Eamon O’Rourke Discusses Why Diversity Matters on and off Set
- (Photo : Eamon O'Rourke is dedicated to remaining transparent on set.)
Before Eamon O'Rourke ever took his seat in the director's chair, he spent the earlier part of his career toiling behind the scenes on film sets - and he immediately acknowledges it was largely a sea of white men. So when it came time to make his own film, he says he wanted to be sure diversity played a leading role.
His movie Asking for It, starring Vanessa Hudgens and Alexandra Shipp, is a female empowerment film featuring LGBTQ+ actors and actors from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. In an interview on collider.com, Eamon O'Rourke describes Asking for It as a film about a gang of vigilante femmes who travel across the South seeking revenge in places where the system has hurt people in marginalized communities. Hudgens told collider.com she took on the role because she feels that more strong women should be depicted in films and that Asking for It achieves that goal.
"One of my favorite things about this movie is the fact that it is female leading," Shipp told collider.com. "A lot of times with these types of movies, you see the women getting saved by a man and in this situation, women are saving each other. I think that's something we all need to see, especially in film."
Promoting a Narrative Rooted in Equality
The end credits of Asking for It state that the movie was shot on the ancestral homelands of the Wichita people. "We further acknowledge the tribal nations who were forcibly removed from there and the 39 tribes who reside in Oklahoma today," the film credits specify. "Native peoples make many contributions to the land and we stand with them and thank them for allowing us to be there and work with them."
Eamon O'Rourke, who not only wrote and directed the film, but also makes cameos in it, says when he arrived in Oklahoma to begin shooting Asking for It, one of his top missions was to make sure his cast and crew were comfortable.
"When you're asking anyone to do extremely vulnerable work - and a lot of the stuff we were shooting was asking a lot of our actors - [you want to make sure] they feel seen," O'Rourke says. "The purpose of trying to achieve diversity is not to check boxes, but rather to create a fuller and more comfortable experience."
Working with people of color, Eamon O'Rourke also wanted to make sure that down to hair and makeup, he hired the right team of people to make his actors and actresses feel supported.
"I do really think that those kinds of things make a big difference and can just adjust the overall vibe on a set," he explains.
As a white man, O'Rourke says he's completely aware of the importance of understanding the gaps in his knowledge while also understanding the limits of his implicit bias. "We all have those things. Just the perspectives that we're able to understand quite quickly and some things that we've had less access with, or no access with, which just creates these gaps, which is not a bad thing," he says.
"It's just a part of being a person. It felt really important to me to be able to recognize those things within myself and be surrounded by people who can help me in those moments and fill in the gaps. I feel like I've said this before, [but] being a good director is not always knowing the answer, it's understanding when you know the answer, understanding when you don't, and knowing who to ask when you don't."
By surrounding himself with a group of people with wildly different individual experiences and varying personal and professional perspectives, Eamon O'Rourke says he was trying to help himself and the movie in those delicate moments.
Eamon O'Rourke Remains Transparent on Set
Eamon O'Rourke adds that having so many different people on set can be a blessing when it's time to bounce ideas around. "Luckily, I was working with a lot of really, really wonderful people. We were able to gain a lot of trust between us," O'Rourke says. "They were very comfortable giving their opinions and sharing their perspectives in those moments, which I think really just helped the movie overall. [I was able to ask] 'What do you think about an experience like this? Does this moment read emotionally true to you? Does it feel authentic? Or does it feel like this is how a white man would say it? If that is the case, then what are adjustments?'"
Eamon O'Rourke says he's extremely proud his film received the ReFrame Stamp, which is awarded to productions showing gender equality and featuring women and individuals of other underrepresented gender identities. According to its website, "The ReFrame Stamp is awarded to narrative and animated features that hire women or individuals of other underrepresented gender identities/expressions (including those who are nonbinary or gender nonconforming) in four out of eight key roles including writer, director, producer, lead, co-leads, and department heads. Additional points are awarded to productions that hire women of color in key positions, and to those with overall gender parity in their crews." Other films that have snagged the ReFrame Stamp include Nomadland, In the Heights, and Encanto.
"There was a real sense of community on our set," O'Rourke says. "That felt extremely important and felt like it had a big effect on our ability to make the movie well."
The director also says going into the project, he constantly prioritized how he wanted the filmmaking experience to be one everyone would look back on fondly.
"I would rather the entire cast and crew say, 'Wow, that was an amazing experience. I felt safe and respected and heard the entire time,'" he says. "Because those are not things to be taken for granted on a film set. [It's] not always the case that that's the way that you end up feeling because there's so much time pressure, and the stakes are so high because there's money involved, and things like that. Oftentimes, laborers and people who aren't at the very top of the hierarchy get really badly mistreated. It's a huge bummer, because I really don't think it has to be that way."
O'Rourke declares he never takes anyone for granted on set.
"At the end of the day, you take any one of those people out of the equation, your movie falls apart," he says. "I think there is a way of balancing logistics and being able to be pragmatic and be smart with your time without [saying], 'We're going to sacrifice the emotional state of the people who are working for us.'"
