After Sarah Lawrence, she worked as a ghostwriter for
The Village Voice for about a year. After quitting that job, she became interested in documentary film-making and soon gained national prominence in the U.S. as co-director and co-producer with
Howard Smith of the 1972 film
Marjoe, about evangelist
Marjoe Gortner, which won an
Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Kernochan's first screen credit as a screenwriter came with the film
9½ Weeks (1986). She then wrote the script for
Dancers (1987), starring
Mikhail Baryshnikov and directed by
Herbert Ross, which chronicles the backstage drama of a ballet company (played by
American Ballet Theatre dancers) and their director during the staging of the ballet
Giselle. By the time she was brought in to work on the film
Sommersby (1993), Kernochan had become known for a particular style of writing in Hollywood. She said in an interview with
Salon: :I think people know that there's no point in calling me in if you want the other kind of women characters: a featureless "help me" character, or the saint, the whore—you know, any of the archetypes. I don't think all women are powerful, intelligent, any of those things. I just require that female characters be very real, that they have all the dimensions that the male characters do. co-wrote the story for
What Lies Beneath (2000); directed
Thoth (2002); and wrote
Learning to Drive (2014). In 2002,
Thoth won the Academy Award for
Best Documentary Short Subject. Kernochan has taught screenwriting at
Emerson College.
Novels In 1977, Kernochan's novel
Dry Hustle ( in hardcover, in paperback) was published. It was reprinted as an ebook in 2011. In June 2011, Kernochan released her first novel in over 35 years,
Jane Was Here ().
Music career Kernochan is also a singer, lyricist, and composer. During the two years after the release of
Marjoe, she released two albums on
RCA Records as a singer-songwriter,
House of Pain and
Beat Around the Bush, on which she sings, plays piano, and contributed arrangements. Kernochan released her third album,
Decades of Demos, in 2013. She also wrote the musical
Sleeparound Town, about puberty and featuring five adolescents. ==Personal life==