“Novitiate” director Betts has been busy in the six years since her nun drama showed Sundance. She worked on an adaptation of “The Days of Abandonment,” then a Pussy Riot movie, followed by Shirley Chisolm project with Viola Davis, “but then that fell off a cliff.”
A David-vs.-Goliath courtroom drama that stars a typically understated Tommy Lee Jones opposite a dynamic Jamie Foxx, “The Burial” was Betts’s next movie.
“You want your second movie to be a personal one that establishes you as someone who has voice. But I’d never been someone who watched courtroom dramas.”
Betts got hooked on movies as a teen, then planned out how to break into the Hollywood boys’ club. “Back then, it was like, only dudes could make an amazing independent film and show up at Sundance” expecting it to launch their careers, whereas she felt “I have to make a superb documentary, and then I have to make a perfect short,” and only then could she make a feature.
“Novitiate” was designed as film with a novel concept and all-female ensemble that could be made in a tight location.
A big step forward, “The Burial” is a project that many directors, from Alexander Payne to Stephen Frears, tried to crack.
“Nobody could quite figure out what to do with it,” says Betts, who abandoned the white-savior element — now, Jones’ character must persuade Foxx to represent him — and gender-flipped the defense lawyer (played by Jurnee Smollett).
“The most important thing was to rewrite the wives and have important female character. She’s like a villain, but she should be the most evolved.”
2023: Directors to Watch–Maggie Betts, The Burial (Women in Film)
Maggie Betts
“The Burial”
“Novitiate” director Betts has been busy in the six years since her nun drama showed Sundance. She worked on an adaptation of “The Days of Abandonment,” then a Pussy Riot movie, followed by Shirley Chisolm project with Viola Davis, “but then that fell off a cliff.”
A David-vs.-Goliath courtroom drama that stars a typically understated Tommy Lee Jones opposite a dynamic Jamie Foxx, “The Burial” was Betts’s next movie.
“You want your second movie to be a personal one that establishes you as someone who has voice. But I’d never been someone who watched courtroom dramas.”
Betts got hooked on movies as a teen, then planned out how to break into the Hollywood boys’ club. “Back then, it was like, only dudes could make an amazing independent film and show up at Sundance” expecting it to launch their careers, whereas she felt “I have to make a superb documentary, and then I have to make a perfect short,” and only then could she make a feature.
“Novitiate” was designed as film with a novel concept and all-female ensemble that could be made in a tight location.
A big step forward, “The Burial” is a project that many directors, from Alexander Payne to Stephen Frears, tried to crack.
“Nobody could quite figure out what to do with it,” says Betts, who abandoned the white-savior element — now, Jones’ character must persuade Foxx to represent him — and gender-flipped the defense lawyer (played by Jurnee Smollett).
“The most important thing was to rewrite the wives and have important female character. She’s like a villain, but she should be the most evolved.”