How it began
I have been happily together with my husband since 1980, 44 years. Oh god, I had to go back and do the math on that, seriously, 44 years?
When we met I had decided I would never get married because men were just too primitive, too much like in the Barbie movie, when Ken found life in the patriarchy so perfect because it favored him, favored men and Barbie felt belittled.
Maybe the problem with the men that made me vow never to marry was where I was living: Modoc County, California, the remote high cold sagebrush desert ranching country, 10 hours drive from San Francisco. Whatever. I had lost hope that men anywhere were any different.
I moved to San Francisco spend a summer editing a documentary I had been shooting in that remote ranching country. I had no idea what I was doing in terms of making and editing a film or telling a story based on verité footage. Now I know that telling a story based on verité footage is a challenge no matter how many years you’ve been making films. But then I had no idea what challenge I was facing.
I’d only been in San Francisco a couple days when a sound engineer told me I was going to need an editor. On the list of possible editors was Kenji. I always joke that Kenji was the only one who called me back, so I married him. During that first call, he was so lively and funny, I went to sleep that night asking myself, “Who is this Kenji?”
Not long after that, I was in my editing room, doing everything wrong, when the filmmaker I was renting the room from knocked on my door and declared, “This is Kenji.” Kenji sat down in my edit room and talked with me for hours.
He always says that he had never met someone so committed to her characters and their story that she lived with them for 3 years, and that I had all this true-to-life footage shot in the moment (verité). He started showing up every evening after doing his own film work for clients, with a pizza and a big smile. He’d then spend a few hours editing the mess I had been making all day.
He was the liberated man I had been looking for, the guy who saw women as equals, who wanted to be different from other guys. I had all I could do to keep my hands off him. When our edit sessions were over, I was crushed because he’d call his girlfriend to ask her what she’d like for dinner.
After about 3 months, he got the hint. The film took 18 months to finish, during which time we became a couple!