The Ideas Behind "Conversations with Coco"

Maggie Calcutt and I wrote a script and filmed an interview between Coco Chanel and Joan of Arc last week. The script writing, albeit difficult to begin, began to naturally flow from us as we sat on the second floor of CoMo. We attempted to make our script humorous; hopefully it worked. We initially knew that we wanted to incorporate an iconic Coco image and an iconic Joan image into the film. For Coco, we chose the picture of her looking over one shoulder with pearls draped across her back; this is how we opened the interview. The Joan image is a little more obvious towards the end of the interview. We incorporated the black and white, striking close up shot from The Passion of Joan of Arc. The music for this particular scene was an obvious choice--Voices of Light, the score to the French film. In the script we decided to strengthen the image of Coco and Joan's confidence by making light of a few of their more difficult situations. Through humor they become unaffected by their struggles and overcame.
Joan is an anachronism in the film since Conversations with Coco, the fictional television show hosted by Coco Chanel, which takes place in the 20th century while Joan originates from the 15th. The anachronism allowed us to make a few jokes about how long the men of the Catholic Church took to canonize Joan, similar to how the men in Coco's life drug their feet on her proposed business ventures. The time barrier between the two comes across in a couple of humorous misinterpretations. Joan confuses Coco's more sexualized love for love of neighbor; Coco thinks Joan dressed like a man to be trendy when in fact much of the motivation was to ward off unwanted sexual advances in prison. But in their differences they find similarities. They were both seen as meek when in actuality they were all but. They found men to be sometimes helpful, but more often than not to be an obstacle in their path. This project was very informative and a lot of fun to think about the women we have discussed in class in a different light. Not only did we have to understand Joan and Coco as historical figures, but we had to think about how Coco would have interviewed Joan in the 20th century and how the 15th century Joan would have responded.