Mother of All Inventions

When Irish funding fell through on her film Red Roses and Petrol, director Tamar Hoffs had to relocate to California. Seán McCarthy fins out how she became the mother of all inventions.

Director/Writer/Producer Tamar Hoffs is a Warrior Mother. The family comes first with her; her three children, Susanna, John, and Jesse continue to play a vital part in the creative whirlwind of her successes, as she does in theirs. There are films being written, produced, and directed in the Hoffs Household. Collaborations with Susanna's band The Bangles are being discussed. Tamar is up all hours seeing her screenplays being brought to fruition upon the toil of her own quill. Film, music, performance, animation... you name it and you'll find it being produced in this household. Of course, that's only in the living room. God knows what's going on in the basement! And all the while, standing matriarchal in her casual stance at the centre of this wildly creative family is Tamar Hoffs – a Mother of All Inventions.

SMcC: Who is Tamar Hoffs and what makes you want to create films?

TH: :I grew up in the mid-west of America, in Chicago, a city with weather so severe it makes Ireland seem practically balmy. My parents were displaced New York intellectuals who believed that one's destiny is controlled by a well-educated brain. After years of studies in humanities and fine arts (University of Chicago, Yale), my destiny took a sudden turn when my husband Josh's medical career led us to LA at the beginning of the 1960s. By chance I bumped into the actor Leonard Nimoy in the parking lot of our children's school. After viewing some of my paintings, he persuaded me to join the art department of Death Watch, the indie film he was about to start with Paul Mazursky and Vic Morrow. My job was painting a tattoo of my design on (soon to be) Mr. Spock's chest each morning. I must admit it was an awesome introduction to filmmaking. Movies, particularly the British New Wave and Italian neo-realists, were a delightful pastime at that stage in my life. But I had not had an interest in making films myself until that moment.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 99