Spring 2008 :: Women to Watch
Elizabeth Hayes speaks with excitement about her recent transition from vice president of publicity at Simon & Schuster to independent film producer with Oscar winner Jonathan Demme. Trying to avoid noisy restaurants and the rain, we had stumbled into New York’s Cupcake Café, which is attached to Books of Wonder, a children’s bookstore dedicated to the classics (it has its own “World of Oz”section) and to encouraging the imagination of young people. We eat our doughnuts surrounded by children’s giggles and dancing cupcakes. With her long brown hair and bright-eyed demeanor, the 39-year-old Hayes appears a decade younger. It seems like a fitting place for Hayes to talk about taking a different path, not exactly the yellow brick road, but a journey into the unknown nonetheless.
I first met Hayes last October on the set of Demme’s upcoming film Dancing With Shiva, written by Jenny Lumet (daughter of veteran director Sidney Lumet). I was a stand-in for actress Rosemarie DeWitt, and it was her first producing gig. During the 12-hour shooting days, I observed Hayes typing away on her BlackBerry as she did double duty as a wedding guest—at one point sharing a scene with rising Hollywood star Anne Hathaway. Hayes seemed guarded and businesslike. A few months have passed and I wasn’t sure what to expect off the set. To my delight, she is thoughtful and inspiring, and appealingly open about working with Jimmy Carter, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David McCullough, and about following her dreams.
“I worked at Simon & Schuster for twelve amazing years. Six of those were spent as a book publicist for Jimmy Carter, whom I adore. Basically, I graduated from Wake Forest in North Carolina, got an assistant job and then worked my way up to vice president. There were many great opportunities, but I knew I needed a change.”
As it turned out, that change came when she met Demme last year. He was making a documentary about Carter during the tour for his most recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Demme was impressed by Hayes’s work ethic and asked her if she would like to work together again. Having grown up loving theater and film in a small town, she jumped at the chance to learn something new. “I know this is cliché, but I had finished reading Eat, Pray, Love at our beach home in Cape Cod and thought, ‘I don’t want to change out of desperation or because I am burned out. I want to do it when it feels right.’ So I shoved the book into my husband Joe’s lap and said ‘I am going to do this.’Then I prayed about it.There were so many factors, it was scary. He had recently started his own lighting company and was doing theater gigs pro bono, and I would have to take a huge pay cut. But things were bubbling and I was hungry to see if I was capable of more.”
A surreal moment of transition came last summer on her last day at Simon & Schuster. “The place was empty. I looked around, felt heartbreakingly sad, wildly excited and part sick. Finally, I left, hopped into a taxi, and told the driver, ‘I just quit my job!’ He turned to me and said, ‘As long as you take care of your friends and family then you will have happiness and that’s what is important,’ and wished me luck. I thought, ‘What a blessing—and from a total stranger.’ It was like being in a movie and being allowed to process it.”
When Hayes started her new job, she wasn’t even sure what an associate producer did. The demands of the job are ever changing, she’s found, but she can sum up her responsibilities succinctly: “Jonathan Demme has a vision and it is up to me to help make it happen.”
Now she’s working 15-hour days to do just that. “I could be putting together a Neil Young shoot, finding people to interview or planning a trip to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans.” Or as her husband likes to put it, “Producers technically don’t do anything, but are responsible for everything.”
Hayes credits her husband as her biggest cheerleader. She’s also received tremendous support from her friends and family. When her parents heard she’d gotten a new job, they visited the set and met Demme. Her mother, a writer, understood the need to try something new, while her father, a career Marine, was worried about her retirement. “They said not to be afraid of change. Although, sometimes the dependability—the thing I wanted to leave in my old job—is the thing I miss most. Now it’s what are you going to do today and where? She has found similarities between the two worlds though: “For creative jobs you have to be willing to work unconventional hours, be self-motivated, and you can't give up if someone says no.”
Next on Hayes list: help Demme complete his New Orleans documentary, Right to Return: New Home Movies From the Lower 9th Ward, support Brad Pitt’s project to build pink eco-friendly homes in the Lower Ninth and finish reading E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime. On her dream list: make a documentary about education in the third world and produce one of her best gal pal’s screenplays.
As I left the Cupcake Café, I felt buzzed both from the sugar and from her secret to success: “Ask for support and do something once a year that scares you.”
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Red and Black: Buying a Second Home
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