Today's filmmaker for our Female Filmmaker series is a savvy lady who has been steadily working on our favorite TV shows and movies forever. Seriously, scratch a favorite TV show in the past 20 years and she has probably directed an episode of five. Let's talk about the life and career of Lesli Linka Glatter and her contributions to skinema.
Lesli Linka Glatter began her career as a choreographer who worked all over the world working with modern dance troupes. Lesli then began her directing career officially after attending the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. While she was there, she made a short film called Tales of Meeting and Parting in 1985 which was nominated for an Academy Award. That's one terrific start to the industry!
In 1995, she made her feature-film directorial debut with the coming-of-age comedy Now and Then which featured an all-star cast of women. She followed that film up with 1998's The Proposition. But don't worry - she directed plenty of TV in between those films. Ever heard of Twin Peaks? She directed four total episodes of that iconic David Lynch series.
She started directing made-for-TV movies for HBO and earned a lot of award nominations for her films. She started dabbling in TV director and by dabbling I mean directing episodes of literally all of the best TV in the past 20-30 years. I am talking about shows like Gilmore Girls (she actually directed the unaired original pilot among other episodes), The West Wing, The Newsroom, Ray Donovan, ER, The Walking Dead, Pretty Little Liars, Homeland, and freaking Mad Men.
In 2010, she was even nominated for an Emmy for directing the episode "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency". That episode did not feature any skin or nudity, but I am consistently surprised to remember how few Mad Men episodes actually do. There is a glimmer of side boob in one episode and Jessica Pare's ass crack in another, but otherwise, the show is surprisingly chaste in the nudity department. There is plenty of cleavage from our favorite gals, but the show itself can be disappointing on a skin level.
Lesli's work really is not explicitly nude in general. This beauty keeps clothes on with the exception of Homeland. In one of the episodes that she directed, she showed Claire Danes' side boob while she sat topless in front of a laptop. She actually won the Director's Guild Award for her Homeland episode "QA" in 2012 and received an Emmy nomination for that same episode. She directed several episodes of Homeland that earned her Emmy nomination after Emmy nomination. Lesli now has the honor of serving as a vice president of the Directors Guild of America.
Lesli has been directing a series called The Banker's Wife which has not yielded any racks or riches. Lesli is clearly a workhorse, but she keeps it tame in the skin department. Here's hoping that that eventually changes and that Ms. Glatter cracks and rack for us!
