This section focuses on Barbra Streisand's own words regarding her film, Yentl. As lead actress, co-writer, producer, and especially director, Barbra invested considerable time meeting with international journalists in 1983 and 1984 to bring attention to the film. In the weeks prior to and following its release, Barbra did numerous television, magazine, and newspaper interviews (major ones listed below), perhaps the most noteworthy being Geraldo Rivera's unprecedented hour-long report on the making of Yentl for ABC's 20/20, which aired on the eve of the film's limited release. Also, Westwood One presented a nationwide two-hour words and music radio special, The Legend Of Barbra Streisand, in November. At the bottom of the page, there are audio excerpts from the special. In January 1984 Barbra discussed the film with Charles Champlin for a largely overlooked and unseen interview feature, which was televised on Awards Time with Charles Champlin, a local L.A. cable TV program. Only a portion of their conversation actually aired to the limited cable audience, but the complete interview is one of the director's most detailed dialogues about the film. The following are Barbra's comments from this interview.
I read it [I.B. Singer's short story] in 1968, and I just fell in love with it instantly. It had been sent to my agent, who turned it down, because I just had done Funny Girl. He thought I shouldn't do two ethnic pieces — play two Jewish girls — in a row. I never even knew about it, but the producer at the time, Valentine Sherry, who has since died, sent the short story to my house. I just read it in one day, because it was only 20 pages long. We did hire him [Singer] to write the first script — it was about a 200-page script — like a long, short story. It wasn't quite cinematic enough.
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I bought it for my own company in 1973, I think. Still couldn't get it made when I was with First Artists, but I didn't intend to write, or produce, or even direct, of course. In 1979 I decided to direct it, but I wasn't going to write or produce. I wrote in my first film outline of Yentl in 1979, when I really bit the bullet and decided with all the terror that I felt (I was approaching 40) that life is short, and one must take risks and chances and risk failure (because there's a lesson in that too) and put some real meaning into my life again, real motivation. It was also very exciting — the struggle is very exciting, even though it's difficult. It's warming; it just gives you a goal, a purpose to every day. I felt like I was 18 again, knocking on doors for a couple of days, saying, "I'm going to be an actress," and it was a wonderful feeling. It was very humbling, trying to get something on and not treated as if I were a famous person or a bankable star at all. I was looked at like, "What is this project, and who is going to go see it?" And, "You're going to direct it?" And, "You're a woman..."
My co-producer, Rusty Lemorande, and I would go to Czechoslovakia. We went many times for that period of 2 or 3 years of pre-production, and I always dressed as Yentl. I put on a costume, took my Super-8 camera, and I would practice directing, doing shots here and there with natural light. The film Super-8 film was so beautiful that I would show it to cinematographers that I would talk to and try to capture this feeling of natural light. Because it was a realistic fairy tale, we had to find places that were real but that looked like a fairy tale. The second city we're in called Bechev might look like something out of an illustrated book — the buildings are pink and yellow and green — but this is reality. We did not paint them; they're there from the turn of the century. These buildings were built in the late 1800s with art nouveau doors.
I love the art nouveau period and the incongruity of this magnificent period of architecture in a Polish shtetl. When you read a book like Polish Jews, you see these wonderful black and white pictures of women by a stucco stove, but behind them is a piece of art nouveau wallpaper (where did they get it?), an art nouveau piece of embroidery on a chair. So, I was able to try to combine these elements, but it was not meant to be a documentary on a shtetl, although everything in the film is authentic, everything was researched, everything was checked through the YIVO Institute of Research, because some of the criticism we got was that it looked like it was out of House and Garden [magazine]. It's a fable; it has music in it. It's allowable, but also it's all real. There were very wealthy Jews like Hadass's family. Every piece of silver could have been in one of those homes. The things that we use, like the artwork on the walls, were things that we found from what women did during the period. Women would make paper cut-outs that looked like lace — fabulous. We found them, and those were on the walls, very authentic things, because I'm interested in design, I'm interested in architecture. All the years of decorating houses just paid off, being a director.
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I've been working on Yentl everyday for almost five years in March. When it opens in Europe, it will be five years. During pre-production, I never thought I had enough time, never thought I was prepared enough, knew enough about Polish life, about the shtetls, about the Talmud, about human relationships...always feeling I never knew enough. That was the most frightening, but I had a wonderful cast and crew, very supportive, and I elicited their help. I said, "I need all of you; I need you to be a part of this dream with me." I only wanted people working on the movie who liked the movie, who liked the script. In Europe (I don't know how it would be working here), they were very supportive. I never felt like they were looking at me like, "You're a woman," or a "star." I just didn't feel that way, maybe because from that first day I said, "Look, are you frightened? I'm frightened too, and this is embarrassing for me to stage these numbers and sing for the first time in front of you." I just told them my feelings, and they responded.
In England Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister, so they're more ahead than we are, in a way. I did not find that I was discriminated against in Europe. Even in Czechoslovakia where we filmed, the government was wonderful, very supportive. They seem to have a respect for talent, whether it's male or female; it doesn't seem to matter. They were very respectful towards me.
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[About the film score] It was an absolute choice. It's a stream of consciousness dialogue in song. We intended the music to be timeless and romantic. It was not meant to be ethnic. Only the real source music at the wedding or whatever was authentic. That's ethnic music, but otherwise, it wasn't meant to be a Jewish movie, a Jewish musical. Fiddler On The Roof used more ethnic themes, but this [Yentl] is a story about sexual identity, role playing, and pursuing a dream. It started out as a poem to my father actually, and I think it's very much a love story. It's a story about the love between parent and child, the love of learning, the love between men and women, the love between two men, two women, friends — it's about a lot of things.
[On casting Mandy Patinkin] I saw him in Evita and then in Ragtime,. He's a very alive, very passionate actor, and that's what I felt this quality of Avigdor needed.
[On casting Amy Irving] She's wonderful. She's to me the epitome of what all men would like in a woman, from her beautiful green eyes to her gorgeous hair and her, sweet, lovely personality. She was a gift. She was like my sister and like my very own little doll that I could dress up and make up, pick her clothes. I made her hair red, because I wanted her to be the epitome of femininity, and I let my hair go brown. Then, when she had her monthly cramps, I could give her the right pill. It was a fun relationship. She always got deceived by my outfit. She would come on the set and hold my hand. "Amy, don't do that. I'm a girl, remember, I'm a girl." If she saw me later with my hair down, she was absolutely thrown. She liked me better as a guy, as the director being a guy. It was an experience that was filled with enormous growth, and that's what I think that life's about.
[On making Yentl's marriage to Hadass believable] Those were the hardest moments. Why would she marry this girl? So we invented this idea that he [Avigdor] was going to leave. And, just to keep him, again, the womanly feminine instinct and the passion outrules the mind and logic.
[On Hadass's character] It's about her growth. She to me was the new woman that's left in the old world. Yentl goes to America, and she [Hadass] stays as the seed of the new woman in Europe. One realizes that you can, as a woman, be everything. You don't have to not have a career to be a feminine woman. You can nurture a nest and take care of your family and also have a mind and have thoughts and opinions.
[On directing] I always thought it was a wonderful thing to do. I always had opinions. On my first day on the set with Willie Wyler, I had opinions, but I loved him, and he loved me, I think. We had this wonderfully respectful, exciting exchange of ideas. At the end of filming, he gave me a director's megaphone with the Directors Guild emblem on it. I've always had opinions. I've always visualized pieces in my mind. I see how I like them to look, and I love visualization, of feelings and ideas. Directing is a wonderful job for that, because if you're just an actress and you have opinions, people look at you funny. But, as a director, you'd better have opinions, you'd better have ideas. So, it's the perfect place.
When I was an actress, I always felt that my function was to serve the director. Even though I might have another way of seeing it, my greatest challenge was to help him visualize his dream. Yet, being a director, I felt just the opposite. I felt that my purpose was to serve the actors. It was most important to me that the actors liked themselves, because actors can be at a director's mercy. I just felt that it was my obligation to serve them, to have them do their best work and inspire them in some way, inspire them to reach.
As an actress, I always felt that the director was the "daddy," and we had to please the "daddy." Here, I had to be the "daddy" and myself and the "mommy" though. You go through many feelings, like a psychologist, like a therapist, like a nurse, like a mother, like a father, like a sister, like a brother, like a lover, like a companion, like a friend. I really, really admire directors now. I realize what they all have ever gone through to get performances out of actors, because the actor must trust the director, and that's hard. Trust has to be earned, and in my case, I was a first time director. For me, to work with Wyler, I trusted him, or many of the wonderful directors that I worked for before. You trust them going in by their past work. It was such an obligation for me to have the actors believe in me, to trust me. So, if they've liked themselves...that's my greatest moment, when Mandy first saw himself in the film. How did he like himself? I held my breath till I got his phone call. I was very happy that he was pleased.
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The Legend Of Barbra Streisand
"The most unusual thing happened..."