Finding Louise Brooks in Europe!

While gingerly opening an old dictionary in the WSU Special Collections Archive, uncovering the words "Louise Brooks, Paris, 1928" inscribed on the front pages, I had a thought that I've experienced so many times during this documentary journey: "This is real, she's real- this actually happened!" In my excitement, I had to remind myself to be gentle, as the nearly century-old book crinkled in my hands; the pages were incredibly delicate, as they had been covered in quotes that had been glued to both sides of every page, every inch of space covered in the words of the great literary masters: Carlyle, Goethe, Ruskin, Plato, Proust, and others that I, with my newly acquired degree from university, was too uneducated to recognize.  This dictionary belonged to a woman with only half a high school education- but that's Louise for you.  During a time when people thought women could do nothing, Louise Brooks could (and dared to) do anything.


Upon first glance into her life, she was a dancer/showgirl turned movie actress who began in Hollywood as a "cheesecake" star. Upon being denied a raise she was entitled to in a shady business maneuver by Paramount, she quit her Hollywood career to go make films in Europe. Those European films, particularly two made in Berlin under the guise of German Post-Modern director G.W. Pabst called Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) (see what we did there?) would be the ones that cemented her fame and indoctrinated her into cinema studies history as being the first natural actress. 

However, to see just this side of her life is to miss 80% of the story; she was also a dancer with one of the pioneering modern dance troops of the time, Denishawn, as well as a self-taught painter, a pretty good photographer and, most of all, a world-changing writer. She worked tirelessly to improve her skill, studying thoroughly every bit of literature that she read and taking fastidious notes to be sure that every fact she put on paper was correct (I urge you not to underestimate this task, because there was no google in the 1960s; it was the public library or bust). Her essays were aimed at exposing the brutal truth about the cut-throat and sexist Hollywood studio system: one which had sexually abused her throughout her career. She was screaming about the Harvey Weinstein's of cinema during a time when people didn't even whisper about such things.
 
There is a lot more to this human enigma, but that is what our film is for.  Louise Brooks was obsessed with the truth, and it has been my unflagging goal to create a film that shows the absolute truth about her. This desire was brought about by a realization that most of the literature released about Brooks in the past two decades reduced her to an over-eroticized image; a sexual object.  This poor woman who had fought so obsessively to protect her legacy and show the truth behind the mysogyny had fallen into the trap she so feared and admonished against. Furthermore, this intense focus on her physical image has overshadowed her near-unbelievable academic accomplishments.  A woman who has over 30 packed research journals and tons of self-annotated and self-indexed books in nearly every subject preserved in archive vaults throughout the country is somehow best known for the number of people she has slept with.  She referred to herself as being a "born whore"; we see her as a born genius. While both sides carry an important story, it is our goal to show you the whole picture- on the biggest screen possible.

 The final lap in our journey consists of us going to Europe to uncover one of the most important times in Louise's life; from Berlin to London, from London to France, and so on, discovering pieces of the past that still quietly linger, waiting to be found.  This project has been almost completely funded by a waitressing salary- now we just need a little help getting from place to place so that we can give you the most accurate and detailed depiction as possible; Louise would have settled for nothing less. The example that she set by eschewing the abusive Hollywood industry to go to Europe is one that could positively influence many today, and her story is everything that we need right now.

Help us find Louise's truth; in exchange, we will give you one of the best stories you've ever heard. And the best part is, it really happened.

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