Joey Soloway | |
|---|---|
 Soloway in May 2018 | |
| Born | Jill Soloway (1965-09-26)September 26, 1965 (age 60) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Spouse | [1] |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Faith Soloway (sibling) |
Joey Soloway (bornJill Soloway; September 26, 1965)[2][3][4] is an American television creator, showrunner, director and writer. Soloway is known for creating, writing, executive producing and directing theAmazon original seriesTransparent, winning twoEmmy Awards for the show;[5] directing and writing the filmAfternoon Delight, winning the Best Director award at the2013 Sundance Film Festival; and producingSix Feet Under.
Soloway identifies asnon-binary andgender non-conforming, and usesthey/them pronouns.[6] In 2020, Soloway announced a name change from Jill to Joey.[7]
Soloway was born inChicago, Illinois to writer and public relations consultant Elaine Soloway and psychiatrist Carrie Soloway, who grew up in London. Around 2011, Carrie Soloway came out as transgender.[8][9]
Soloway's elder sibling[10] Faith Soloway is aBoston-based musician and performer, with whom Joey sometimes collaborates.[11][12][13][14] Both Joey and Faith attendedLane Technical College Prep High School in Chicago.[15] Joey Soloway graduated from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison as a communications arts major.[16][17][18]
Soloway's mother was formerly a press aide to Chicago MayorJane Byrne and was a former communications director for School SuperintendentRuth Love.[19] After 30 years, Soloway's parents divorced in 1990.[20] Soloway has a stepfather named Tommy Madison.[21]
While at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Soloway was a film and television student of JJ Murphy and participated in the creation of an undergraduate experimental narrative film entitledRing of Fire as theassistant director under director Anita Katzman. After college Soloway worked as aproduction assistant in commercials and music videos in Chicago, as well as at Kartemquin Films on the movieHoop Dreams.[16]
While in Chicago, Joey and Faith co-developed a parody ofThe Brady Bunch for live stage calledThe Real Live Brady Bunch, which began their professional theatrical writing and directing endeavors. They also sold a pilot script toHBO calledJewess Jones about a female superhero. Also at theAnnoyance Theatre in Chicago, the pair created playsThe Miss Vagina Pageant, and later, while in Los Angeles,Not Without My Nipples.
With Maggie Rowe, Soloway co-createdHollywood Hellhouse andSit n' Spin.[22]
Soloway's TV writing career began on shows such asThe Oblongs,Nikki, andThe Steve Harvey Show. Soloway followed those shows by writing for four seasons on the HBO original seriesSix Feet Under, ultimately serving as co-executive producer.Six Feet Under ran for five seasons from 2001 to 2005.[23] Soloway received three Emmy nominations in 2002, 2003, and 2005 for Outstanding Drama Series.[24] Soloway's short story,Courteney Cox's Asshole, caught the attention ofAlan Ball and led to the job.[15]
Soloway later wrote episodes ofDirty Sexy Money,Grey's Anatomy, andTell Me You Love Me and was executive producer/showrunner for the second season ofShowtime'sUnited States of Tara, created byDiablo Cody, as well as HBO'sHow to Make It in America, created by Ian Edelman.
In August 2016, Amazon premiered a Soloway-directed pilot ofI Love Dick, based onthe novel by the same name byChris Kraus.[25] It was later picked up for a full season,[26] which premiered on May 12, 2017.[27]
Soloway created the pilotTransparent forAmazon.com, which became available for streaming and download on February 6, 2014, and was part ofAmazon's second pilot season.[28][29] Joey and Faith Soloway collaborated onTransparent, including serving as co-writers.[30] Joey was inspired by their parent who came out as a transgender woman.[31] The show starsGaby Hoffmann,Jay Duplass, andAmy Landecker as siblings whose parent (played byJeffrey Tambor) reveals she is going through asignificant life transition[clarify].[32] The pilot forTransparent was picked up by Amazon Studios.[16][33]
As part of the making of the show, Soloway enacted a "transfirmative action program", whereby transgender applicants were hired in preference to non-transgender ones.[16] As of August 2014[update], over 80 transgender people have worked on the show, including two transgender consultants.[16]
Soloway wrote Hoffmann's role onTransparent especially for her after seeing her performance onLouie.[34]Transparent premiered all ten episodes simultaneously in late September 2014.[35] The show wrapped its fourth season in 2017, and concluded with a movie finale in 2019.[36]
Soloway received two Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series in 2014 and 2016 forTransparent and the show has received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.[24]
Soloway's first film was a 13-minute short titledUna Hora Por Favora, which premiered at theSundance Film Festival in 2012. The film starsMichaela Watkins andWilmer Valderrama. The film tells the story of a woman (Watkins) who hires a day laborer (Valderrama) to do some work at her home, but their relationship soon goes beyond the professional.[37][38][39]
Soloway's debut at Sundance,Afternoon Delight (2013) won the Directing Award.[40] The film follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), a thirty-something woman who is struggling to rekindle her relationship with her husband (Josh Radnor), and ultimately befriends an exotic dancer (Juno Temple).[41] In an interview byIndieWire, Soloway had a personal connection to the film's central character, explaining "There's a lot of me in Rachel's journey. I've never brought a stripper home, but I've always loved reading the memoirs of strippers and sex workers. I feel like they're the war reporters for women. They go to the front lines of a very particular kind of extreme conflict and live there, then write about it so we can experience it with them."[42]
Afternoon Delight played at national and international film festivals and was nominated for multiple awards, including aGotham Award for Breakthrough Performance for Hahn and a Spirit Award for First Feature.[43]
In June 2019, Soloway signed on to write, direct and produce theRed Sonja remake.[44][45] Soloway later left the project but remained an executive producer.[46]
Soloway wrote the novellaJodi K., which was published in the collectionThree Kinds of Asking For It: Erotic Novellas, edited bySusie Bright. Soloway's memoir,Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants: Based on a True Story, was released in hardcover in 2005, and in paperback in 2006.[47] In 2018, Soloway published another book,She Wants It: Desire, Power and Toppling the Patriarchy, withEbury Press, a division ofPenguin Random House.
Jewish religion and culture, sexuality, and gender are recurring themes in Soloway's show,Transparent.[30] According to Soloway, "TheTransparent narrative is not, then, just or even mostly about transition and transgender. It's about big themes like familial secrets and transformation, revelation and change, all of which are rendered through the specificity and magic of television images and sounds, which create imaginative worlds."[30]
In September 2016, Soloway gave a master class on the female gaze at theToronto International Film Festival.[48] The termmale gaze was first coined byLaura Mulvey in her 1975 essayVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and, just like Mulvey, Soloway gives their own definition of the Female Gaze in three parts.[49] Part one: "reclaiming the body, using it with intention to communicate Feeling Seeing".[48] An example of this female gaze is in the television showI Love Dick, Soloway said in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival that, "I Love Dick...is a series that confronts us with the power of that feminist anger, the female gaze..."[50] Then, part two: the gazed gaze which Soloway describes as taking the camera and using it to show how it feels to be the object of the gaze.[48] For example, in the filmFish Tank, Soloway says it does exactly that, "...while I was watching it, I was like this is the female gaze. She is showing us how it feels to be this girl. She is not looking at this girl" they explained.[51] And part three: a "Socio-Political justice-demanding way of art making" and returning the gaze.[48] The female gaze is about people reclaiming ownership over their body, deciding how it can be portrayed and, as Soloway points out, is a "conscious effort to create empathy as a political tool" thus seeking out empathy rather than objectification.[48]
Soloway's writing is often about "The Heroine's Journey", which is about "repairing the divided feminine: the wife and the other woman confronting each other--mom, stripper. That I think women's journeys are really about repairing these sort of divided parts of ourselves. And this divide in our culture that I think is responsible for so much that is a problem in our culture."[52]
Soloway has sevenEmmy nominations and two wins.[24] Soloway is also a member of the board of theSan Francisco Film Society.[53]
In 2015, Soloway's showTransparent won aGolden Globe for Best Series - Musical or Comedy, which Soloway dedicated toLeelah Alcorn after her suicide the year prior.[54][55] Later that same year, Soloway won aDGA Award and aPrimetime Emmy Award for directing episode 1.08 ("Best New Girl") of the show.[56][57] In 2016, Soloway won another Emmy for directing episode 2.09 (" Man on the Land") ofTransparent.[58] Also in 2016, Soloway was a finalist forThe Advocate's Person of the Year,[59] and was named toOprah Winfrey'sSuperSoul 100 list of visionaries and influential leaders.[60]
Soloway was inducted into theChicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2022.[61]
In 2011, Soloway married music supervisor Bruce Gilbert, with whom Soloway had been in a relationship since 2008. They have a son. Soloway's older son is from a prior relationship with artist John Strozier. In 2015, Soloway announced their separation from Gilbert, and that Soloway was in a relationship with poetEileen Myles, whom Soloway met throughTransparent;[1][62] their romantic relationship has since ended,[63] and Myles and Soloway held an event at theHammer Museum, Los Angeles, in which they "processed [their] relationship onstage".[63]
Soloway lives in theSilver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.[5][64]
In Soloway's memoirShe Wants It, Soloway discusses accepting a nonbinary identity at age 50 after filming the first two seasons ofTransparent.[65]
Soloway is a strong supporter offeminism[66] and co-founded the website Wifey.tv[67] which is described as, "a curated video network for women"[68] that includes content created by and for women. In an interview byForbes, Soloway discusses the site saying, "I really like when our content appears to contradict itself at first glance. One day we might post something about sexism or the male gaze, then the next day post something that might be seen as precisely too sexy or raunchy, but it comes from a female creator or artist so it’s relevant. We love the conversation and don’t feel as dependent on insisting on a particular point of view."[69]
Soloway also co-founded the East Side Jews collective,[70] which is funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.[71] The collective "brings together 20- and 30-something Jews in Silver Lake and the surrounding neighborhoods of Los Angeles for offbeat, too-cool-for-shul events that tend to be heavy on comedy and light on Jewish ritual."[70]
Soloway co-wroteThe Thanksgiving Paris Manifesto with Eileen Myles in 2016,[72] which is a feminist manifesto about the pornography industry. The manifesto was posted on topplethepatriarchy.com, a domain purchased by Myles and Soloway.[72] The manifesto opens with, "We shouldn’t be starting with porn but we must. We support the idea of a porn industry and the idea of people making a living photographing and sharing images of sex but we don’t support an industry that exclusively distributes portrayals of almost exclusively male pleasure and climax."[73]
Ms. Soloway, 39
Jill, 48
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