Little Women with A.B. Allen

It's been a long time coming, friends and listeners, but Making the Scene is finally back for its second season!

Our first guest of the season is filmmaker A.B. Allen, whose opinions on the form have been one of the bright spots of being extremely online during this long and unholy pandemic. Their choice to kick off this new season of the show is a scene from Gillian Armstrong's 1994 adaptation of LITTLE WOMEN, a beautiful and earnest adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. The scene is question isn't an easy one to keep one's composure through, and both host and guest suffered just a bit to prepare for this episode. We discuss Armstrong's approach to Beth's death, the subtle but powerful choices of lighting, music, and set design that underline the sequence's impact, and the incredible performances Claire Danes, Winona Ryder, and Susan Sarandon bring to the moment.

If you want to watch before or after listening, the scene begins at 1:33:37 and ends at 1:39:04.

During the discussion, we talk about two interviews with Armstrong. The first, from Vulture, discusses how they had to reshoot this scene due to a lab mishap, and the second is an oral history of the film from the New York Times.