films – my favorite so far has been “Madeline’s Madeline” which I highly recommend. And of course when I was growing up Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers were like Gods to me!
What’s next for you after “Accommodations?”
I just locked picture on a film called The Pleasure of Your Presence starring Alicia Silverstone about a woman who tries to stop her brother from marrying a woman she dislikes the weekend of their wedding in the Hamptons.
Name your favorite family activities in both LA and New York?
I’m obsessed with doing creative family activities. In NYC, we love Chambers Street Pottery and in LA The Brentwood Art Center. We always hit ice skating in both cities. The Gourmandise Cooking School in LA is fantastic - my kids just took a pasta making class there and loved it. My kids can’t get enough of Dreamscape in LA in Century City and of course Disney in LA and the Santa Monica Pier are big for our family in LA.
What’s your mantra? Are there any words you live by?
Everything good in my life has come from making myself uncomfortable so I try and remember that expanding doesn’t necessarily come from a comfy place.