TDFW: Issue #4 The Reframer Alexandra Dean
"The world would like to stick us in aspic at the moment of our greatest beauty"
Alexandra Dean is a Partner and Director/Producer at Reframed Pictures production company. She is an Emmy award-winning journalist and producer having produced news- magazine documentaries for PBS before becoming a series and documentary producer at Bloomberg television, producing the series Innovators, Adventures and Pursuits. She also writes about invention for Businessweek magazine. Her most recent documentary is Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 and later was released on American Masters.
Let me just say I’ve seen Bombshell about four times now. I have always loved Hedy and been fascinated by her life. Wild that we’re still not any better now with how we treat women in the public eye when they age.
It’s true. The world would like to stick us in aspic at the moment of our greatest beauty which is not usually the moment of our greatest intellectual achievements but it was for her!
What should everyone know about you?
I grew up in London but I have American parents so that means I have a weird accent that goes back and forth between English and American and it’s not under my control and I’m not trying to be Madonna! That’s a huge part of why I wasn’t able to do one thing I really wanted to do in my life which was to be on the radio. I was so self-conscious of that accent that I didn’t do it.
Talk about a time when turning something down was a pivotal moment for you.
Well I was going to go work for Keith Olbermann at one point because I’m trained as a journalist. At the same time I wanted to go out and start my own thing and I was really torn about it. He was saying these wonderful things about how I could grow to be an executive producer and I was excited. So I went out and bought myself this Donna Karan dress for about ten times the price of any dress I’d ever bought before. I loved this dress and I went home and told my husband I was going to take this new job and he said “that’s great” and then I went and sat under the bathroom sink all night thinking about did I really want to work for someone else or did I really want to strike out and start my own production company and see what I could do. In the morning I had to admit that I wanted to do my own thing and turn down the job. And I’d been sitting in the Donna Karan dress in the bathroom all night so I couldn’t return it! I still wear that dress so much. You ever see me at a wedding I will be wearing that dress! Starting Reframed was a really pivotal moment in my life. If I hadn’t jumped out of the corporate world and taken this risk I never would have made Bombshell or tried to have my own voice, I was always making things for other people. This was me speaking for myself. Everyone should try that once in their life if they can.
Best or worst advice you’ve ever been given (or followed)?
As a female director starting out, I noticed and observed (not just for me), many women found it difficult to have a voice, or a strong opinion. We don’t kind of operate that way, we’re more subtle in general. So what happens when you’re working, people-often men-will come in and try to give your work a voice of their own. Rewrite it, etc. To have a really successful piece of work you have to let it really be you. It can’t be somebody else. There will always be someone foisted on you [in the process] and it’s really important to know that you can listen to them, that teamwork is important, collaboration is important, but you have to go back to your work at the end of the day and see, does it have a coherent voice now, does it reflect me? Is this how I really feel? Because otherwise it might lose its integrity.
Follow Alexandra on Twitter and tweet her that she should post a pic of the infamous Donna Karan dress!
Reminder that you can reach out and suggest, recommend, nominate anyone you’d like to see in future issues! Because everyone has turned down something. And I want to know for what.