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Hillary Clinton Documentary Interview With Director Nanette Burstein


Yeah, and I did not have a lot of time with him. It wasn’t until the end [of the filming process]. I wasn’t sure if I was going to ask him to be interviewed or how important it would be, and then later in the editing process, I realized it would be really nice in the section about her being Secretary of State to hear from Obama. So we went to him, and we didn’t have a lot of time left. He did ultimately agree, and he agreed, like, “OK, I have limited time, and I need to know specifically what you want to ask me about.” And he was agreeable. I knew specifically what I wanted him to talk about, which is what I did, so that did not take a lot of time. And he’s incredibly articulate and he can just sit down in a chair and talk about it and then go about his day.

President Barack Obama chats with Hillary Clinton backstage following a campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016.Barbara Kinney/Hillary for America

One thing that I really found interesting is that there’s a lot of talk about Hillary’s close confidant and advisor, Huma Abedin, but she does not sit down for an interview. I assume you reached out to her, so what can you say about that?

I mean, Huma is extremely involved in [Hillary’s] life still, to this day. And Huma was very helpful to me. If I needed to contact any of [Hillary’s] friends or colleagues, they would never call me back if Huma didn’t say, “No, [she’s] not just a crazy person, and yes, Secretary Clinton is OK with you talking to her.” So she was unbelievably helpful and supportive of this project. She just isn’t someone who wanted to sit down for an interview. She’s had her own struggles with the media about her own life and prefers to be more behind the scenes.

Were you personally bummed that she didn’t participate?

I mean, yeah, it would have been nice so then people don’t go, “Why isn’t Huma Abedin in it?”

You filmed in the Clintons’ house in upstate New York, right?

Yes, in Chappaqua. We filmed in their guest cottage.

What was it like being in their home?

They have these two cute dogs running around. It’s not an exaggeration that they love to read and there are bookshelves and books everywhere. They are very down to earth. People think they maybe have this elitist lifestyle and I did not find that to be true at all. They have pretty modest living arrangements, and are very laid back, other than there are Secret Service around, which is a requirement.

Hillary Clinton and Nanette Burstein pose for photo

Clinton with the documentary’s director, Nanette Burstein.

Jack Berner

Did doing this documentary change your view of the Clintons?

I like them a lot more afterwards. Just getting to know them as people. Look, I voted for her, and I thought she would have made a great president. I thought she made a great senator of New York, but I was never a Hillary-acolyte. I didn’t put her on a pedestal. I didn’t really think a lot about her. In fact, I thought, like a lot of people, “Oh, she seems a little guarded.” And I didn’t find that to be true at all. I found her to be quite approachable and accessible and very down to earth. Even smarter than I had imagined, too.

Burstein’s four part documentary series, Hillary, premieres Friday, March 6 on Hulu. Jessica Radloff is the Glamour West Coast editor. You can follow her on Twitter at @JRadloff.*





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Miss Americana's Director Says Her Female Crew Wasn't Taken Seriously While Filming Taylor Swift


LW: I thought that was so moving and brilliant, and I loved Taylor’s response to her, too. I thought what Nikki Glaser was saying made so much sense. She said, “This is Psych 101; I was projecting because I was struggling with an eating disorder at the time.” I thought that was a really brave and incredible thing to say. That made me think about if there’s ever been a time where I’ve made fun of someone, I was probably projecting my own insecurities on them as well, you know? We did notice when we were looking at that archival material that a lot of that stuff was coming from other women.

God, I almost tear up like thinking about some of the notes I’ve gotten from teenagers about how they look in the mirror and they hate their body and they hate the way they look. But now that they’ve seen that Taylor has struggled with some of these same things too, and she’s gotten through it and she’s stronger and happier as a result, and that inspires them to keep going. It’s just so moving.

What was the most unexpected thing about filming Taylor?

LW: The contrast between the extraordinary elements of her life and the ordinary elements. [There are] the very big and massive, spectacular, glittery times, but then these very mundane, normal moments. I really love the scene where she’s eating a burrito. I know people have really responded to this scene, and I think it’s because it’s just her putting a chip in a burrito for crunch. There’s something so great about when you get to a point when you’re filming someone and they can relax enough to eat lunch and shoot the shit with their friends in front of you.

When you can film the boring stuff and you have that comfort level with someone, then you know you have access. You know, at that point. It’s weird, but that was like a breakthrough moment for me because it feels like the camera isn’t there.

When did that moment come? How long had you been filming her before you felt like you broke through to that point?

LW: At least a few months. But I will say that the first interview we did was the first interview she’d done in three years, and we did that audio-only. I think that was the moment when we really got to know each other and when I really started to see what the story of the film was, that first audio-only interview. It was just me and her, in a room for hours with a recorder.

Did any of that audio make it into the film?

LW: Oh yeah. When she talks about the sexual assault trial, that’s from the audio interview.

Did Swift see the film at different points in the editing process, or did she not see it until it was finished?

LW: I wanted her to see it before it was finished because there’s stuff in here—like her talking about an eating disorder—that I think is really important for her to be comfortable with that kind of stuff going out into the world. It was great because when we showed her the first cut, she loved it immediately. She was never like, ‘No, I don’t want to go there.’ There was no off-limits area other than anything that would compromise her security.

Taylor’s feedback was great. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh no, we can’t do this.’ It was feedback from another storyteller. She’s such an extraordinary storyteller. So it made sense to me.

Netflix

Before I let you go, I have to ask: When InStyle asked you about a potential engagement ring you said, “I’ll have to watch the scene again.” Did you watch the scene again?

LW: I was confused by what that person was talking about. They said it’s the scene in the car where she was talking about her eating disorder, that there were flash frames of a ring. And I was like, I don’t remember that. There was definitely nothing like that there. I know that people on the internet are freaking out about this later scene where she’s wearing a ring. I don’t know anything about…I think she just wears a lot of rings. I think people are overreacting to it a little bit. As far as I could see she’s constantly just wearing lots of rings! [Laughs]



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Issa Rae Had the Best Response After Announcing the All-Male Oscar Noms for Best Director


This morning (January 13), Issa Rae and John Cho helped announce the 2020 Oscar nominations from Los Angeles.

So many of your faves received nods, including Florence Pugh and Saoirse Ronan (Little Women), Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit), Laura Dern (Marriage Story), and Charlize Theron (Bombshell). But much of the discussion online has been centered on who didn’t get a nomination. Some of the biggest snubs included Jennifer Lopez for Hustlers, Awkwafina for The Farewell, and Lupita Nyong’o for Us. And yet again, not a single woman was nominated in the Best Director category, where many thought Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Lorene Scarfaria (Hustlers), or Lulu Wang (The Farewell) deserved recognition.

And Issa Rae had a perfect response—and facial expression—to this news. After reading the list of names, she simply said, “Congratulations to those men.”

Twitter, of course, loved it. “‘Congratulations to those men.’ – Issa Rae introducing the Best Director category is a MOOD. #OscarNoms,” one person tweeted. “‘Congratulations to those men.’ @IssaRae is all of us, mad about the lack of a directing nod for Greta Gerwig,” another wrote, alongside a GIF of Pugh as Amy March.

This isn’t the first time a famous woman has called out an awards show for its lack of female directing nominees. In 2018, Natalie Portman was announcing the winner of the Best Director category at the Golden Globes when she said, “And here are the all-male nominees” before reading off the names. It was a fantastic burn, as well.

All internet fun aside, it’s ridiculous that we have to keep having this same conversation, year in and year out. There are so many worthy female directors that could have been nominated this year (and in the years past), and yet we still continue to see projects viewed through the male lens as more worthy of esteem and awards.

Do better, Hollywood.



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The 15 Best Gifts of 2019, According to Glamour's Fashion Market Director


There’s nothing I love more than finding that perfect yet unique present to gift for birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries. So, suffice to say, the holiday season is one of my favorite times of year because I get to partake in this activity 20 or 30 times over. The minute those holiday lights are up on the street (ahem, pre-Thanksgiving these days), I start making my holiday gift giving lists for my family and friends—and checking it twice.

Drumming up those oh-so-special moments can, at times, be tricky but I tend to make a note on my iPhone with anything interesting I’ve seen in the past couple of months. This normally lengthy list helps to stop the endless internet searches in the wee hours for those perfect gifts. Here’s what I am gifting this holiday season, and hopefully it can help you check off some of the presents for loved ones on your list, too.

All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.



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Jennifer Lopez Says a Director Once Asked Her, Point-Blank, to See Her Breasts


Jennifer Lopez is enjoying a major career high after the success of her movie Hustlers and her upcoming Super Bowl halftime performance with Shaklra. But not that long ago, she was a young actor figuring out the entertainment industry, and that included navigating some uncomfortable moments. This week, she opened up about one specific incident in which she says a director asked her to take her top off during a costume fitting.

“He wanted to see my boobs and I was like, ‘We’re not on set,’” Lopez said during the Hollywood Reporter‘s Drama Actress Roundtable,, which also included Scarlett Johansson, Lupita Nyong’o, Awkwafina, Laura Dern, and Renée Zellweger.

“And I said no; I stood up for myself,” she continued. “But it was so funny because I remember being so panicked in the moment. And by the way, there was a costume designer in the room with me. So there was another woman in the room, and he says this and I said no. Luckily a little bit of the Bronx came out, and I was like, ‘I don’t have to show you my—No. On the set, you see them.’”

Lopez added, “If you give in, in that moment, all of a sudden that person is off and running, thinking they can do whatever they want. And because I put up a little boundary right there and said no, he laid off and then later on apologized. But the minute he walked out of the room, the costume designer was like, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that just happened.’”

Now Lopez says she’s made a concerted effort to make the sets she’s a part of as comfortable as possible for women. She shared that for Hustlers, there were comfort coaches around to make sure everyone felt at ease, particularly since the movie involved nudity.

“It was basically somebody who understood that world and said, ‘These things are okay,’ and, ‘These things are not okay’…and made everybody on the set comfortable with what they were doing, because we had a lot of women who were half-dressed or naked, topless,” she said.



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Hustlers Director Lorene Scafaria Made the Best Movie of the Year—Here's How She Did It


“We’ve seen so many scenes in strip clubs in other movies and TV shows, but so few from a dancer’s perspective,” Hustlers director, writer, and producer Lorene Scafaria tells me. The film, based on a New York magazine article by Jessica Pressler, stars Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez as the ringleaders of a group of strippers who scammed their wealthy Wall Street clients using a mix of drugs, smarts, and sex appeal. “I was just really excited to walk in their shoes, literally, tell the story through their eyes, and explore a world that maybe we think we know but don’t really unless we’ve worked there.”

That desire to tell the women’s lives from their perspective—and understanding the limitations and challenges in doing so—is why Scafaria was the best person to put this story to screen. In another’s hands, the film could have easily turned into an over-sexed romp a la Showgirls or a weepy cautionary tale. Scafaria hits the right tone, though: She doesn’t shy away from all the fun and nudity one might find in a strip club without sacrificing the gravitas that happens as the dancers’ lives spin out of control.

Lili Reinhart, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, and Constance Wu play a group of strippers who con their wealthy clients.

Barbara Nitke/STX Entertainment

Scafaria says she did a lot of research beyond the source material to get it right. In addition to meeting with dancers and other club employees who worked during the movie’s time period (roughly 2007 to 2013), she hired a stripper consultant to read an early script and be available on set during filming. She also looked at the article in a new light. “Reading between the lines of the article, I got inspiration because I thought, This is a really interesting friendship story,” she tells me. “I wanted to incorporate that part of it as much as anything else.”

All that research and careful attention to tone paid off: The film has an 87% approval rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are already calling it a serious Oscars contender.

So what does it take to create the movie of the year? Scafaria breaks down the film’s biggest moments and themes, below. Some spoilers ahead.

The Athleticism

When Lopez’s character, Ramona, first teaches Wu’s Destiny how to pole dance, it’s set to Chopin. The message: Pole dancing is an art form, requiring as much skill as any master classical pianist. Scafaria tells me she wrote the Chopin music cues into the script because the classical composer’s songs are frequently taught to student pianists—a fitting comparison to Ramona, who shows Destiny the ropes of the strip club. “These are songs that require a lot of flexibility and sincerity,” Scafaria says. “To me, that felt like what’s required of these dancers on the pole. The Chopin pieces were always the sound of the movie, and the sound of the work that the women do.”

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But they’re not just artists—they’re athletes. Watch Lopez’s pole-dancing workout videos for proof of that. “I wanted to show these women in power and in control,” Scafaria says. “In a lot of ways, I approached it like a sports movie because I wanted to highlight the athleticism of what they do, the strength that’s involved. There’s a lot of beauty and grace to it.”

The Cameos

The inclusion of music’s hottest names Cardi B and Lizzo in Hustlers has been much publicized, but they’re doing more than just lending star power to the IMDB page. Both women play strippers at the club during its last glory days—right before the economic recession hit—and their time on screen is equal parts hilarious and nuanced. “It was very exciting to see women like Cardi and Lizzo just come and coexist in the same movie as all of these other performers from a lot of different walks of life,” Scafaria says. “Actors, singers, dancers, strippers…to see them all in one room together was really something.”

Cardi B was particularly brilliant casting because she’s famously worked as a stripper before. Scafaria says Cardi brought her signature high energy to the set. “I wanted her to make the lines her own,” she says. “If anything didn’t feel authentic to her, I wanted her to call it out. But it wasn’t until we were there shooting scenes that I really got to see her bring it to life. She’s such a natural. Everybody knows how funny she is—she’s an incredible personality—so I’m sure nobody’s surprised that the kinds of improvisation she could throw around [was amazing].”



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