Karyn Kusama

Kusama was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Haruo Kusama, a Japanese child psychiatrist. He immigrated from Japan and attended the medical school of Washington University.  Kusama's mother, Susan McGuire, was an occupational therapist. She is of Scottish-Irish descent. Her father is Japanese American and her mother is Scots-Irish-American.[6] Karyn grew up highly invested in the film industry and watching movies, she used it as an outlet to help her feel seen.[7] Her love for filmmaking grew from the female directors, Martha Coolidge and Amy Heckerling, Directors of Valley Girl and Fast Time.[8] She graduated from Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis. In 1990, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. One of her professors at NYU, Carol Dysinger, admired her work and loved the way she told her story through filmmaking.[9] Her jobs before making it big in the film industry varied from nannying, house painting, editing, and working with the production of independent films/ music videos.[10] In 1992, after partnering with John Sayles as an assistant, she joined Gleason's Gym in Dumbo, Brooklyn where she started boxing. She used the fact that she was one of the few female boxers as inspiration for the film, "Girlfight" in 2000. She trained with a well known Spanish trainer, Hector Roca. [11]

Kusama's films have been noted for their strong feminist themes, and with the exception of The Invitation, all have featured female protagonists. They are often flawed, with the filmmaker citing an interest in ambiguity and difficulty in characters. Kusama has described herself as a "feminist unapologetically" and has criticized the barriers that women face in the film industry. In addition to themes of feminism, Kusama takes the time to investigate and understand the darker side of psychology for her characters. She highlights many of the negative emotions such as violence, loss, anxiety, and unrest. She ensures her work is in a realist direction and related to the viewers in an uncomfortable way. Kusama's works are represented in an externalizing direction where her character's emotions are channeled into physical actions.[44]

Her interest in being a filmmaker comes from the "disparate elements" of art in storytelling from dialogue to music, and the opportunity that being a filmmaker allows in uniting these elements into a single vision. Kusama's films have often drawn upon and been influenced by her own experiences and connections. In her beginning years she was surrounded by people dying, drugs, violence, betrayal, and anger. She used all of these feelings to create tension and anxiety from the audience. Kusama also refuses to set aside roles for men, hence the feminism within her films.[45]

Some of her films have been set in the city of Los Angeles. On the city's usage in The Invitation, Kusama said that despite the film being primarily set and shot in a single interior space it had to be set in Los Angeles due to the mythology and history of the city and the surrounding Southern California region. With Destroyer, she aimed to authentically depict parts of the city not often seen in popular culture, resulting in its location shooting going "off the beaten path." Many of Kusama's production designs are thought through in a more emotional way. She ensures that the lighting, color palette, and music are a direct reflection of her characters on screen. Since she has a dark overall theme for her films, many of her works have dim and darkened lights in terms of color and most of her tones are way below the audible ranges of her landscapes so in the final project they come off as vibratory in theater. Kusama has a love for the visual arts and detail. Her signature way of framing her shots help push along her themes of her stories. Ensuring she has a controlled aesthetic, she uses isolation techniques, dead spaces, and the camera to create personal feelings with her characters.  [46]

Kusama married screenwriter Phil Hay in October 2006. They have a son. Although they had known each other since meeting at Sundance when Girlfight premiered in 2000, it wasn't until they worked together on Æon Flux that they began dating.[3]

Hay has co-written three of her films with his writing partner Matt Manfredi. Together the trio formed Familystyle Films,[47] under which Destroyer was released.

Kusama has named Jonathan Glazer and Jacques Audiard as two current filmmakers who have influenced her.[28] She also said Chantal Akerman's arthouse film Jeanne Dielman is one of her favorite female-directed films.[48] Kusama was initially inspired to make films–particularly centered around women–by her viewings of Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) as well as Martha Coolidge's Valley Girl (1983).

Feature films

• Girlfight (2000) (also writer)
• Æon Flux (2005)
• Jennifer's Body (2009)
• The Invitation (2015)
• Destroyer (2018)

Short films

Television

• Gordon, Bette (Fall 2000). "Karyn Kusama". BOMB Magazine. 73.
• Baker, Aaron (September 2000). "A new combination: Women and the boxing film: An interview with Karyn Kusama". Cineaste. 25 (4): 22–26. ISSN 0009-7004. ProQuest 204837126.
• Figgis, Mike (2000). "Karyn Kusama". In Lippy, Tod; Boorman, John; Donohue, Walter (eds.). Projections 11: New York Film-Makers on New York Film-Making. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-20591-2. OCLC 45625833.
• Horowitz, Josh (2006). "Karyn Kusama". The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker: 20 Conversations with the New Generation of Filmmakers. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-452-28681-8. OCLC 475147506.
• Rybicky, Dan (2008). "Chapter 13: "And Maybe There Is a Way to Give Hollywood the Kick in the Ass That It Needs: An Interview with Karyn Kusama". In Bernardi, Daniel (ed.). Filming Difference: Actors, Directors, Producers, and Writers on Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Film. University of Texas Press. pp. 263–288. ISBN 978-0-292-71923-1. OCLC 488626749.

• Karyn Kusama at IMDb