Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Monique Sorgen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Monique thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I grew up in a hippie house so I was always allowed and encouraged to pursue my dreams. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t planning to pursue a creative career that would be something to do with entertaining people through story, in particular. I directed my first play in the 5th grade, when I petitioned the principal to put on a redux version of “Annie” at the winter assembly, and then gathered all my friends at recess to rehearse for the next month. As a I became an adult I understood more and more why it was important for me to pursue this career. It’s because you can influence the state of the world through art and through stories. And since I was raised by activists I always felt it was my moral duty and my civic responsibility to do whatever I could to try to make the world a better place for everyone in it by any means I could access. So for me storytelling was always how I hoped to make a difference. I’ve always had a unique perspective on life because of my unconventional background and upbringing, which didn’t push me toward conforming to society, but rather to think that everyone should have a chance to find their own path toward happiness, no matter what that might look like.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m a writer-director with a joyfully cynical voice, who uses comedy to upend a woman’s place in the world. I love comedy because movies and television shows attract a bigger audience when they are entertaining, and you want to tell your friends about them. A lot of my material is fun, but that does not prevent it from having some kind of message that disrupts your expectations about the characters or the situation– kind of how Barbie did last summer. It had a lot to say but presented it in a way that was fun and visually pleasing and original, but also enjoyable. What I really want to do is break down people’s preconceived notions and eradicate their judgment of those who make different life choices. Particularly for women, and even more so for single women…
My personal mission is to celebrate women who are single weather that’s by choice or by accident. Women are autonomous, and some of us actually don’t want to be defined by who we’re dating, or who we’re married to, or who our children are. Some of us want to be defined by who we are, even if those dreams don’t include getting married or having babies. Some women (like some men) are more passionate about their careers, and that is a perfectly valid choice. Even those women who are single not-by-choice tend to get shamed for it– as if they are not worthy– when in fact, they just haven’t met someone who is right for them and makes them happy. That’s why a lot of my stories deal with single women of all ages, with a variety of desires.
I’m breaking down barriers for women in my films, but also in my life where I’ve also started a new organization called, GenXX, which I’ve co-created with Maria Burton, Nandi Bowe, and Susan Dynner. Our mission is to raise awareness and expand opportunities for the generation of experienced, vetted, and talented women directors who’ve been overlooked, lost between sexism and ageism. Our website www.GenXX.infoexplains it more thoroughly.
Have you ever had to pivot?
My whole career has been one pivot after another. At first, when I was small, I thought it would be an actor. But you know, when you’re small you don’t know that there are directors or writers or anything else, you just see the actors so that was just a matter of growing older and learning about how things are made. I didn’t even realize that I had already been a director in 5th grade. But when I got to college and figured out who does what, I instantly pivoted to directing and focused on that.
Right out of college, I got a job as a director’s assistant on television shows, and for 3 years I learned on the job—it was everything I needed to know to become a director. But there weren’t any opportunities for young women coming up in the business at that time (which is why we created GenXX). I didn’t realize there was sexism back then, so I forged ahead, using my new connections to get great recognizable actors and great crew members, to make a short film. It was super well received and played on TV and Airlines around the world. I did all that by the time I was 25. But everyone wanted to know what else I had written. And I kept saying, “I’m not a writer, I’m a director.” I only wrote that short film because I couldn’t find any material I liked enough to direct it.
And nobody at the time believed that women could direct, so I was kind of pushed into a writing career. That said writing is a wonderful, fun, creative process where you get to not only decide what the story will be about and who it’ll be about, but you also get to decide how it’s told, what the tone will be, who the main character will be, what their journey will be… so ultimately I learned to love writing.
But the writing actually led me into a career creating reality shows—so that was an accidental pivot, where the first few jobs were hybrids of comedy writing and real people, and eventually the jobs were just real people in dumb situations. The thing about reality TV is it’s a pretty dirty world to work in because you have to have less moral scruples to survive there, and as you may remember, I was raised in hippie house by activist parents who wanted to change the world for the better, so ultimately, after a few people screwed me over pretty badly, I quit cold turkey. I was like “If I’m going to get screwed over this much, I’d rather get screwed over doing something I care about.” So that was when I pivoted back into narrative writing and that was when I really sat down for a bunch of years and wrote all the screenplays.
I ended up writing at least 40 screenplay– probably more, but you lose count after a while– including some television pilots and specs, as well as a novel, and a theatrical one act to play. And my stuff was well received, but so much of it had this very female gaze, and it often had female characters, and I can’t tell you how often people (back before #MeToo) said that movies about women don’t sell. (During this time, I continued directing small projects like music videos that ended up on the Disney Channel, and branded reality shows for the internet that I shot in the Philippines with international crews where I was in charge of everybody.)
Then when #Metoo happened, I finally realized that sexism was the reason my directing career hadn’t taken off, despite all my experience working in show business and despite my continued efforts to make writing and directing samples… This was the first time in my career there had really been an opening for someone who looked like me to do the job. So, I pivoted again, back to where I’d started.
I went hard back into directing short films and made a web series starring sock puppets that was just released on the Argentinian platform Flixxo.com and it’s available on KoldOpen.com in the US. I’ve been able to win awards with everything I’ve made, and get into Oscar Qualifying Film Festivals. Again, just proving that I was always here, and I was always worthy, despite the fact that nobody was looking to hire me because they couldn’t trust that a woman could do the job, (even though there’s no logical reason a woman can’t do this job). And now I’m working on getting a feature film going. And I’m very focused on being a director full-time even though for many years people saw me as a writer, and for many years before that people saw me as a reality TV person…
So I’ve pivoted a lot of times, but I think with all my scripts under my belt and my shiny new directing awards, I’m currently in a good position to finally go after the things I’ve been trying to get from the start.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
First of all, I think everybody is creative, but some people just don’t explore that side of themselves that closely. That said, “non-creatives” as you call them, think I chose this… but it chose me. It’s a calling. If you do it, it’s because you don’t have a choice. It’s so hard and non-linear, and every day is like taking a gamble on yourself. Then if you have moments when you’re struggling, people act like it’s your fault for choosing it. But you can spend hours and days figuring out something else to do, and it keeps drawing you back, because you can’t not do it. If you could, you would.
I’ve actually tried to quit before. I moved to Paris thinking, “I’ll be in a beautiful city, where maybe it won’t matter what job I’m doing because I’ll be here!” But within a week, I was only meeting Paris’ showbiz people, and I was going to movie premieres, because it’s what I know. It’s what I’m an expert at. And it’s what I love.
Also, if you think about it, everyone makes choices in life and you don’t know how they’re going to go. You could choose a straight and narrow path, but then your spouse could die young, the company you work for could go under. You could choose a job you hate and wake up and realize you wasted your life. You could choose to marry money and never get to feel real love. Every choice is a give and take. Every choice is a risk, so why not chose the risk you think might fulfill you?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.moniquesorgen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moniquesorgen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moniquesorgenlove/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monique-sorgen-b5b10134/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/moniquesorgen
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@MoniqueSorgen
- Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/moniquesorgen Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Monique-Sorgen/e/B00CF6B588
Image Credits
Erin Brown Thomas Troy Smith Josh Schnose Paula Rhodes Darryl Pugh Elaine Collins Julian Jankowski