SXSWORLD

Jill Soloway will be a Film Keynote Speaker at SXSW 2016 THE SOLO WAY Jill Soloway's Transparent Sense of Purpose By niGel m. smith SXSW.COM | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 | SXS W O R L D 2 1  Before writing the pilot for Transparent, inspired by her father coming out as trans- gender, Soloway was already well on her way to becoming a television titan, having explored the thorny family dynamics that characterize Transparent over four sea- sons of HBO's Six Feet Under, as writer and co-executive producer. She also was show-runner for the second season of Showtime's United States of Tara, another series to center on brood dysfunction.  However, her first dabble into film- making set her back. Despite winning the best director award at the 2013 Sundance film festival for Afternoon Delight, a dark comedy starring her frequent collaborator Kathryn Hahn as a bored housewife who strikes up a friendship with a young pros- titute, the critical reception was curiously mixed. Female critics tended to favor it, while some male critics derided the film.  "We went from the night of the premiere, with people going, 'Awards campaign for Kathryn!', to 'nobody's probably ever going to see it,' " Soloway recalls. "It was this horrific roller coaster from thinking I had a huge hit, to kind of getting pummeled in the press by some male critics. Maybe it was misogyny."  It took her father coming out as trans- gender shortly thereafter to inspire her to write the pilot for Transparent—and ulti- mately regain her footing with a renewed sense of purpose.  "Once my trans parent came out, and I started to understand the connection between misogyny and trans-misogyny. I started to get a bird's eye view of the way a lot of people share a common feeling of oppression," she says.  "I think watching Transparent change the world has emboldened me," Soloway continues. "You go through life thinking: 'Nothing will ever change, and nothing I do will make a difference.' And yet, writing this little half-hour show—which to me was a very personal exercise in exploring my own feelings of shame around my family— has made me believe I can change the world, which I think is everybody's dream: to matter."  As for Hollywood's warm embrace of Transparent (on top of winning seven Emmys, the show has also nabbed two Golden Globes), Soloway says she feels "of two minds about it."  "On the one hand, every time I drive past a billboard or a bus, which I do all the time in L.A. with Transparent, or when we're at the Emmys, I'm absolutely, positively shocked that the show is being loved and seen by the world, because it seems totally unreal," she says. "At the same time, there was a feeling shortly after my parent came out, when I had the idea for the TV show, where I was really able to fast forward to see all of this happening in this really strange way, where I had this sense of security about it. This matters, and this story is going to get out. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I know it's going to happen, and I know it's going to be right."  "I knew this idea had wings," she adds, "and it was more than a TV show."   ill Soloway for president? The prospect isn't as far out as it seems. The Emmy- winning producer, writer and director says that long before bringing the transgender movement to the mainstream with her Amazon sensation Transparent, she har- bored the drive to become "the first woman president."  "I think I was known as a bossy child," she recalls. "I don't think I'm going to pull off being president this time around—and that's fine."  Instead, Soloway has gone about making her mark on the America by working to revolutionize the television industry with Transparent.  When complaints surfaced from the LGBTQ community concerning Jeffrey Tambor's casting as the show's transgender matriarch Maura over a transgender actor, Soloway responded by taking affirmative action to right what many deemed a wrong. She has since instituted a "transfirma- tive action program," wherein she favors the hiring of transgender candidates over non-transgender ones to create a wholly inclusive set reflective of the world of the show. As a result, the series—which recently launched its third season—boasts the largest group of transgender cast and crew in Hollywood.  Soloway's activism now permeates everything she touches. She used her recent Emmy win for outstanding directing for a comedy series (her second for Transparent) to urge her peers in the room to "topple the patriarchy!"  "It's a privilege, and creates privilege, when you take people of color, women, trans people, queer people, as the subjects of stories, you change the world, we found out," she said to roars of approval.  Most recently, that fire translated into an urgent op-ed she wrote in Time magazine, in response to Donald Trump's "locker room talk." Citing his boastings as an example of "toxic masculinity," she wrote: "The sooner we acknowledge the con- tinuum on which our lives exist, the sooner we'll respect each other and embrace our glorious diversity."

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