Patience and Success in Filmmaking with Carol Dysinger

Carol Dysinger is an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, an award-winning professor at NYU Tisch, and an advisor at the Doc Lab at Sundance FIlm Institute. A seasoned Hollywood veteran, her body of work spans from film and music video editing, screenwriting, and directing. Her second directorial work, “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl)” won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2019. 

In this interview with  The Light Leaks, she talks about witnessing the progression of Hollywood firsthand, the lessons she’s learned throughout her career, and how it’s never too late to hit your stride. 

This interview was conducted and edited by Brielle E. Wyka. 

On Her Early Life

Did you always know you wanted to go into film?

No. When I grew up, you only saw films in the movie house, you know, and the Exorcist would be at a movie house for like a year. Movies were like… they were like cheese, you know? You loved it, but you didn't know how it was made. And you didn't ask. 

My mom loved movies. I was named after Carol Lombard because she went down in a plane crash at some point  – she was married to Clark Gable, which I think is why my mother liked her so much. 

I didn’t really go to the movies much. One of my favorite movies when I was young was a documentary called Endless Summer, which is probably one of the first independent films and it was about surfing. And Lawrence of Arabia, which of course has nothing to do with Lawrence or Arabia, but you know, it was a beautifully fun movie. 

On Her Teaching Career

You’re a professor at NYU now. Was that something that you always wanted to do or did you just kind of happen upon it after you started in the film industry?

It's one of those things in life, which like so many decisions get made because of insurance. I did my very best to make it in Hollywood at a time when being a girl was not the easiest in the world. But as a member of the Writer's Guild and needing insurance, the Guild depended on you working a certain amount. And then my husband got injured and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to maintain my membership, so I took a job teaching and then as I was doing it, I realized I really liked it. And it gave me a lot more freedom because I didn't have to do things I didn't care about in order to pay my rent.

I could just teach and teaching is great. Because all you talk about is making movies and nobody’s asking you, “Who's your agent?” It’s just – filming. 

What are some of the core ideas you try to incorporate in your lessons or like with your students when you're talking about filmmaking with them?

Well, a lot of it is about a process, and young people – sorry to lump you all into a big group – but because you spend so much time in school, the whole way you go about doing things is often about somebody else telling you, “You did well.” Now you're never gonna tell yourself you did well until you're way done. So you have to have a process that isn't looking for affirmation. Right? The one thing I keep telling them is like, look, you cannot make yourself write. What you need to do is learn what to do to that makes you feel like writing. And like it's not about forcing yourself down. You have to learn about your creative voice and what it takes. 

I always tell the story about how, when I was a screenwriter, Mondays were terrible. And I finally, one day just said, screw, I went to like three movies in a row – back then in LA, they had 11:00 AM matinees.  I would go to three movies in a row, have dinner with a friend, wake up Tuesday and write like a bang. And then I realize I just never work on Mondays. And I feel like I'm getting away with murder and then I'm on Tuesdays, but that's me. It doesn't work for anybody else. 

So that's what I keep saying is like, you're here to learn craft and identify what's your voice and what's the shadow of what you think you're supposed to do. And I try to unpack those things because we get, we do have such a diverse class because people are from all over the world and everything, especially in New York. 

So it's mostly a work with process. I mean, I teach editing mostly and that's about just how to direct yourself and not look back and not get obsessed with the cut. So it's mostly about process. Get out of your own way.

On Her Filmmaking Career

What is your favorite role to be in when you’re making a film?

It's the editing. I mean, I love it. I can't do it anymore – my wrists are shot because when I started in film I had like six years of all the crazy stuff they invented before Avid and other editing technology came out. Talk about Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory – these things were absurd! So my wrists are shot, but it was the job I could get. It was the job that women could do back then if you were good at it. 

I tried to be a first AD cause I thought it would be good practice for directing, but if you're a woman first AD in the early eighties they're like, “There's something wrong with her. She's got a mouth on her.

I don't like sets very much, so editing was the job I could get and could do well and make money at. I loved writing, but the stuff I like to write is about war. It was about history. And I kept getting hired to do quirky brunettes and falling in love stories. So editing was kind of my mainstay, both narrative and documentary. It was the thing I could all always fall back on to make money if I wasn't getting a screenplay sold or something. But I like making documentaries. I like directing documentaries because I'm a curious person.

How did you come to love documentary filmmaking?

I came to NYU when I was 16. I was majoring in dance and movement and then I got a job at the dark room. And all these film students came in and I realized a film was something you actually made, that people made. And I was like, really, and I kind of realized that what I loved about acting you could do in film, but you didn't have to like get dressed up. It was the same, like breaking down characters and breaking down stories and telling stories and creating performance. So I ended up going to film school and the first film I made won a student academy award. So I figured I should stick with it.

Then, I got really into documentaries. I got into editing. I got into a lot of things, but I think, I think if I was born anything, it was a storyteller. And when I hit my developmental years, film was the way you did it. The generation before me wanted to write the great American novel, my generation wanted to make the great American movie and that, and the next generation's the great American limited series. Now we're into the great American whatever – podcast. 

Aside from being curious, how did you become interested in Afghanistan and the middle east as your main focus?

Well I love history and I'm always fascinated by primary sources. I'm old enough to remember the Vietnam war, and one of my many fantasies was to be Margaret Bourke-White, who was like, the tall, thin rich woman who could afford to go be a journalist in Vietnam during the war. So when 9/11 happened and president Bush decided to go all shock and awe on Iraq, after having gone into Afghanistan and I was like, “Wait a minute.” 

I mean, the Iraq was a psychotic side show, one of the greatest mistakes in American history – not counting slavery – but but Afghanistan was disappearing! And there was this whole thing about how the national guard was going to Afghanistan to train the Afghani national army. So you had a group of people who had never been to war, going over to train a group of people who had been at war for four years, and teach them how to make an army. And I'm like, “This, I gotta see.”

And so, literally my first movie was almost called “The Forgotten War” because nobody was talking about Afghanistan, and then I got obsessed with the place. I got very into the afghans and I got to know them and it was just, it was such an adventure. All happened when I was like 49 and I was teaching and going, “Wait a minute – I'm divorced. I don't have kids. What the h*** am I gonna do? I can't just teach for the rest of my life.”

And I don't know what came over me, but I just figured out how to get on a plane to Afghanistan. A friend of mine loaned me a camera, I started shooting, didn't know what I was gonna shoot. And then I figured it out and I've been going there off and on since 2005. 

How have your goals and milestones evolved over the course of your career?

My milestones these days are very like, “Okay, I just wanna finish One Bullet and when that's done, I'll think of something.” But you know, I'm 66. People used to retire at my age. It's sort of a different time of life. You're not building anything really – you're just being, and that's really nice.  People are always so scared that if they don't do anything within the next two years, then it’s like they're just never gonna be anything. But I made a skateboarding movie and won an Oscar for it in my sixties. How the h*** did that happen? I have no idea.

Life is longer than you know. I wish somebody had got me on the phone and said, “The thirties are great and you're not fat.” “The forties are great and you're not fat.” “You got a lot of juice left in you in your 50s and you're not fat.” Because you always think the next decade is like the end of ends, but it's not. 

On Her Most Recent Project

So you’ve now won an Oscar for your documentary Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl). What does it feel like to see that your subjects aren’t just beloved by you but by many?

It was interesting because it was a commission and I love those girls, and I wanted to show you why I love them and I didn't wanna do it overtly. I was always around and because I was a woman, I could go a lot of the places the men couldn't go and that was in the household and these Afghan girls are just, they were just so funny  and I could never figure out how to get a camera on them because the minute there was a man in the room they got all polite and careful. 

So when A&E came to me and said, uh, you wanna do a movie about Skateistan? I was like, “Oh yeah.” Because I knew I'd be able to show the girls for what they are, which is resilient and funny and great. And I approached it like, “I'm just gonna let you meet them like you'd meet them, like If you walked into SC Astan, and I'm not gonna pretend that I'm from Afghanistan.” And I knew that great stuff would happen. 

And when it went so far, I was kind of shocked. It was wonderful because I hadn't had that kind of thing where people loved what I loved when I showed it to them. For a long, long time, the last award I won was my student Oscar in 1977 and this time people kept saying, “Well, come on you're gonna win the Oscar.”

It's like one of those things that you think about your whole life and when it happens, it's ordinary because it's happening. And then people look at you and go, “You've got an Oscar!” and it's like, “Yeah, I do. What does it mean? I don't know – it makes my students really happy.”

Your crew was made entirely of women for “Learning to Skateboard.” What was that like compared to working with mostly men? 

Actually to tell you the truth, I've never worked with a crew, because with all my other work I was a one-person band. So the gorgeous thing about it was having Lisa Rensler, who's my cinematographer, who I had gone to college with. She was a very old friend who I hadn't seen for many years and I was looking for a female cinematographer to go to Afghanistan with me and I ran into her at a party. I hadn't seen her in like a long time and I said, “Hey, you wanna go to Afghanistan?” She was like, “Yeah.”  And that was good because she shot features and she was very, very good. 

And Zama [Wahdat] had been my student and she was from Afghanistan, but hadn't been back since she was three, but she spoke Dari. We hired her and then Elena [Andreichiva] was the producer. It was really great. It was fun. We had a good time. 

Your Oscar speech was so interesting, how you talked about winning the student oscar and expecting to immediately break into the industry and instead you had to climb the ladder for decades after. What was it like to finally win another Oscar after all these years? 

Well we'd been to a luncheon the day before and Greta Gerwig was there and I thought Little Women was terrific! And she hadn't gotten nominated. So I was like, “You guys, this business is rough and I just wanted to throw something out to all the women of my generation who didn't get to do what they wanted to do because we just weren't considered able.” 

And Lina Wertmüller just died at the age of 93 and she was one of the first female directors. She was Fellini's AD and she was the only one working when I was young. She was it. I mean, the fact that I even thought I could do it is kind of insane but like, but that's why God invented 19, you know? 

Some Final Reflections…

Is there anything you experienced throughout your time in the industry that made a significant impact on you or made you want to change the way things are done?

Well, a lot of things. But I mean, there's so much work I did that was credited to a man – there's editing where the director didn't come in and I did it and that's why they hired me back. This one guy, every time I cut his movies, he got nominated for an Emmy and it wasn't an accident. 

I think I had to make this shift of saying, “I wanna be good at what I do and I wanna love what I do and I am good at what I do.” And that’s just because editing a movie is like, when you build a boat and then somebody gets on it and sails away. 

But I think what I learned is that there comes a point where you have to jump or you're going to end up being bitter. And, and I knew that was coming because I started getting fired and I was like, “Okay, I'm good at this. I rely on this. This makes me a lot of money, but I can't keep doing this because I'm becoming a bitter person and I will not be bitter. I refuse. I will do anything.”

It's like when I thought I wanted to be an actress. I started watching what actresses really have to go through and I said, “Forget it.” It took me a long time to figure out what my real craft was because craft matters, craft really matters.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned about exploring your craft in the filmmaking industry?

You gotta do your jumps when you have time to recover in your life. And I think I also spent a lot of time getting really good at my craft of editing would when you're editing documentaries, that's what enabled me to go into the field and having never shot a documentary in my life, and come back with something that could be cut because I knew what I needed I could do that. 

And, and you gotta, you gotta practice. And I did that by cutting all these other movies and the ship sailing away again and again and again – I did it enough. And then the teaching allowed me to realize that I knew stuff and then that gave me the confidence to say, “All right, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm getting on a plane and I'm going to Afghanistan. I'll just go and see what happens and trust myself to find a way.” 

It’s not about being comfortable and not knowing your craft. It's just being comfortable, not knowing where you're going. I don't know if it's a revelation, it was more like getting wet by walking in the mist, as opposed to somebody dunking a bucket on your head. 

One last question – who are some of your favorite filmmakers just overall or recently…

Well, when I was young and I discovered Ozu who did Tokyo Story and all those, I just was just blown away by the way he made movies. I love them. There's a movie called “Hearts and Minds.” I forget who made it, but that just completely redefined documentary for me. And I was a fan of Fellini, huge – I love Fellini. And I love the Romanian new wave. I can never pronounce any of their names, but I love that stuff.

There have been so many and most of the men, because there were no women when I was coming up. I love Deborah Granick. I mean, she was my student, but I still really love her work. And can't believe it took her so long to get a movie financed. Karin Kosama was one of my first students and I love everything she does. 

You know, I sort of made a vow when I started teaching that I would be what I did not have as a woman filmmaker. And I think I did that. A lot of my female students are making a living or directing television or show running or directing movies. Now Chloe [Zhao] won the academy award and I feel like I made use of the things I had to go through and I feel like I've moved the history of cinema, just a tiny bit, by helping those women. 

I think that is a good place to end, but before you go, I do have to ask about how on your NYU bio, it says that you edited “Rock the Casbah” by The Clash.

Yes, I did. My joke with the Oscar is like, “Finally, Rock the Casbah will not be the final sentence in my obituary.” The students come up to me and say, “You worked for The Clash!” 

It was a job that came to me and then I just, I loved them and I loved the song and they shot all this stuff. And Bernie, their manager’s like, “Nobody's gonna know what that thing is.” And I was like, “Oh eff-off Bernie I'm gonna cut to the armadillo. So shut the h*** up.”

I love them, and I love that time. I cut that on film – on 16 millimeter. Wow.