Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Or the folks at Paramount Vantage are. Check out this poster for Burstein’s Sundance award winning documentary American Teen coming out this summer. It is practically identical to the poster art from the Hughes classic The Breakfast Club.

Opening This Weekend

Stop-Loss
Directed by Kimberly Peirce. It’s not about women, but it’s a great sophmore effort from Peirce. Check out my review: Stop-Loss

Hats Off
Documentary profile 93 year young actress Mimi Wedell. Directed by Jyll Johnstone (NY)

Flawless
Remember when Demi Moore was starring in big budget flicks way back in the 90s. She’s become another one of those mid-life women who have just disappeared from film. We see her in the tabloids but not in the movies. She makes her return as a female jewelry executive in 1960s London who continues to get passed over for promotions. When a janitor played by Michael Caine proposes a plan to get even she takes him up on it. Good suspense coupled with righteous sexist indignation makes an enjoyable film.

Remaining in Theatres
La Misma Luna - expanding to 390 theatres
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day -please check out Nicole Hollander’s (author of the comic Sylvia) take: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Girls Rock!
The Other Boleyn Girl
Penelope
Mad Money
Juno

Opening next weekend
My Blueberry Nights- starring Norah Jones (yes, the singer)
Nim’s Island- starring Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin
Flight Of the Red Balloon- starring Juliette Binoche
Jellyfish- co-directed by Shira Geffen (NY)

It’s a common conversation in Hollywood that women don’t make genre movies, you know, the kind that actually make money where things blow up and people die. Kimberly Peirce, in her second film coming almost a decade after the brilliant Boys Don’t Cry, goes where few women directors have gone before — a war film. While Peirce herself says this is not a technically a war film, in my book, it falls into that category. The opening 20 minutes takes place in Iraq first with a sequence of these young soldiers first making an MTV like video of their lives at war, followed by one of the most difficult to watch battle scenes.

Then, they come home all changed and screwed up. Ryan Phillippe, who has a tendency to be only as good as his material and director, is great here as Sgt. Brandon King a good ol Texas boy who signed up for duty after 9/11. He’s home and ready to get out and move on with his life. As he arrives to sign his discharge papers he is told that he has been “stop-lossed” and must prepare to ship back to Iraq. Brandon, always the perfect soldier, loses it, and goes AWOL trying to figure out a way not to have to go back.

What’s great about this film is that it’s not preachy. Hopefully, because it’s produced by Paramount and is targeted at the youth market, the kids who have missed the other war films will finally get into the theatres and see for themselves the fruitless brutality of war.

Much of the pre-release press has focused on why it took Peirce so long to make her second film. If she were the only woman who took many years to make her second film it would be news, but it’s not uncommon. (Tamara Jenkins took almost a decade too to make The Savages and she got nominated for a writing Oscar this year.) For Peirce the success of her first film raised the stakes on her second. Here’s what she told the NY Times:

“I had given everything to that movie,” Ms. Peirce said. “I was exhausted, and I got offered millions of dollars, many different movies. But it’s like starting to run before you’re ready to run. You’re still the same.

“ ‘Boys’ set the bar very high artistically for me. I wanted to be that much in love with my next character. I wanted to feel it was taking over my whole life. I was lonely when I wasn’t able to work on a movie at that level again.”

By all accounts the actors adored working with Peirce, and Phillippe addressed the woman director issue head on in some comments to the Washington Post.

He found it strange, however, when he realized she was the first female director he’d ever worked with.

“That is shocking,” Phillippe says, “because I’ve made about 30 films, and it’s a strange commentary on this business. We need more female writers and more voices, and that’s one thing I’ve been encouraging Kim about — don’t wait another nine years to make a film. People need to have that kind of inspiration she can provide.”

On the other hand, he says, gender had very little relevance in regards to making the film. “She’s tougher than a lot of the men I’ve worked with,” he says. “Tougher than Eastwood or Altman.”

So Kimberly Peirce has done several important things with this movie. She’s made a great film about war that young people can relate to, and she’s proven that women can direct tough material just like the guys. We always knew that was true. Why doesn’t Hollywood?

(photo: WireImage)

• La Misma Luna broke the record for a Spanish language film opening. The Patricia Riggen film scored $2.8m last weekend with a 10,414 per screen average (which was the highest per screen average for the weekend.)

• Bonnie Hammer currently the head of USA and Sci Fi is taking over all cable production for NBC Universal.

• Amy Madigan will join Grey’s Anatomy for the remaining episodes this season which start airing at the end of April.

• The late Wendy Wasserstein’s children’s book Pamela’s First Musical has been turned into a musical and will get its first staging in May as a benefit for Equity Fights AIDS and the Theatre Development Fund’s Open Doors program which Wasserstein founded. Musical will star Donna Murphy and will be staged by Graciela Daniele.

• HallMark Channel seems to have woken up to the older female demographic. Upcoming movies include: Dear Prudence starring Jane Seymour an advice columnist and TV personality who becomes involved in a murder mystery while on vacation. (August) Ladies of the House starring Pam Grier, Florence Henderson and Donna Mills as three women who renovate a house as a church project and discover themselves along the way. (November) Thanksgiving Reunion starring Jacqueline Bisset based on a short story by Louisa May Alcott (November 2009) (Cynopsis)

• Most cable stations use the summer to debut their new series when boradcast TV is on hiatus. This summer USA will premiere In Plain Sight starring Mary McCormack a U.S. Marshal helping people in the witness protection program relocate while juggling her own erratic family. (June 8, 10pm) The Starter Wife based on lat year’s mini-series starring Debra Messing will begin its 10 episode run in October. (Cynopsis)

Two days ago I posted some comments about an LA Times piece that talked about the influence that John Hughes has had on today’s comedies. Check out the original piece here for a recap: The Difference Between John Hughes and Judd Apatow

I emailed the writer, Patrick Goldstein with this response: Just wanted to comment on your John Hughes piece this morning. I think you missed the boat a bit by not talking about the influence that Hughes has on young female characters.

Surprisingly, Goldstein responded with this:

I think you make a good point. I actually quoted Stacey Sher, who produced Reality Bites, talking about Hughes’ influence, but we had space issues at the last minute and the copydesk had to take her out of the story. But I confess that everyone I asked who came up with a list of filmmakers who were influenced by Hughes ended up giving me an all male list. Who would you cite among female filmmakers that you think was influenced by him in a big way?

So I put the question to you: Who are the female filmmakers who were influenced by John Hughes? Please don’t say Amy Heckerling. She made Fast Times at Ridgemont High before Hughes made Sixteen Candles. They are contemporaries. The fact that everyone has cited Heckerling to me just goes to show that we need more women directors period.

Send me your thoughts.

I’ve been critical of the insider Hollywood show Shootout with Peter Bart (editor of Variety) and Peter Guber (uber-producer) as being so boy-centric. I was catching up on some recent episodes and was happy to see Charlize Theron, Patricia Clarkson, Cheryl Hines and Joan Rivers interviewed.

I was also surprised to have the Peters take on the issue of how Hollywood neglects the older market. Bart believes (as I do) that this strategy is self-defeating since this is a growing demographic that has money. Guber responded that the studios know the audience is there but getting them into the theatres is another story. It requires more patience and older people don’t necessarily come to sequels or buy merchandise.

Just goes to show how uncreative the marketing arms of the studio are and how overly obsessed they are with the first dollar instead of long term performance.

Here is some of what Charlize Theron and Patricia Clarkson had to say. Charlize Theron talked about being a producer as well as an actor. She co-stars and produces Sleepwalking currently in theatres.

I believe there is an audience for these [indie] films if you are smart about marketing. They need special care, they are not studio films.

I believe you can make a great film and it can get lost in the marketing campaign.

I asked Michael Seitzman who wrote the screenplay for North Country – why don’t you write these kinds of stories more, why don’t you write these kind of roles for women? And he said, Charlize, I would write every movie like this but there isn’t a demand for it.

This makes me so sad. I believe that people would see the movies if they are good. Lots of the female-centric films released are very weak and watered down in order to appeal to a wider audience.

It’s reflective of who we’ve become as a society. We’ve become completely fluff obsessed.

Patricia Clarkson’s mom Jackie is a Councilwoman in New Orleans so she knows a thing about women in politics. She came on to promote her film Married Life but wound up making comments about women in politics.

Peter Bart: Do you think there is residual resentment of strong women in politics?

PC: Yes. It is difficult. There is this underlying misogyny that exists. It’s American and it’s difficult for women to rise to power.

and

The people who are most difficult on women are women.

Amen, Patricia.

(Photo credit: Wireimage)

Haven’t you noticed that Laura Linney is always good in everything? I really can’t think of any missteps in any of her performances. Can you?

She’s costarring in the awesome HBO miniseries John Adams and she took some time out from rehearsing Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Roundabout Theatre in NY to answer some questions about herself and her experience playing Abigail Adams. Linney is heavily featured in episode four of John Adams “Reunion” which airs this Sunday on HBO.

Here is part of the conversation:

Women & Hollywood: Do you think Abigail Adams was a feminist?

Laura Linney: She was certainly progressive in her thinking, but you also have to realize where she was. Within her context, she was progressive, but at the same time, she still very much believed that a woman’s place was at home. It’s sort of tricky when talking about her as a feminist, she was more like a humanist, I think. But she was very, insightful and very aware of – in her personal politics as well as governmental politics.

Her entire life she regretted that she wasn’t able to have an education. And the fact that she was a far superior writer to her husband, which he admitted…So she always, I think she realized that there was injustice there.

W&H: I was particularly interested in seeing Sarah Polley join the cast last evening (the episode that will air this coming Sunday). She’s a very talented young actress and director. I’m wondering if you had any conversations with her.

LL: Yes. She’s an amazing, amazing person. Away from Her, was just hitting when she was there. It was so sweet because I don’t think she was quite aware of what was happening. I mean, she knew that her movie had done well, but I don’t think she had realized the impact that it had particularly within the U.S.

W&H: Both of your trajectories are not typical in Hollywood so I found it just so interesting that she would be cast as your daughter.

LL: Sarah is having a remarkable life. And as the years go by, it’s will be really interesting to see what she chooses to do next. She has a lot to give. There’s a lot for her to do. I think she’s going to have the opportunity to do it.

W&H: Please talk about the way women are treated especially as they age in Hollywood.

LL: It’s a complex topic. And a lot of it is just what you will participate in. I can only speak for myself. I don’t know what anybody else should do. But you just have to surround yourself with the right people and keep yourself concentrated on the things that you think are important and do the best you can.

I don’t know how, you know, completely tackle this because I don’t spend all of my time there. I do work in the theater, and I work in television, I’m not completely 100 percent focused on just film. So I’m certainly aware that it’s there. I’m very lucky and grateful that I’ve somehow been able to keep working. But I think you have to be you and not let people tell you what to think about yourself, quite frankly.

The amazing Nicole Hollander creator and author of the comic strip Sylvia gives us her personal take of the new film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Check out her site: Sylvia

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: on my list of movies to see if you’re past your 47th birthday.

I’m wiping the tears off my face and Gail says to me: “Thank god, I thought that piece of crap was never going to end.”

“Well,” I say, striving for balance. “ I can’t defend it, but I enjoyed it. In fact I loved it. It isn’t often you get to see a movie where a very plain woman, full of gumption and good sense, hungry and jobless, forced to stand at a soup kitchen for a bowl of Dickensonian-looking porridge magically lands a job as secretary to a dippy pretty young thing with a complicated love life and a dazzling social circle, all within hours.

Whereupon this same woman changes the life of everyone she meets and ends up with a man her own age (Ciaran Hinds, fabulous Irish actor, last seen in There Will be Blood) who is a great success as a designer of woman’s lingerie, but finds it unrewarding and decides to go back into men’s socks because really their structure is more complicated than you think and who tells her quite matter of factly (it’s the same performance he gave in There Will be Blood ) that he’s been looking for her all his life.

Really, what’s not to like?” I ask her. “How many movies have you seen lately when a 40 plus woman ends up with a successful, handsome man, with no obvious health problems, who’s like her same age?”

She says: “It was a great big boring mishmash of every 40’s musical comedy I’ve ever seen and it didn’t even have any good dancing in it.” I retire from the argument… she goes to the ladies room and meets a young woman who loved it and now she’s rethinking the whole thing.

I am still on my anti-Judd Apatow rant. I still can’t quite believe how a schlub from Long Island became one of the most powerful men in Hollywood (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since its been done before…Jerry Seinfeld.) Today’s LA Times has a story about the influence on John Hughes on today’s comedies. Just in case you were wondering, Hughes has virtually disappeared from Hollywood since the early 1990s and has written a couple of movies (Maid in Manhattan) under a pseudonym.

Of course the LA Times writer, Patrick Goldstein, talks only to male filmmakers especially Judd Apatow about how Hughes brilliantly wrote about the outsider boys in our culture completely ignoring his influence regarding young female characters.

“You see Hughes’ influence on all TV comedy, especially the stylized single-camera comedy,” says Apatow. “His great film characters, starting with Anthony Michael Hall in ‘Sixteen Candles,’ were big inspirations. When we were growing up, we were all like Hall — the goofy skinny kid who thinks he’s cool, even if nobody else does. ‘Superbad’ has that same attitude, that mix of total cockiness and insecurity.”

In case you have never seen Sixteen Candles, I just want to state for the record that Sixteen Candles was about Molly Ringwald’s character Samantha and her struggle with being noticed and counted in our crazy world as she is on the brink of becoming a young woman.

In the mid 1980s, John Hughes did something that is lacking from today’s comedies — he made movies that spoke to both boys and girls. The list is mind boggling:
Sixteen Candles – 1984
The Breakfast Club – 1985
Pretty in Pink – 1986
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off -1986
Some Kind of Wonderful- 1987

Hughes characters shaped the values Gen X’s both boys and girls. He wrote young women characters with respect in a way not seen in mainstream Hollywood comedies today.

Molly Ringwald with all her angst and despair was my teenage hero. I even got a ghastly red dye job. Hughes influence can be seen in recent characters like those in in Mean Girls, and The Princess Diaries. Thank you John Hughes, I think the young men making movies today could use your advice.

Way back in October Maxim, the misogynist magazine that masks as a “lad” magazine called Sarah Jessica Parker the “unsexiest woman alive” How disgusting. Words do matter because all these months later it still bothers her and her husband. Might I suggest that the female actresses who pose for the cover oft his magazine make a decision not to. Maybe if women said no to this type of language and misogynist behavior they might shut up.

PS- We love you SJP and can’t wait for Sex & the City!

Sarah Jessica Parker Hurt by Unsexiest Label (Zap2it.com via Charlotte Observer)

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas have always been fascinating figures I know very little about. I barely had any sense of what they looked like except from the cover of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (which I shamefully admit to have never gotten through), but I have been fascinated nonetheless to learn and read about them – their lesbian marriage, how Alice was Gertrude’s wife, how they hosted the most interesting salons in their Paris apartment, and also how the Jewish Stein was able to evade the Nazis while living in the French countryside. Everything was written about them like they were one. Yet always it seemed like Gertrude was dominant.

A new musical at Urban Stages in New York City takes a look at the most famous “Boston marriage” from the perspective of wife, Alice B. Toklas. It explores their days in Paris and the salons where they hosted Picasso and others of the artistic intelligentsia.

The all female cast is led by Cheryl Stern as Alice and the indomitable Barbara Rosenblat as Gertrude. Book and lyrics are by Ted Sod, music is by Lisa Koch and the show is directed by the Urban Stages artistic director, Frances Hill.

While making a musical on a small scale is quite a challenge there were some touching and funny moments especially from the supporting cast playing a revolving band of characters in Gertrude and Alice’s lives.

I’m still just a s fascinated as I was before — maybe now when I next pick up the The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I’ll be able to get through it.

Play runs through April 6. Get more info and tickets: Urban Stages
Read Janet Malcom’s New Yorker piece on Gertrude and Alice: Strangers in Paradise

I’ve been noticing lots of stealth ads around New York City for the new Judd Apatow produced anti-romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s about another schlub who gets dumped by his overachieving girlfriend and winds up at the same hotel in Hawaii with her and her new musician boyfriend. You can’t really tell they are for a movie, but they are really offensive and have started to piss me off.

The one that set me over the edge was: “Yes you do look fat in those jeans- Sarah Marshall” “You Suck Sarah Marshall” and then today I saw one that said: “My Mother Always Hated You.”

Way to ratchet up the misogyny, Judd. I’m definitely boycotting this film. Anyone want to join with me?

Opening This Week- La Misma Luna
La Misma Luna was, suffice it to say, an unexpected pleasure. While I do like my share of foreign films, I sometimes walk into them expecting something overly serious and sometimes difficult to relate to. This film was nothing like that. La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon) is a beautiful and touching film which tells the incredibly relevant story of a mother and son separated by the US border each trying to survive the best they can without one another.

La Misma Luna Review
Interview with Patricia Riggen

Remaining in Theatres:
The Other Boleyn Girl
Juno
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Penelope
Mad Money
Girls Rock!

• Geena Davis is coming back to TV. She will star in Exit 19 a new drama on CBS. Davis will portray a homicide detective in Manhattan while juggling two kids as a single mom in the suburbs of Long Island. Awesome. (Cynopsis)

• Angela Bassett has joined an elite club with her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Angela Bassett Gets Hollywod Star (AP via Yahoo)

• Kimberley Peirce opens her second film Stop-Loss next week, 10 years after the groundbreaking Boys Don’t Cry. The movies is very interesting and well done. What’s even more interesting is that she is the first woman to make a fiction film about the Iraq War. Women have been making great docs, but she is breaking new ground here.

Peirce on women directors: “I think women are probably not as driven to just turn out the numbers,” Peirce said, when asked why she hasn’t made more films. “It’s a weird thing. Look, I want to make a lot, but I want to love them, because they’re a part of me, you know?” Kimberley Peirce (LA Times)

• Questions for Laura Linney (NY Times)

• Can Mary Parent Make MGM Roar Again? (LA Times)

• Annie Lennox Steps Up, Sings Out to Fight AIDS (VOA)

I gotta admit that this woman has guts. Most people who have been hit with the backlash for comments made about women’s place in Hollywood would probably keep their mouths, but as her film 27 Dresses is about to open in England, Heigl again goes on the record about the whole Knocked Up is sexist controversy. (By the way, Judd Apatow has count it four films he’s produced opening this year.) Here’s some of what she said to the Guardian.

Those comments provoked quite a backlash, and Heigl was described as ungrateful and a traitor. Some people even suggested she would never work again. Was she surprised at that? “I was. Maybe it was naive of me,” she says. “I think that the reality of starting to become successful is that [some people] want to slate you for something – put you in a box and put a label on what sort of a person you are. I’m not wild, I haven’t been to rehab, I don’t do anything eccentric – I’m really boring. So that’s where they have to go.” She stands by her comment, but says the sexism element “didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the movie. That’s where the comedy lies, between these polar opposites and stereotypes of female-male behaviour. I don’t know a lot of guys that act like Ben, but we know that some exist. I don’t know a lot of women who act like Alison, but again we know that some women do. Those are the stereotypes, and they’re exaggerated. But it seemed to me that she was such a stiff, she had such a stick up her ass. I wish she had been a little more fun.”

“I would never want to be malicious or ignorant,” she continues, “but I didn’t think that comment was any of those things. It was my opinion and I’m allowed to have one. Isn’t it the land of the free?”

I’m sure some people are thinking, yes, Katherine you are allowed to have an opinion, just as long as you don’t say anything that matters. Clearly, this woman has a rational brain and is not afraid to stand up for herself and others. (She was one of the first to speak up last year during the Grey’s Anatomy homophobic incident that got Isiah Washington fired.)

Full story: Katherine Heigl (The Guardian)
(photo credit: Wire Image)

It’s not news to anyone who reads this site that it’s a tough climate for women artists. A new international holiday, SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now) has been launched by the Fund for Women Artists. The first one will take place on Saturday, March 29th. It’s not too late to participate and show your support for all types of women artists!

Martha Richards, Executive Director of the Fund for Women Artists, answered some questions about SWAN Day. More info: SWAN Day

Women & Hollywood: What is SWAN Day & why is it needed?

Martha Richards: SWAN Day (Support Women Artists Now Day) is a new international holiday that celebrates women artists that will take place on the last Saturday of Women’s History Month (March). As a symbol of international solidarity, there will be parties, performances, exhibits and other events featuring women artists all over the world. The public will be encouraged to attend these events and to make donations to their favorite women artists. There are currently almost 140 events across the U.S. and in 8 other countries. They range from a festival of women-fronted rock bands in New London, Connecticut to a performance of “Tales from the Far Side of Fifty” by women aged 56 – 84 in Oceanside, California. All-day festivals are being planned in Washington, D.C.; Cranston, Rhode Island; San Diego, California; and Las Vegas, Nevada.

By focusing attention on the work of women artists, SWAN Day will help people imagine what the world might be like if women’s art and perspectives were fully integrated into all of our lives.

Also, SWAN Day is designed to empower women artists to do more fundraising for their projects. Since government and foundation funding for the arts has decreased over the past decade, women artists need to approach more individual donors, but many artists are shy about doing that. By validating the contributions of women artists, SWAN Day helps them feel more confident about asking for money. They are proud to tell prospective donors that they are part of an international celebration.

W&H: How can people get involved in their community?

MR: The easiest way to participate is to attend a SWAN Day event. People can use the official SWAN Day Map to search for events in their area. Many people are celebrating SWAN Day by having private parties where they get together with friends to watch a movie that is written or directed by women or to talk about their favorite women artists.

If there are no events in their area, they can organize one of their own – the event can be a party, performance, exhibit, or any other activity that celebrates women artists. People are welcome to post their events on the SWAN Map by filling in a form Sign Up

W&H: If you can’t organize an event, how can you participate?

MR: Another way to participate is simply to send a check to your favorite woman artist. You can find someone to support through the WomenArts Network, an online directory of over 1,000 women artists Women Artists Network, or you can choose to support any other woman artist that you know. Almost every woman artist has projects that she cannot do because of lack of funds, and any woman artist that you support will probably use the funds wisely. You can also make a donation to The Fund for Women Artists to help support future SWAN Days by clicking on any Donate Now button SWAN Day

Many people are celebrating SWAN Day by wearing t-shirts, jewelry or other items with swans on them. You can order t-shirts, hats and mugs with the SWAN Day logo Buy SWAN Day materials or you can download the SWAN Logo from the Publicity Tools section of SWAN Day and put it on items of your own.

Think also about writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or create an op-ed piece about the status of women artists. In San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, New York, Boston and Washington, DC, women have asked their Mayors to issue a SWAN Day proclamation, and we are optimistic that each Mayor will respond. If you want to contact your Mayor, The Fund for Women Artists has posted sample proclamations.

W&H: Why is it important to support women artists?

MR: It is important to support all artists these days – men as well as women. We are living in such war-torn times and we need better tools for understanding each other. The arts provide some of the best ways for people to learn about each other and to become more tolerant of differences. If we invest more money in the arts, we will have a better chance of creating a more tolerant and peaceful society.

It is important to focus on supporting women artists because in the past women have been ignored and severely underfunded. We have been deprived of the creativity of half the population because women have not received the funds they need. We have missed out on the inspiration, empowerment, and healing that their art might have provided. Women artists should be funded because it is the fair thing to do and because we need to see beautiful and moving works of art that reflect women’s perspectives.

There is a myth in this country that when there is no arts funding, great art will still be made by “starving artists”. Actually women artists are much more likely to be serving as your waitress than “starving.” When there is no arts funding, women artists are often forced to take menial jobs that take up most of the time that they should be devoting to their art. As a society, we are wasting a major asset when we force these talented women to do jobs that squander their talents instead of developing them.

W&H: What would you like to see come out of SWAN Day?

MR: SWAN Day is inspired in part by Eve Ensler’s V-Day celebrations which raise over $4 million a year for programs responding to violence against women. In the same way that organizers of V-Day events donate a portion of their proceeds to local women’s shelters, SWAN Day organizers are encouraged to use their events as benefits for their own work or as fundraisers for other women artists in their communities.

Ensler started with only one benefit performance, but after 8 years, there were 2,500 V-Day events all over the world. Our long term goal for SWAN Day is simply to help our constituents to raise as much money as possible for their work and the work of other women artists. Eight years from now, we will be thrilled if we are raising $4 million a year that is distributed to women artists through a global network of individual artists and women-led arts organizations.

Who would have thunk? Virginia Madsen best known for her Oscar nominated role in Sideways has started her own production company – Title IX Prods with Kelly Meola. Anyone who names their film company after Title IX has got have some serious feminist chops.

The company’s name, Title IX, comes from the 1972 U.S. law forbidding discrimination in schools and universities based on gender, but Madsen and Meola said that doesn’t mean they will only produce female-driven films.

“We kind of saw it as we want to be able to play on equal ground,” Meola said. “Of course, we want to talk about female issues but not just tell stories about women.”

Added Madsen, “I like the idea we’re leveling the playing field.”

First film is I Know a Woman Like That, a documentary directed by Elaine Madsen (Virginia’s mother) about women 64-94.

Madsen, Meola Form Title IX Prods (Hollywood Reporter)

La Misma Luna was, suffice it to say, an unexpected pleasure. While I do like my share of foreign films, I sometimes walk into them expecting something overly serious and sometimes difficult to relate to. This film was nothing like that. La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon) is a beautiful and touching film which tells the incredibly relevant story of a mother and son separated by the US border each trying to survive the best they can without one another.

Rosario (Kate Del Catillo) has crossed the US border from Mexico in order to provide for her son Carlitos (Adrian Alonso) who she left with her mother. She tells him that when he misses her he should look up at the moon because they would both be looking at the same moon (La Misma Luna) and would feel closer together. When Carlitos’ grandmother dies unexpectedly, the 9-year-old sets off on the perilous journey to find his mother just as she is struggling with the decision about whether to return to Mexico to be with him.

The film was written by Ligiah Villalobos and was directed and produced by first time feature director Patricia Riggen. Riggen takes the hot political issue of immigration and humanizes it in a profound way. It never gets preachy, is extremely moving, and has an amazingly breathtaking performance from a talented young actor, Adrian Alonso.

La Misma Luna opens today in 250 theatres in over 150 cities across the country.

Go see this film!

La Misma Luna

Patricia Riggen’s first feature film La Misma Luna opens on 250 screens across the country today. She answered a few questions about the film and being a female director.

Women & Hollywood: The issue of immigration is so highly charged and you were able to humanize it and also to show that it is a women’s issue.

Patricia Riggen: Women are now crossing the border. It used to be men. Now, there are 4 million women in this country who have left a child behind. When people ask me if this is a true story, I tell them that it is based on 4 million true stories. These women have no other options and make the most difficult sacrifice of all because no mother would leave her child unless she was desperate. That was something I wanted to explore. Rosario has a huge dilemma having made this decision in order to provide for her child because she loves him, while at the same time feeling like she’s sacrificing that love. It’s not just a statistic to me. These are human beings and that’s what I wanted to show.

W&H: This film feels very female — it’s from a woman’s eye. It’s no coincidence that both the director and screenwriter are women. These films are few and far between in Hollywood these days.

PR: It’s something that I have struggled with in my career. I’m Mexican, and I never could have become a director in Mexico. I moved here and that allowed me to do this work.

W&H: In Mexico, you didn’t have an opportunity to work as a director?

PR: In Mexico, I never gave myself the chance to imagine myself in the director’s shoes. It took me a while to discover what I wanted to do. I was already working in the business doing different jobs and feeling unhappy. When I was growing up in Mexico there weren’t any women directors around for me to see that it was something I could do. Funny enough I wrote my college thesis on women directors in Mexico when I didn’t even know I was going to be a director. There were four, and I interviewed them feeling like being a director was equivalent to being an astronaut — the hardest most strange thing to be. Completely unaccessible, and it shouldn’t be like that.

W&H: Women feel that it is so difficult to be a director here.

PR: That’s what my friends tell me and I feel it is so easy here.

W&H: Have the Fox Searchlight people (the film distributor) been supporting your vision?

PR: Fox Searchlight has been wonderful and I’ll tell you why- they’re all women. There’s one guy at the top and then it’s all women. Their sensibility is very feminine and it makes it really wonderful for a women’s movie. They totally get it and care about the film.

W&H: Adrian Alonso performance as Carlitos really astounded me. Talk a little bit about how you directed him and how you were able to elicit his spectacular performance.

PR: Thank you, nobody ever asks me about this. They always say, where did you find him. It’s not the finding, it’s the directing. It’s all about the directing. I think most kids can act and it’s a matter of directing them properly. In this case, Adrian is very talented but he’s also a child and has no criteria to understand if he is doing something good or not. Older actors know what they are doing, kids don’t.

W&H: The whole movie rests of his shoulders — if he wouldn’t have been good, the movie wouldn’t have been good.

PR: I basically knew that if I didn’t find the right kid I shouldn’t even attempt to make this movie. But the truth is that I worked with him very closely and my eyes were always on him to protect and help him.

W&H: How did you get the script?

PR: I made a documentary called Family Portraits and Ligiah saw it and loved it and sent me the screenplay. I immediately connected with it. We started working together , and when we had the script ready to shoot the financing was there. She was great to work with, she’s very smart and she always stood by me. When I felt that the movie wasn’t going to happen she came and worked for no money. She did all the drafts and revisions and waited and waited for the movie to happen.

W&H: You are also the film’s producer.

PR: This is an important aspect. I did have a way to make this at a studio, and I started working with them but felt I was losing creative control and the decisions being made were wrong and it wasn’t going to be a good movie. I was thinking that I was a director for hire, but it was a project that I brought and realized this is not a way I wanted to make my first feature. Fortunately, it was a very low budget so I decided to raise the money myself to keep control which enabled me to make every single decision which allowed me to make the best movie I could.

W&H: What do you want the audience to feel after seeing the film?

PR: I want them to have a good time, and to feel engaged and moved. I want people to see the humanity of those who surround us that we don’t necessarily notice like the waiter or gardener and think about their lives.

W&H: What’s next for you?

PR: I have several offers from Hollywood. I am keeping my feet on the ground knowing that my fellow female directors have taken a long time to shoot again. They have made successful first films and then it has taken them a long time to shoot their second. I don’t want to take 10 years to make another film. I am developing some projects for Hollywood including a romantic comedy and a period drama. But I also have a project of my own that I control in case the Hollywood films don’t happen.

Leslie Mann is Judd Apatow’s wife. She’s been in his last several movies and this week opens as the female foil to the Apatow produced Drillbit Taylor starring Owen Wilson (film looks really, really bad.) She had some success early in her career and then after she co-starred with Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy she couldn’t get a job. (Funny though that Jim Carrey the actual star of the film still got work.) Lucky for her she hooked up with Apatow and for a while she focused on her family.

This week EW gives her their “spotlight” and she really gives it to Katherine Heigl about her comments regarding Knocked Up.

Having emerged in the last couple of years as a compelling female voice in what’s often perceived as the Apatowian boys’ club, Mann strongly defends her turf. She says she was surprised when Knocked Up costar Katherine Heigl publicly critiqued the film as being ‘a little sexist,’ saying it paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight. Mann retorts, I didn’t think I was a humorless shrew in Knocked Up. I think the women are just as funny as the men in that movie. ‘Humorless shrews’- who even says that? I just think its an odd choice of words.

Here’s what I think Leslie, you took the bait. Katherine Heigl told the truth. Knocked Up was more than a little bit sexist. It was very sexist, but it was also funny, that’s why we’re (OK, me) are so uncomfortable with it.

If Judd Apatow is as close to god as Hollywood thinks he is, he should be able to make films that are less demeaning to women.

I’m standing up for Katherine Heigl all the way.