Lesbian-Friendly Teen Film Is the Anti- 

Long before she was the "it" girl gracing the provocative poster of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Rooney Mara was a little-known actress that filmmakers Francesca Gregorini and Tatiana Von Furstenberg plucked for their first feature film, Tanner Hall. Tanner Hall, which hit theaters last Friday, is a different kind of teen movie -- more of a family drama set in a New England boarding school, centered around four disparate teenage girls, each dealing with her own burgeoning sexuality and personal baggage. The girls (Fernanda, Kate, Lucasta, and Victoria) each offer something to LGBT viewers, especially Lucasta, who finds herself attracted to someone completely unexpected. Von Furstenberg and Gregorini --best friends (one gay, one straight) from their college days in Rhode Island -- sat down to chat about the film the morning after its debut.

SheWired: You sound exhausted. Are you operating on three hours of sleep?
Tatiana Von Furstenberg: We're operating on three hours of sleep, and also we're operating on very little adrenaline because it's so stressful when you put yourself out there like we did with the movie. And even with the event last night, it was super well attended, but at the same time we were the ones who were [doing everything]. It's stressful.

This film has been a long time coming for you. The film originally hit festivals in 2009.
Yeah, that was like our first little bit of validation was that we were accepted in competition at Toronto, and that was the first time anybody outside of our close group of friends, who of course were proud of us, and who of course responded to it. It was like the first time that we suspected that some people in an audience would at some point like it.

Did you realize it would take this long to get to a wider theatrical release?
I think we're really happy about that, because we didn't have a studio and we didn't have a production company and our investor was very supportive of us. We didn't have to deliver by a certain date. We had patience, and in the end it really worked out because we always had a commercial film but we didn't have a star in our leading role, and the fact that we were able to take time and not jump on the first offer and not close on the first deal and hang to our equity. We waited for Rooney to become a star, I guess, or to certainly get the role of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, so it worked out for us. It wasn't frustrating, it was super deliberate, actually.

Read the complete interview at SheWired.com