Monthly Archive for September, 2008

I admire Diablo Cody. She just does her thing without giving a crap what other people think and tells them so. Not surprisingly for a woman who calls herself a radical feminist she’s got a lot of haters out there, and thanks to the web and blogosphere she gets a lot of nastiness hurled at her. She and Katherine Heigl seem to be the center of the wrath against women in Hollywood. Not surprising, they are two young women who actually speak out.

In a post entitled Hello Again! (Starring Shelly Long) on her myspace page she addressed some of the crap being thrown at her. (BTW where is Shelly Long? Ted Danson is still working, Woody Harrelson is still working, I occasionally see Kirstie Alley, but Shelly Long…gone.)

I am not Charlie Kaufman or Sofia Coppola (much as I supplicate at their Cannes-weary feet.) I’m not Paul Thomas Anderson. I’m not even Paul W.S. Anderson. I am middle-class trash from the Midwest. I’m a competent nonfiction writer, an admittedly green screenwriter, and a product of Hollywood, USA. I am “Diablo Cody” and if you’re not a fan, go rent Prospero’s Books again and leave me the fuck alone.

I may have won 19 awards that you don’t feel I earned, but it’s neither original nor relevant to slag on Juno. Really. And you’re not some bold, singular voice of dissent, You are exactly like everyone else in your zeitgeisty-demo-lifestyle pod. You are even like me. (I, too, loved Arrested Development! Aren’t we a pretty pair of cultural mavericks? Hey, let’s go bitch about how Black Kids are overrated!)

I’m sorry that while you were shooting your failed opus at Tisch, I was jamming toxic silicon toys up my ass for money. I get why you’re bitter. I took exactly one film class in college and– with the curious exception of the Douglas Sirk unit—it bored the shit out of me. I also once got busted for loudly crinkling a bag of Jujubes during a classroom screening of Vivre Sa Vie. I don’t deserve to be here. We’ve established that. But I’m here. Five million 12-year-olds think I’m Buck Henry. Accept it.

That said, I’m a 30-year-old woman with a dwindling interest in blog culture, and I don’t have time to address this bullshit every time one of my projects comes out. I’m in love, I just bought a house, and my boss made E.T. I kind of have to focus on reality.

She also spoke to the LA Times on the set of her next film the horror flick Jennifer’s Body which is directed by Karyn Kusama.

“I am directly influenced by girls I have known,” Cody said. “Girls who treated life as a race, and if there was someone or something they wanted, they would stab you in the back. It’s a movie about hunger. A lot of teenage girls are starving themselves and a lot of them are psychologically hungry, because they are so misunderstood.”

Kusama and Cody face an unusual challenge with “Jennifer’s Body”: While the film is populated with gorgeous women, they want to make sure the movie isn’t lecherous. “That’s something you have to grapple with when you are making a monster movie — the girls have to look hot,” said Cody, who describes herself as a radical feminist. “We didn’t have to worry as much about ["Juno" star] Ellen Page’s lip gloss” as how Seyfried and Fox look in this film.

“But horror is a surprisingly feminist genre,” Cody said. “The last person standing is usually a woman. And most of the guys in this movie are vain and insecure. You’ll notice there are no fathers in this movie. I didn’t want there to be any male role models — I didn’t feel these were girls who were loved by their fathers.”

And lastly, she just penned a love note to Judy Blume in this week’s EW. I, too, love Judy Blume and read all her books religiously.

You have to wonder why no one’s made a big-screen adaptation of Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself — a bracingly vivid story of a Jewish girl in postwar Florida — or Forever, an oft-banned tale of love and (virginity) loss. I imagine it’s because these stories belong to young women. Real young women, not singing Disney cheerleaders, hair-flipping pop stars, or cartoonish socialites. ”Judy’s girls” are imperfect and unsure; they tend to vacillate maddeningly between outspokenness and passivity. Even physically beautiful characters (like the protagonist in Deenie) are outcasts somehow, stymied by the expectations of others. It’s definitely not the stuff of Hollywood. But Judy Blume’s bildungsromans are as sweeping and intense as anything we see on screen these days. They’d make great disaster movies, and anyone who’s been a teenager knows that’s not an overstatement.

I say keep talking Diablo. I usually never go to horror flicks but I’ll see your film so you already made an extra $10 bucks.

Diablo Cody addresses teenage cannibalism in ‘Jennifer’s Body’ (LA Times)
Diablo Cody: In Praise of Judy Blume (EW)
photo: Chris Hatcher/ PR Photos

I’ve seen the trailer for Oliver Stone’s W a couple of times now and while I think that it is so hysterical I worry that people who are still on the fence will be very offended by this and it might push them towards McCain.

Do you think that Stone’s film could adversely affect the Democrats? The people working press on this movie better be smart in how they roll out Oliver Stone cause he can set people off. That this film is coming out before the election makes me very nervous.

How can it be that in 2008 two major music shows can get away with not nominating women. EW reports that the Hip-Hop Honors and the BET Hip-Hop Awards have not nominated a single female rapper. It also goes on to report that the Grammy’s might not include female rappers since the 2005 removal of the Best Female Rap Solo category. Seems that very few women were submitted for consideration?

How is this possible? Here’s one reason given:

”Hair and makeup is killing female hip-hop,” says a source. ”The grooming cost to break a female rapper versus a male rapper is 10 times as much per appearance. That tends to have an adverse effect on a record company’s willingness to even entertain a female rapper.”

So unbelievably pathetic.
BET and VH1 Present…Awards Shows Without Women (EW)

Most people wrote her off a year ago but she kicked ass this week with her Sarah Palin interviews that hopefully will be a turning point in people’s assessment of her capacity (or incapacity) to lead. Then she scored McCain when he ran away from David Letterman to clean up Sarah’s mess. Katie actually looked sorry for Sarah as she had to give her clues to complete sentences. I bet the campaign thought that Katie would be an easier interview for Palin, since she’s a woman who’s been given a hard time by the media herself.

Lesson of the week: don’t underestimate Katie.

I just can’t get enough of Tina Fey. Loved her on SNL on Saturday night this week doing Sarah Palin again. Just in case you missed it. (as of Sunday at 5pm over 569,000 had viewed this- awesome.)

I couldn’t embed it so you have to click through: Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin

Also check out this great piece on her career from the NY Daily News. Interesting tidbit that I learned- she’s been a member of Weight Watchers. Now I love her even more.
The rise of Tina Fey: From ‘SNL’ to sitcom phenom and box office draw (NY Daily News)
photo credit: Djansezian/AP

For standing up for women with HIV/AIDS. The original Deena from Dreamgirls on Broadway tours nationally and internationally with her one woman show Sometimes I Cry, The Loves, Lives and Losses of Women Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS.

A Diva Speaks for HIV’s Silent Victims (Washington Post)
Sheryl Lee Ralph Site

Nights at Rodanthe is the film this weekend targeted at women. It’s another in the line of Nicholas Sparks romantic novels like The Notebook and Message in a Bottle that are very good at attracting women. I mean, really, how can you go wrong with Richard Gere and Diane Lane. They have some serious on screen chemistry as two people who meet one weekend and fall in love at an inn on the Outer Banks of North Carolina during a hurricane. The circumstances may seem absurd, but the characters come off as real with Lane playing a woman deciding whether she wants to divorce her cheating husband, and Gere playing a doctor dreading a confrontation with the husband of a patient who died on his operating table.

Kudos to producer Denise Di Novi who has a great track record producing films for women including the subversive Heathers, Little Women, Practical Magic, What a Girl Wants and both Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants films. I loved that director George C. Wolfe cast Viola Davis as Lane’s best friend and owner of the inn. I appreciate that he showed a real, loving friendship between a white woman and an African-American woman (which Tyler Perry also did in The Family That Preys. Interesting that both films are directed by African American men.) I loved how after falling in love, Lane returned to her art which she had given up to raise her family. I loved that the film gave hope and possibilities for rediscovering yourself. I loved that Diane Lane looked like a normal 40 something woman. She is beyond gorgeous but looks real, with lines of her face that match her age (unlike Meg Ryan looked in The Women.)

I thought the first half was stronger than the second, when it became a really sappy melodrama. But the second half included a great reconciliation between Lane and her teenage daughter played by Mae Whitman. They fought all through the film (typical teen film bullshit), but when Whitman stepped up to help her mother through her grief, it showed what a lovely young actress Whitman has become.

Other Women-Centric Films in Theatres
Hounddog: Concerned Women for America is trying to boycott Hounddog. It’s important not to let the right-wing efforts shut down giving people the ability to judge the film for themselves. Director Deborah Kampmeier will be doing a Q&A following the 5:15pm show Saturday at the Cinema Village. (disclaimer, I am consultant to the film)

The Duchess
The Women
Frozen River
Trouble the Water
The Family That Preys
Towelhead
The Longshots
Mamma Mia!
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

Also, Diane Keaton opens in limited release in Smother which does not seem to be reviewed. It doesn’t look promising but in case you must see Diane Keaton this weekend…

Totally got the chills while watching this. Opens December 12th. Oscar nominations for all!

Somebody please tell me WTF happened to Diane Keaton? She is one of the leading older working actresses. She was awesome in her oscar nominated performance in Something’s Gotta Give. (always watchable film even on basic cable with commercials) which was supposed to revitalize her career? I did like her a couple of years ago as the mom in The Family Stone, but lately she has been playing crazy, overbearing, stalker moms, which I find so sad.

Her first stalker mom was in the much maligned Because I Said So, and Mama’s Boy (which co-starred Jon Heder as her slacker son who likes living with mom) didn’t even make it to the theatres here in the US. Now this week comes Smother (which did not screen widely — never a good sign) where she plays a mother who moves in with her son and pressures him to have a baby. The title just makes me want to run for the hills.

Can someone please give this woman a good script? Meryl Streep can’t do them all, and if she can we are in a more sorry state than I ever could have imagined.

photo credit: David Grabber/PR photos

Jada Pinkett Smith will star in and executive produce a pilot for TNT, Time Heals. Smith will play a nursing director and single mother (widow) in the show created by John Masius (St. Elsewhere).

From the press release:

TIME HEALS takes place at Charlotte Mercy Hospital in North Carolina, where the strong but caring Nancy Hawthorne (Pinkett Smith) continuously fights a battle she often knows she won’t win. Whether treating the homeless woman in front of the hospital like a human being or trying to talk a suicidal cancer patient off the ledge, Nancy must challenge hospital administrators, heartless doctors, apathetic colleagues and a system that sometimes forgets it’s there to serve the sick.

Sounds like a great addition to The Closer and Saving Grace. TNT is getting very smart with its programming.
photo credit: Glenn Harris/PR Photos

Gotta love Ashley Judd for continuing to stand up about the most important issues effected our planet. Also in this clip are Julia Ormond, Madeleine Albright and Cornel West.

My piece on Abby Disney is on p. 36.

Spinning Into Butter, the Mark Brokaw directed film, adapted from Rebecca Gilman’s play, has been finished for a while but couldn’t get distribution. Now that Sarah Jessica Parker’s film cred is through the roof this tough film about race relations on a college campus will be released in early 2009 by Screen Media.

I’m sure the poster and trailer will be updated but here’s what I found:

It’s ‘Butter’ for Screen Media (Hollywood Reporter)

Another reason why I don’t watch this show anymore. Yuck.

• Mamma Mia! was the number one foreign movie for the third week in a row with $14.5 million. The worldwide gross has reached $476.1 million.

• The Women declined in its second week, but its total box office take in now at $19.3 million which is more than it cost to make.

• The Duchess made a whopping $27,000 per screen gross in its debut weekend on 7 screens.

I was traveling all day yesterday without internet access so here’s my delayed wrap up from the Emmy Awards. Firstly, the show was so goddamn boring. The ratings sucked – only 12.2 million people watched. Secondly, from the get go, I thought it was extremely sexist. TV, unlike film, gives me hope because it does embrace women in leading roles. But clearly there was a disconnect between the women who were honored onstage and the pathetic, sexist writing that dominated the show.

The whole opening bit with the reality show hosts was HORRIBLE and went to the dark side when Heidi Klum’s tuxedo was pulled off by William Shatner to reveal black Daisy Duke shorts. Gross.

But the saving grace was Tina Fey, and boy do I love her. She won 3 freakin Emmy Awards. Best writing, best actress in a comedy, and best comedy show. All the talk was about Mad Men and how basic cable is the new HBO, but to me Tina is the story. She is a Juggernaut.

But, people you have got to watch her show. Think of 30 Rock as a women’s film. You gotta support it. I am very serious about this. The ratings for this show are not great, but NBC didn’t have much in the pipeline this year and they also believe in the show so they stuck with it.

YOU MUST WATCH 30 ROCK. It is totally feminist, and totally subversive. Tina Fey is the real deal. A writer and actor who looks and thinks like a normal person.

Alec Baldwin who is absolutely hysterical on 30 Rock and won best actor in a comedy said this about Fey after calling her the Elaine May of her generation:

We have the greatest writers, but the show was created by one woman. This was Tina’s idea. This was Tina’s thing. She is the head writer. She is there every day, even when she’s not shooting as an actress. She goes back and forth between acting and writing. We’re very, very lucky.

Sometimes the crazy man actually sounds sane.

Not that I needed any more reasons to love her more, but I do for saying this about playing Sarah Palin on SNL.

I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5. So if anybody can help me be done playing this lady Nov. 5, that would be good for me.

Other awesome women winners:
Glenn Close- Actress, Drama, Damages. Close gave a great shout out to all her fellow nominees who by the way were all over 40. She basically said that her award shows that “complicated, powerful mature women are sexy and high entertainment and can carry a show. She called them all “The sisterhood of the TV drama divas.”

Jean Smart- Supporting Actress, Comedy- Samantha Who?
Dianne Wiest- Supporting Actress, Drama- In Treatment
Paula Weinsten- Producer, Made for TV Movie, Recount
Laura Linney- Actress, Mini Series or Movie, John Adams
Eileen Atkins, Supporting Actress, Mini Series or Movie, Cranford
Tricia Regan, Director, Non-Fiction Special, Autism the Musical

Check out this smart piece from Sarah Warn at After Ellen:

Women were almost completely absent from all the directing and writing categories (in other words, any categories that were not gender-specific). There were no women nominated in the categories of Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special or Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series (all the nominees were white men), and there was only one woman nominated in the categories of Outstanding Director for a Drama Series (Arlene Sanford, for an episode of Boston Legal), Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (Robin Veith for Mad Men) and Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie or Dramatic Special (Heidi Thomas). None of them won.

If visibility was bad for women overall, it was really bad for women of color.

After Ellen’s Emmy Wrap Up

Just want to let you all know, especially the awesome people who post comments, that I guess the site has made it to a level where trolls and spammers have found it and posted some stupid comments and crap. So…I’m deleting any nasty trolls and spamming comments.

Back Tuesday hopefully with a new bag of tricks.

Week two of the fall season and it’s another good weekend for women at the box office. Disclaimer: I’ve been a consultant to two of the films coming out today — Hounddog and The Duchess.

Hounddog is a labor of love for director Deborah Kampmeier and stars Dakota Fanning in an amazingly brave performance as a young girl struggling to keep her sense of self and voice in a world stacked against her. The film has had a hard journey to theatres including a call for a boycott from Concerned Women for America (now you gotta go and see it since they hate it) Please check out my story on the behind the scenes struggle of director Deborah Kampmeier, Keeping Hold of Your Vision. The film opens in NY, LA, Chicago and Memphis this weekend.

The Duchess is an 18th century costume drama that stars Keira Knightley as the Duchess of Devonshire, a woman bred for marriage to the upper crust. She gets stuck in a loveless marriage with Ralph Fiennes, finds a best friend who winds up falling in love with her husband, finds her own soul mate, becomes pregnant by him and is forced to give up her child or else lose everything including her children with the Duke. Yikes. The British seem to be able to tell these stories better than anyone, and it made me wistful thinking of some of the greats like a Room With a View and Remains of the Day. Opens in limited release this weekend. Rolls out across the country over the next few weeks.

For those in NY, the documentary All of Us about how the HIV epidemic is effecting African American women opens. Powerful stuff. Read my interview with director Emily Abt.

Racing Daylight, a quirky romance, murder mystery, ghost story which crosses time and stars Melissa Leo and David Strathairn is playing at the New York Film and Video Festival at the Village East Cinema tonight at 6pm.

Since we are all so obsessed with politics lately (I know I am), the political film of the week, Battle in Seattle directed by Stuart Townsend depicts the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle where thousands of protesters took to the street to raise awareness about the corporatization of the world. Very moving.

Other Women-Centric Films in Theatres
The Women
Frozen River
Trouble the Water
The Family That Preys
Towelhead
The Longshots
Mamma Mia!
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl

While the HIV/AIDS epidemic does not make the headlines regularly anymore, a new, riveting, documentary by Emily Abt takes the time to dig in deeper to how this epidemic has morphed into a killer of African American women. African American women are now 68% of new diagnoses, yet only make up 6% of the population. This is a crisis. Abt takes us to the Bronx and introduces us to an idealistic young doctor, Mehret Mandefro who has dedicated her career to raising attention to this issue, while at the same time provides compassionate care to women who could easily have fallen through the cracks in an overburdened health care system. The women who share their stories in All of Us are so incredibly brave and impressive and have spoken out so that what happened to them doesn’t happen to girls and young women.

The film opens tomorrow, Friday, September 19th in NYC at the Cinema Village, and will premiere on Showtime on World AIDS Day on December 1st. More info here: All of Us

Check out the Trailer:

Director Emily Abt answered some questions about her film.
Women & Hollywood: How did you meet Mehret and why did you want to tell this story?

Emily Abt: I met Mehret Mandefro in 2003 when we were both Fulbright Scholars in London. She was getting her masters in Public Health of Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and I was making my Columbia University MFA thesis film on local Muslim girls. We were both deeply committed to social change — she as a doctor, and I as a filmmaker — and wanted to know more about why black women were being disproportionately impacted by HIV. Most effective social-issue documentaries start with an important question and that was ours. Black women are 23 times more likely than white women to get HIV and HIV is still the leading cause of death for black women ages 18-35. Mehret and I felt this reality was unacceptable and wanted to turn a spotlight on the issue.

When I first began the film five years ago, I hoped there would be a great deal of media coverage on the topic of HIV and black women in America as well as a good deal of public outrage about the lack of funding allotted to deal with this health crisis. But unlike the AIDS movement of the 1980’s, largely spearheaded by gay men, there has been no such movement on behalf of the countless American black women who have suffered disproportionately from this disease.

W&H: Please explain what ABC is and why it is not enough especially for poor, urban, heterosexual women?

EA: The ‘Abstain, Be faithful, useCondoms’ approach to HIV prevention as endorsed by the Bush administration is irrelevant for the majority of women and young people, leaving them without the necessary information or tools they need to protect themselves. More specifically, ABC isn’t effective because it’s been proven that abstinence-only education does little to reduce sexual activity; marriage is actually a risk factor for HIV so the ‘be faithful’ message misses the point, and using condoms is of course important but fails to take into account that women tend not to protect themselves when they’re sleeping with men who have the upper hand, financially or otherwise. Public health experts on the ground must be able to determine the best mix of prevention programming that responds to the circumstances of the epidemic where they are working. As it stands, their hands are tied by mandates from Washington. Congress can and should change this.

W&H: How did you find Chevelle and Tara and also how did you get them to agree to have intimate details and histories included in this film?

EA: Chevelle and Tara were women that Mehret met through her work at Montifiore Hospital in the Bronx where she was doing her residency. It wasn’t actually very difficult to get them to share their stories – they really wanted their voices to be heard!

W&H: I was shocked when Mehret revealed that while she preaches safe sex with all her patients, she herself has not always practiced safe sex. What did that moment reveal about women and power in sexual relationships?

EA: That moment showed that all women need to do a better job at being self-protective. When it comes to sexual health, progressives and feminists must push hard for change on a legislative level but also can’t overlook promoting it on a personal one as well. While the paternalistic protectionism of early years was clearly a destructive force for women, we must embrace a new self-protectiveness when it comes to our behavior in the bedroom and within our intimate relationships. I created ALL OF US to be used as a tool for not only social change, but personal change as well.

W&H: How do we get the powers that be to take this epidemic more seriously?

EA: Forgive me for being self-promotional but suggesting they see ALL OF US ain’t a terrible idea. Writing our senators and insisting that they support Senator Barbara Lee’s trailblazing PATHWAY bill (backed up by Hilary Clinton) is also a good start. And there needs to be a mass of people -whites, blacks, browns, men, women, etc- all shouting that there’s something wrong here. The message needs to come from all of us because the advocacy groups aren’t able to create enough public discourse on their own. And of course, vote for Obama.

W&H: Explain the tag line – love and sex can mean life or death?

EA: ALL OF US promotes the idea that when you’re ready to have sex with someone, you should both get tested and share those results. Some people say “well, that’s really awkward and not too romantic” to which I respond: should you really be sharing life’s most intimate, sacred act with someone if you can’t have that conversation?

As women, we have to start looking at the way we confuse love and sex. Men will happily sleep with a woman they don’t love. It’s one thing to be okay being that woman, and perhaps jeopardize yourself emotionally, but women are often also allowing themselves to be physically vulnerable in the very scariest of ways. Women, across boundaries of race and class, are so hungry for love and intimacy from their male partners that they’re willing to put their very lives on the line to get it. And when women contract HIV, or even a bad STD, they feel like damaged goods. They feel that their very worth as a human being has been lessened and can even become suicidal. So ALL OF US is trying to start some very crucial, life or death, conversations and asks viewers not to just watch this epidemic from a distance but rather, say to themselves “there but for the grace of God, go I…”

W&H: What are your goals for the film?

EA: I hope ALL OF US, like all my films, inspires women to stand up for themselves. I’d like some teenager in the Bronx to see the film and say to herself “you know I’m not going to settle for casual sex when what I really want is a commitment.” I’m hoping a college kid sees it and realizes there’s no excuse for skipping the condom. I want the film to be used as a tool by the wonderful educators, social workers, medical health professionals, advocates and the blessed community organizers (take that Sarah Palin) that have made it their business to stop or slow this epidemic. And if I did my job right than ALL OF US will spark dialogue and social change among thousands of women and girls who are unfortunately on the front-lines of great personal risk. If someone uses the film to advocate for a national sexual health plan (is it really okay that 1 in 4 teenage girls has an STD?), nothing more would please me. That’s all, just a few modest goals.

W&H: What did you learn from making this film?

EA: I learned that sometimes making a film will leave you with battle scars but that means you’re battle-tested for the next one. And I learned (again) that art and politics can make a mighty fine combination if carefully mixed.