photo by Suzanne Hanover
The rise of assistant director Nandi Bowe from set production assistant to 2nd AD to director in a span of 11 years is a story of vision, courage and hard work. As an African-American and as a woman, Nandi has gained a strong foundation of support in the film industry and from within the DGA membership.
Her 25-minute short, Statistically Speaking, aired on the Showtime cable network in February during Black History Month, receiving the First Place Award in the comedy category from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, as well as honors from the Black American Cinema Society. It stars Alfre Woodward, Lillian Lehman, veteran DGA member Garry Marshall, Roxie Roker and Richard Edson. Shot for $15,000 ($25,000 after post production and screenings), Statistically Speaking was written, produced and directed by Bowe.
Given experimental status by the DGA and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) for cast and crew waivers, Nandi raised money and rallied support from all over town, calling in some heavyweight help from her past professional associations. According to Jerry Ziesmer, chairperson of DGA's AD/UPM/TC Council and founder and chair of DGA Mentor Committee of Assistant Directors, "Most people do it by asking for grants and funding. Nandi Bowe did it on her own, by calling in favors from people like Alfre Woodard, Garry Marshall, Willie Burton, myself and others. What I love most of all is to see an assistant director become a director. It gives her a reel to show to agents, cast and producers." Nandi tends to inspire that kind of support.
The premise of Statistically Speaking explores the statistic that states it is easier for a woman over 40 to get hijacked than it is for her to get married. Statistically speaking, was it easier to become a director by working as an assistant director first? Bowe said, "The thing you find is that being an assistant director isn't necessarily a line to directing. In fact, it's more the exception to the rule."
Nandi's introduction to the film business followed quickly upon graduation from Howard University in Washington DC, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Production, cum laude. She knew film was her medium but until then, television had been more accessible. Having worked as an operations trainee at public station WHMM-TV, based at Howard University, for two years, she would have directed either for film or television at the time, she said.
The opportunity to volunteer on director Sidney Poitier's New York location of Fast Forward (1984) was a pivotal break. When some PAs were let go, Nandi was hired on, and re-hired when the shoot moved back to LA. Living on a salary of $300 a week, with no car, family or friends, Nandi made it work by staying with members of the crew and commuting to her home in Oakland on weekends. That film led to the producer hiring her on his next picture, Tom Donnelly's Quicksilver (1984), which shot in San Francisco. "I had done two films by October 1984 and by then I realized that, as hard as it was, I could work in the film industry," she said.
When Nandi's mother, Nanny Murrell, PhD, who is an assistant professor at the School of Nursing at the University of California San Francisco, took a job teaching nursing and midwifery in Malawi, South Africa in 1984, she asked Nandi if she wanted to go with her. Nandi's decision to accompany her provided an unforseeable fortuitous twist in her own career.
After six months of acclimation to a town with one newspaper, no television and three traffic lights, and being without a phone, Nandi heard of a film shooting in Zimbabwe, a country she had never visited. By calling one of the trade papers in LA from a Malawi hotel, she was able to locate a number for the production of King Solomon's Mines. Although they were close to completing shooting, a sequel was going to start up one month later. "I just decided to go," she said.
With enough money to live in Zimbabwe for two weeks, and the name of a friend's cousin to stay with, Nandi flew to Zimbabwe, managed to get to the set and got hired to sit on the top of a mountain to act as relay station, for the equivalent of $75 a week. In the two years (1985-87) that her mother was in South Africa, Nandi worked on five films: Allan Quartermaine and the Lost City of Gold, Fire in Eden, Jake Speed, Cry Freedom and Mandela.
It was while she was working in Zimbabwe that Nandi met Robin Melhuish, now her husband, whose father was the British High Commissioner. Robin, who formerly worked for BBC radio in London, is now a first assistant cameraman. He recently completed Milos Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt.
Robin and Nandi were married in 1989 and have a young son, Addae, a West African name which means Morning Sun.
After returning to the US, Nandi worked in various capacities, from set production assistant to 1st AD, racking up the hours to get into the DGA on such features as Lean On Me, The Presidio, Tucker, Frankie and Johnny, Sneakers, Hocus Pocus, Do The Right Thing, The Long Walk Home, House Party, The Saint of Ft. Washington, Sister Act 2, Blankman, Boys on the Side, To Wong Foo..., and Daughters of the Dust.
"For the longest time, when I was a PA, I wanted to be an AD," Nandi recalled. "And being the set PA is the logical way to start out, especially if you are a women. You're working so hard, and it's a constant hassle when you're making such a little amount of money, that I just wanted to be an assistant director in the DGA. DGA was like a wonderful place where people had some rights and everything that I didn't have. They got overtime, health care, all that."
She became a member of the DGA in 1989, the same year she began her Directing Fellowship at the American Film Institute, where she made four short films in one year. Her submission film, which gained her acceptance into the program, Rebecca's Bed, won an award from the Black Filmmaker's Hall of Fame.
Jean Firstenberg, AFI director and CEO, commented, "Nandi Bowe is the kind of a person who finds a way to make what she cares about happen. She is talented and tenacious -- the two essential characteristics of a director. We are proud that AFI was a part of her career path and that she was the recipient of a Mary Pickford Scholarship. In fact, Nandi is sort of a pioneer in her own right." The scholarship is given upon recommendation from the faculty to honor artistic merit. It is not a minority scholarship.
Of her experience working as an African-American woman on a set, Nandi said, "On film sets, as the PA, as the AD, usually I was one of very few Blacks. You know, if it was a film that had a Black actor in it, then there was Black make-up and hair and me. And other times, I worked on films that didn't have Black themes or Black actors and, in a lot of cases it was just me. I was the only Black person, and one of two or three women."
Her heroes and mentors are as diverse as her background working on feature films: Hal Ashby, who directed two of her favorite films, Harold and Maude and Being There; Julie Dash, director of Daughters in the Dust and a period short, Illusions; Jodie Foster, whose acting and directing talent Nandi describes as "quiet thunder;" Lucille Ball, because she had the camera equipment painted light green to make a happy environment for her crew; Alfre Woodard, who is a friend and someone who made Nandi feel welcome in LA at a time when she knew no one; Whoopi Goldberg, the actress with whom Nandi has worked the most; Oprah Winfrey, with whom Nandi worked on The Women of Brewster Place, and whom she admires for her easy, sweet, savvy professionalism; and Garry Marshall, who Nandi says is definitely a mentor. "The thing that is so wonderful about Garry is that people love him and he enjoys what he does and takes time to have fun," she said.
Of his experience working on Statistically Speaking, Marshall said, "Nandi was very kind and yet professional as a director. I thought her shots were both artistic and practical under her budgetary restrictions. I knew when she was writing [the part] for me that she had a great future as a director -- I didn't want to tell her though, because I didn't want her to get a swelled head. I had no problems working with her other than I never did learn how to pronounce her name." (For the record, the first syllable of Nandi is pronounced non, as in non-stop.)
Ziesmer is another mentor. "Jerry Ziesmer is one of those people who has been such an influence in my life," said Nandi. "Just by being someone who would take the time to answer my question or to let me know that I was not alone with my fears or my worries or my anxieties."
Support on film sets has also come from the old-timers, the ones who recognize the light of enthusiasm in Nandi Bowe's eyes. "I always get along well with the guys on the film sets," she said. The key grip is often my friend, the gaffer is often my friend, because I get them to tell me little secrets. I say to them, 'Why did you do that?' And I get them in the habit of telling me when something special comes up.
"I think that people who are good at their job have enough to share," she continued. "There is a whole tier of people who are 1st ADs when you're a 2nd AD, or 2nd ADs when you're a PA, and they decide to share their knowledge, their wisdom and their fears, or whatever. That is another kind of support I've gotten."
Contrasting her assistant directing experience, Nandi explained, "Assistant directing, although it is very creative if you do it well, is thought of as management on the set. You're setting the environment for a productive day of work for somebody else's dream, vision and passion. And if you're lucky, you share that with them. As a director, your job is to bring all of the details together, to serve one vision, dream or thought, and if you're lucky, it's mostly yours. For both assistant directors and directors, I'd say grace is important. Both should be really smart, quick on their toes.
"As a director, a clear sense of leadership is important, because you are the one that people look up to," she continued. "Also, I think you have to have that special quality that allows people to believe they can exceed themselves. I believe there is a marriage of time, money and art in filmmaking, and as a director I want to be responsible for that. I realize that it is a business and I want to find a way, within the boundaries of time and money, to responsibly obtain my vision."
Nandi comes from a long line of highly motivated, self-directed women. Her great aunts are Bessie and Sadie Deleny, the centenarians whose autobiography Having Our Say went from The New York Times best-seller list to a Broadway play. The book documents a life of education, hard work, sacrifice, virtuous living and a good sense of humor, giving testimony to the beliefs installed by their parents, who raised ten children in Raleigh, North Carolina at the turn of the century. The Delany sisters were among the first African-American women professionals in New York City during World War I. Their father, who was born into slavery, became America's first elected Black Episcopal bishop. Nandi's father, Walter Bowe, is a retired jazz and blues musician who resides in New York.
As the eldest of three siblings, Nandi grew up in a home where watching television was not allowed. She recalled, "My mother said she didn't want anything [in the house] that was more enticing than she was. I was born in 1963 and the images that were on TV had nothing to do with me or my life, and it's only recently that there is even a semblance of positive images for Black people. Both my parents loved movies, so from early on I was dragged to movies, happily but all the time. So I really got a love of film from my parents as well."
Nandi's leadership abilities were expressed and noticed early on. Darlene Librero, Director of the Explainer Program at San Francisco's Exploratorium Museum where the focus is on human perspective itself, remembered hiring Nandi as a high school student explainer because, "She was very vocal, confident about what she had learned; her family valued sharing, and her family was open. She doesn't let things go by and has a sense of organization about things that are intangible." Nandi worked at the Exploratorium during 1976-1977.
Girlfriend and champion supporter Alfre Woodard concurred. "Nandi is a very rich and deep person. She has always had planet-eye view, looking at the whole all the time," Woodard said. "What is so attractive and adorable about Nandi as a person is that she sees how it is all one thing, one world, and she operates out of that. One of the interesting things about her as a filmmaker and one of her greatest assets is her storytelling. Because she is so well-read, and because of her directing skills, she won't give us sleight of hand filmmaking. I desperately want to do her action adventure script North Star as my next picture."
Nandi sees her future as a film director in this perspective: "Perhaps a director is an alchemist, somebody who can change a rock into gold. What I want to do on a wide scale is to change the way people think. Right now I want to direct anything I can that is worthy. Is it worthy? That's the only qualifier."
If alchemy plays any part in Nandi's feature directorial debut, her next project promises to be pure gold.
Francesca Riviere is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer specializing in the arts.
