“Get A Sitter, For Crying Out Loud” | Pamela Adlon, Babes

Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau star in Babes. (Courtesy of Neon)

A hilarious and heartfelt comedy about the bonds of friendship and the messy, unpredictable challenges of adulthood and becoming a parent, Babes marks the feature directorial debut of Emmy-winning actress, writer, and director Pamela Adlon.

Screening Saturday, May 4, at 6:30 p.m. at the Music Box, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival (get tickets now), with Adlon in attendance for a post-film Q&A, Babes follows inseparable childhood best friends Eden (Broad City’s Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau), having grown up together in New York City, now firmly in different phases of adulthood. When carefree and single Eden decides to have a baby on her own after a one-night stand, their friendship faces its greatest challenge.

Co-written by Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, the film delves into the complexities of female friendship with a blend of laughter, tears, and labor pains. Ahead of Babes playing the Chicago Critics Film Festival, Adlon graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, her individual responses. 

How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?

When I look back on it, I have been making things and documenting and recording things my whole life. I was a poet. I’ve been a documentarian. An editor. I’ve been a photographer and filmmaker since I was a teenager. A songwriter. A historian. I used to steal shots and locations everywhere, pretending I was a film student. Instead of film school, I rented every video at my local video store in my twenties. It all culminated when I made my show Better Things. And now it continues. I get to put all the music, shots, locations, actors, inspiration, and language I love into one place, and I get to do it professionally. A real gift. I am grateful.

What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?

This movie is a love story between two lifelong friends. I wanted to make a movie about real, honest female friendships that gets into the unsexy realities of pregnancy and parenthood and friendship. We rarely get to see that on the screen. It feels urgent to dig into the female experience and let it play and breathe and laugh along the way.

Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).

Some great influences have been the films of John Cassavetes, Alan Parker, Adrian Lyne, Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, and Nora Ephron. Many, many documentaries. Noir. Psychological drama. Rom-coms. Courtroom thrillers. Bob Fosse. All That Jazz in particular. In terms of Babes, it was very important to me that it was grounded in the emotions and the characters, so we could serve the bigger comedy beats.

Pamela Adlon, director of Babes. (Courtesy of Neon)

Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?

New York City is a character in the movie as much as the people. Location scouting was particularly fun on this one, because I got to go into places that still had the bones of the great brownstones of Harlem, the Upper West Side, and Queens.

The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.

Swimming to Cambodia was a particular moment for me, watching Spalding Gray do his monologue immortalized on film. Paris Is Burning. Flashdance. Fame. I love seeing a good horror movie in the theater. As long as people don't bring their kids… Then it ruins it for everyone. PLEASE don’t bring your kids to horror movies! Get a sitter, for crying out loud, so we all don’t have to feel guilty for enjoying it.

Babes screens Saturday, May 4, at 6:45 p.m, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 3–9, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago). Get your tickets now.