A Chat With Lynda Obst - Grandparents.com

Famed Hollywood producer talks about the intersection of moviemaking and grandmothering

Before Lynda Obst became a grandmother, her most important role was producing modern hit films like Sleepless in Seattle and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. She is also a former editor at The New York Times Magazine and the author of Hello, He Lied (Broadway, 1997), a blunt guide for navigating the film industry. Then in 2007, she welcomed Sunny, her first grandchild, into the world.

Grandparents.com spoke with Obst about what it means to be an outspoken, activist grandparent in Hollywood.

Grandparents.com: Did you have a moment of existential crisis when you realized you were about to become a grandmother?

Lynda Obst: You better believe it, since I thought I was still a teenager. This was the living proof I'm not. No longer the hiding of the age. No longer the dating of the young boys. It was a horrible existential crisis and I was quite angry with my son for putting me in that position. I thought it was hideously rude of him. The day I found out I was going to become a grandmother was a bad day with my colorist. It was a bad nine months for me all around.

GP: How does the climate of raising kids now differ from when you were raising your son?

LO: God, I would have been arrested. Everything I did then is now illegal. We used car seats that would now be outlawed. We carried our kids around on our backs, and they played outside, all without video surveillance. We’d never heard of disinfectants with infants. It’s amazing my son didn’t die of an infectious disease. Everybody now is completely paranoid about motherhood as though it was something that was invented five years ago. Really, people. Women were doing this thousands of years ago.

GP: You're a seminal feminist. How and when do you plan to start indoctrinating your granddaughter with a healthy sense of radical feminism?

LO: I've already started. I have been resisting pink. I resist all forms of headbands. If she is in a headband of any sort, I immediately take it off. And I try to avoid all clothing stores that bring out the psychotic consumerist in me. I have not yet gotten her a subscription to The New York Review of Books, but I intend for that to be an early birthday present.

GP: As an activist, what do you think are the most important ideals for your granddaughter to have as she comes of age?

LO: I want her to know everything is possible for her as a woman and a human being and to have an absolutely open heart and zero racism. And I want her to be loving and un-cynical like her mother and political like her father. When my son was 11 and we watched the fires burning during the L.A. riots, I had to restrain him from running down there and protesting in favor of Rodney King. I expect the same from Sunny. But I'd rather she not get lost at a Run-DMC/Beastie Boys concert, or whatever the analog is today, like her dad did.

GP: But you will take Sunny to a rock or rap concert when she’s 11, right?

LO: Oh, I will undoubtedly be the person both volunteering and assigned to take Sunny to whomever the Hannah Montana simulacrum is in her day, and she will be dancing some dance I will tragically pretend to know. She will not get lost, though, because as you can tell I am much more mature now.

GP: How do the politics of Hollywood compare to the politics of the playground? Any specific tactics or morals you've learned on the studio lot that might serve as useful advice for your granddaughter?

LO: Sunny should expect some lying on the playground. And cheating and scratching and selfishness. But she shouldn't be stunned by it. She should be chill as much as she can be about the kinds of people she'll run into and not get too disturbed by the sociopathology of others.

GP: Which of your film heroines would you want your granddaughter to aspire to emulate?

LO: They're all projections of my ideal woman. Ellie in Contact is uncompromising in her search for truth, Andie Anderson in How to Lose a Guy doesn't let anyone get the best of her, and Melanie in One Fine Day balances all aspects of her life in a way I aspired to as a mother but never achieved. As a producer, my career is showing women engaging in that narrative of strength, so what I have to offer Sunny are profiles in girl-courage.

GP: Do you feel competitive with Sunny's other grandparents to be the coolest?

LO: Dealing with other grandmothers is an unexpected issue. There are three of us since my ex-husband remarried, and his wife is a bona fide grandma, too. My daughter-in-law’s mom lives three houses away from Sunny, which you have to admit is an unfair advantage. I just had to get really relaxed about that and just be me. Since I'm the grandmother on the yoga and philosophy brigade, I know she's mine as a teenager. I mean, ultimately it's not a competition. But may the best grandparent win. Just kidding. No, I'm not kidding, it's a free-for-all.