Camille Hardman, Gary Lane and Larry Lane on Still Working 9 to 5
Courtesy of Camille Hardman, Gary Lane, and Larry Lane
9 to 5 stars Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Dabney Coleman reunite in its planned 40th anniversary to explain the film’s social, historical, and cultural context in Still Working 9 to 5. It examines the fight for gender equality, as well as its televised and Broadway adaptations and fandom. The documentary is directed and produced by Camille Hardman, Gary Lane, and executive produced by Larry Lane. They have previously collaborated together on the Lanes’ Hollywood to Dollywood, which follows Gary and Larry’s path in finding the eponymous singer.
Still Working 9 to 5 had its Canadian premiere at the 2022 Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival (April 28 - May 8) following its world premiere at 2022 SXSW. It recently won the award for Best Documentary at American Documentary and Animation Film Festival in Palm Springs. Hardman and the Lane brothers recently sat down with me via zoom before its screening about their relationships with Dolly Parton, adjusting the doc after the 9 to 5 sequel did not happen, and differentiating it from 9to5: The Story of a Movement.
- NOTE: This conversation is edited & condensed for clarity. -
EF: This story that you have with Dolly Parton did not begin with Still Working but with Hollywood to Dollywood. What was it like to make both films?
GL: It doesn't seem like it was 10 years ago since we made Hollywood to Dollywood. It was such an adventure to go on that trip. Our friend John Lavin was the director of that film and we really didn't know what it was going to be. It turned out to just be kind of like our open hearts to Dolly and what she meant to us growing up. Then when she saw the film, she let us use her music and the film, which was over 15 songs, and it was a road trip documentary that just turned into something bigger than we ever thought it would. We played at 75 film festivals. We won 25 Best Documentary awards. Hollywood to Dollywood was our personal story growing up in the South and what dolly meant to us. So that really did help with this movie, Still Working 9 to 5. In 2018, Dolly Lilly and Jane were talking in the press about wanting to do that 9 to 5 sequel and it had never happened and they wanted it to happen. I told my brother that “9 to 5 has been a movie. It's been a song. It's been a TV show. It's been a musical. Now it's going to be a sequel again with all the original cast.” So we had an idea to document the life of 9 to 5. That's what we wanted to do. Then we talked to [Camille] about the idea. Camille is one of those people that dives into everything. She did a lot of research [such as] finding out the 9to5 organization was there and Jane's friendship with Karen Nussbaum and why Jane wanted to make the movie. It turned into this whole idea with the movement behind the movie and that's how Still Working 9 to 5 came together. We came together with Camille to make the film that we've got today, four years later.
EF: What led you to do this documentary instead of the verite doc on the lives behind the making up 9 to 5 2?
CH: So we had started doing some filming with [9 to 5 writer] Patricia Resnick. We had planned on potentially going on set. But because the sequel never happened, we sort of had to pivot and come up with a new idea on how we were going to utilize all the interviews that we had already done.
GL: We have kind of become the sequel in some ways because we've interviewed Dolly, Lily, Jane, and Dabney Coleman. So the fans are going to see all of them. We've got a new 9 to 5 version, a duet with Dolly Parton and Kelly Clarkson, that the fans are going to enjoy. So we've added two more iterations to the 9 to 5 life with our documentary and with the new nine to five duet. We feel like we have accomplished something really cool with that for the fans to enjoy. But we also educate them about the working women's issues that 42 years later still have not been solved that the film tried to showcase.
EF: As you want to let people see the fandom of 9 to 5, but then you want to show the social commentary. How do you make sure that you don't outshine one aspect over the other?
CH: I think the thing is that you know that the film 9 to 5 did come out of social commentary and a social movement, which was the 9to5 organization created by Karen Nussbaum and Ellen Cassidy. There was that kernel of an idea that spawned the 9 to 5 film, which allowed them to add all these issues about sexual harassment, equal pay, lack of promotion, lack of childcare and and maternity leave. We wanted to make sure that we educated people, as well as entertain people because that's the best way of getting a message across to anybody is to make sure that it's entertaining and people aren't hit over the head with us.
EF: 9 to 5 is very popular. There has been a Julia Reichert and Steve Bogner documentary 9to5: The Story of a Movement. How do you make sure that it differentiates from another such documentary?
GL: It was interesting because there was a whole history behind that documentary. It used to be called Raises not Roses in 2014. And then when we were about a year into production, we found out that it was [changed and] called 9to5: The Story of a Movement. We also found out that Julia had put it on the back burner while she made American factory. So then I think, because we were making Still Working 9 to 5, it kind of brought her back out. So then we were a little fearful, oh, there's two 9 to 5 documentaries. But when hers came out in 2020, me and Camille went to [its screening] in Los Angeles. We really saw that it was a documentary about the making of the 1973 organization leading up to the film being made. So in some ways, it's almost like a prequel. It shows you how the organization got there. We focus a little bit on the organization, but we go from the film forward 42 years. So we kind of feel like we offset each other. We make each other look good, because one is the very beginning, and one is where we are today. So I think our film maybe getting out there may have kind of galvanized her and then obviously because of COVID, we didn't hit the 40 year anniversary. We continue to edit and work on our film and get it the way we wanted. So she came out in 2020 and here we are two years later coming out.
CH: It was interesting, because we did have to make some changes to our film. We were using some of the same archival footage. We did have to take a bit of our archival footage out, and change our storyline a little bit because we did have some of the same stories. [The changes] made it a little bit harder, but it made us want to be more of an accompanying piece, as opposed to being repetitious.
LL: We actually embraced Julia’s film. We've shared it on all of our social media channels. Qe wanted people to see her film, how the organization got there and how the organization was formed because where we start with Jane and her friendship with Karen Nussbaum, it's important to see where that organization came from, because that's what fueled the film to be made for it to drive us 42 years into the future.
CH: The reason our film was coming out, but it was because of the 40th year anniversary. So for us, that was a really important milestone that we wanted to showcase and the fact that there was a sequel coming. So in this case, it ended up just being a pure coincidence. I think that there were two films coming out.
EF: Thank you for sharing the appreciation. What did you love about seeing 9 to 5? How did it form a significant memory for the rest of your lives?
CH: For me, I saw the film when I was very young. So of course, I didn't have a great understanding at the time what it meant. So it was a funny comedy. It was very fantastical. It was very broad, but I didn't understand the context of sexual harassment. I just knew that there was this boss that was being lecherous to this woman. I had no idea. Many years later, when Gary and Larry brought the project to me. I watched it again. I couldn't believe how current and poignant it was, and the fact that many of the issues that they had been talking about in 1980 were still very pressing today and a lot of things still hadn't changed. So that was the one surprise to me.The other surprise to me, was that the director [Colin Higgins] was Australian. I had no idea that an Australian director created this film.
GL: We actually grew up in North Carolina in the South. Our parents were big fans of country music, and our mom and dad really loved Dolly. We were very young when we saw it too, not really understanding what it was all about. But we knew that Dolly was in it, and our parents wanted to see it. They were driving the car and paying for the movie. So that's what we went to see. When we revisited it [years later], you just really see what these women are dealing with. We had our mom in the workforce and we're asking her did you have to deal with this stuff. It opened a conversation. Then we saw the TV show. We saw the musical in New York. We've just always been fans of 9 to 5. We've always thought the song was amazing. We just thought that having a sequel come out with all the women who are so still relevant today. Mr. Hart [played by Dabney Coleman, is still relevant. Dabney Coleman was 90 when we interviewed him. It was something you just can't wrap your head around. There's no other film in history that's ever done everything that this film has done. We really wanted to give its dues and shine a light on it.We're so happy that Camille came on board, because we perfectly balanced the fandom and the feminism of it because you need both of them in there. We did a perfect balance with two amazing editors, Oreet Reese and Elisa Bonora did an amazing job to help us craft our vision. We couldn't be more proud to have this kind of going out into the world right now. It's a perfect time for it to be out in the world, because the Equal Rights Amendment still has not passed. And that's a really, you know, sad commentary on us as a nation.