Tag Archive for 'Martha Coolidge'

More Women Directors React to the Bigelow Win

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on March 15, 2010
in Women Directors
. 4 Comments

Folks, the reactions keep coming in. Here are some more female directors and their thoughts on the Bigelow Oscar.

This roundup includes: Martha Coolidge, (Rambling Rose); Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Secret Life of Bees; Maria Maggenti, The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love; Sarah Walker, The Underdog Club; Arlene Bogna, Patriot Johnny; Ela Thier, Foreign Letters

Martha Coolidge

It’s great that she won!  I was at the DGA and the Oscars.  You could feel the swell of enthusiasm in the room at the Oscars.  It felt like a stampede.  She did a terrific film that has a special meaning to the country right now and walked a fine line politically.  On so many levels it worked to push her over the top.  Jim (Cameron) was thrilled!  Now the question is what will it do for women getting jobs?  I certainly hope it improves her choices.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

My thoughts are pretty simple — watching her walk up to the stage to collect her oscar, I just felt good.

Maria Maggenti

I was really happy when Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar. She’s been working a very very long time as a director. And The Hurt Locker was a beautifully directed film, even if it was more of a character study than a conventional narrative. Do I think it will have an impact on the industry and the dreams of other female directors? No. I don’t. If you have as many meetings as I do, every week, with studios and financiers who are responsible for helping you make your next feature, you realise that the blind, matter-of-fact sexism that informs executive decisions is still there. Bigelow has never once done a studio film — no one would hire her. All her films have been negative pick-ups, which means she’s had to take them onto the marketplace after they’ve been financed. I kind of wish that I could say to some of the execs I meet (mostly female by the way) “Hey, look what Kathryn Bigelow did – why not trust that I can do the same thing?” but quite frankly, the answer will be: “You’re no Kathryn Bigelow.”  A singular voice will always be seen as a singular voice. And Bigelow herself didn’t exactly hold up the feminist mantle in her win — in fact, I was more moved by Barbra Streisand who’s “it’s about time” was the most that seemed to be made of Bigelow’s triumph as a woman director. Hey, maybe I’m wrong. If the picture I’m trying to get off the ground goes, and I get financing, a studio behind me, a big P&A commitment and the kind of behind the scenes political push that make awards go one way or the other, I’ll let you know.

Sarah Walker

Kathryn Bigelow I believe in you. Your magic is real.

Arlene Bogna

I can still hear Barbra Streisand’s words “Well, the time has come,” and I agree with Kathryn Bigelow’s statement about being a filmmaker without a gender modifier.

History has been made, and from this day on it is possible for a woman to win an Oscar for Best Director.  A door has been unequivocally opened, and perhaps it is a chance for more and more talented lady directors to contribute to cinema and be recognized for their work. Future audiences may even take for granted how long it took for all this to happen. And that would be great.

Ela Thier

I admire Bigelow’s talent and thrilled that she be recognized! I look forward to a culture in which half of the films in the theater are directed by women.

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Tags: Gina Prince-Bythewood, Maria Maggenti, Martha Coolidge

The Academy Elects a New President

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on August 19, 2009
in News and Sexism
. 2 Comments

oscarThe Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the folks who bring you the Academy Awards, have elected themselves a new president and not surprisingly, it’s a guy.  But I dug a little deeper and the numbers of women in leadership at the Academy is abysmal.

Tom Sherak was elected last night to succeed Sid Ganis as president. The only woman in leadership is Kathleen Kennedy who will be serving as a vice-president.

Only two women have been president of the Academy.  They include Bette Davis in 1941 for 2 months; and Fay Kanin from 1979-1983.  (They are only allowed to serve a maximum of 4 one year terms.) So really, only one woman has been president since 1927.

Pathetic.

This year there are a couple of women on the board of governors including:

Annette Bening
Martha Coolidge
Lynne Litmann
Dede Allen
Rosemary Brendenberg

So including Kennedy, women have 6 slots out of 43. That’s a woefully pathetic 14%.

No wonder they don’t give a shit about women.

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Tags: Kathleen Kennedy, Martha Coolidge

How Will More Best Picture Nominees Effect Women?

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on June 26, 2009
in News
. 2 Comments

The Academy blew the minds of pretty much everyone following the film business by doubling the Best Picture nominees starting this year.  So instead of five best picture nominees there will be ten.

The news was greeted with mixed emotions (as expected) but I am interested in thinking about whether having more films slots could help pictures about women and women filmmakers.

I emailed some people in the film business and here are their answers.  Hopefully I will get some more responses and I will add them to the post.

More importantly, what do you think about this big, big change?

Gale Anne Hurd, producer of The Terminator, The Abyss and Punisher: War Zone

I’m delighted the Academy has made this decision – now lesser known indie films, strong dramas or musicals, and even powerful commercial films (like this year’s STAR TREK) will receive the recognition they deserve with a nomination.

Thelma Adams, Film critic, US Weekly

This change clearly seems to be to the advantage of big films that have been overlooked of late — The Dark Knight, etc.  So I don’t think it’s a victory for women in film, but a triumph for big Hollywood over quality indies.  Will this help Kathryn Bigelow’s pummeling “The Hurt Locker?” I think not.

Martha Coolidge, director, Rambling Rose, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (disclaimer: she is on the Board of Governors of the Academy)

So my answer to you is “yes” this certainly increases the chances of films by and about women being nominated in the Best Picture category.  The number of Directors to be nominated has not been increased so I don’t think it effects that at all, except that any achievement by a woman helps every other woman.  So a woman’s movie nominated for Best Picture one year could increase the attention to another good one the next year getting more attention for both categories.

Sasha Stone, editor, Awards Daily

I think for the first time in decades there is a chance for more than one woman to get a film into the Big Ten.  Best Director, though, is still where all of the power lies and in that category no woman has won.  Can this change that?  It’s possible.  It looks likely that Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker is headed for one of the ten slots – she may get a Best Director nod but I don’t think you’d find anyone who would say she is the frontrunner, or even has a chance, to win.  That’s because most of us accept the bitter truth that these awards are still voted on by a majority of male voters.  So in that way, ten nominees isn’t going to change things. On the other hand, perhaps the wider opening for Best Picture contenders at all could open previously closed doors for women and other minorities.

What it mainly does is free up the Academy voter from having to make hard decisions.  For instance, last year it was The Reader vs. The Dark Knight.  Previously it was Dreamgirls versus Letters from Iwo Jima.  Since voters put down their pics in order of preference from 1 to 5, their top two, or maybe three are the only films that get attention.  They know this, which makes their decisions so difficult, so predictable and so boring. With more choices, smaller films or foreign films or even animated films that voters love could pop up on the list whether it’s been marketed as an Oscar movie or not.

Robin Swicord, Screenwriter (Little Women, Memoirs of a Geisha) and Director (Jane Austen Book Club)

I’m not sure what the effect will be on women.  What I hope  is that the onslaught of expensive Oscar campaigning may be somewhat reduced, since it should be fairly impossible for a studio to mount mega-million-dollar Oscar campaigns for every film that would be in possible contention in a wider field of nominees.  Reduced competitive “noise” may make it easier for a film without the support of a huge and costly Oscar campaign to come to the attention of voters.  (And yes, some of those may be films written by or directed by or starring women in lead roles.)  I also hope that a broader field of possible nominees will allow more action films and comedies to get the attention that some in these genres deserve.  And it may even change the Weinstein/Miramax-originated model of releasing “Oscar contenders” only in the fall and then doing a full-court press to position a handful of pictures as being Award-worthy.  It won’t be possible for schedulers to fit every Oscar-worthy film into a fall release in theatres if the field has widened to ten Best Picture nominees.  Personally I’d like to be able to go to the movies year-round and expect to see films of high quality.  We’ve driven audiences away from the habit of going to the movies regularly, by creating these weird little release windows for “summer movies” and “fall movies” and the February dumping ground for movies that distributors aren’t sure how to sell.  These release patterns make it difficult for studios and marketers to think in other terms, and I believe that has limited the development of movies that are truly original.  Here’s hoping the Academy’s Board of Governors did something brilliant.  I think it is possible that they have.

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Tags: Gale Ann Hurd, Martha Coolidge, Robin Swicord, Sasha Stone, Thelma Adams

Women Directors Talk Permeable Wall

Published
by
Melissa Silverstein
on April 20, 2009
in Women Directors
. 5 Comments
Martha Coolidge

Martha Coolidge

A bunch of high profile female directors (Martha Coolidge, Penelope Spheeris, Catherine Hardwicke, Kimberly Peirce) participated in a symposium at Chapman University in CA this past weekend called Women in Focus.  They spoke about the difficulties for women directors.

Here’s what Catherine Hardwicke had to say about her post-twilight world:

There are a zillion movies that you feel a woman should direct…But they’re more than happy to let a guy do it.

Some doors opened post-Twilight:

I got sent a zillion scripts…There’s maybe one out of 500 that I’d like to do, but you’re in competition with Oscar-winning directors for those.

Martha Coolidge has been a truth talker on this issue for some time.  She’s one of the women with clout to be honest since she was the head of the DGA.  (I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for her since she really has tried to push this issue, and even when she had a position of power things didn’t get better.)

The truth is that there is a permeable wall…We don’t have the club and we don’t have the members that the guys do.

The glass ceiling has become a permeable wall.  Now women can’t even see the other side.

I find it hysterical that Penelope Spheeris was thought by Lorne Michaels as not able to direct on her own until her 7th movie the SNL spinoff movie Wayne’s World.  The idiots must have thought the film was going to flop cause they gave her 7% of the profits making her a millionaire.

Maybe it will be different for the next generation.  Kimberly Peirce is now developing a comedy with Judd Apatow.  Hopefully with her at the helm it won’t be the typical Apatow fare and might treat women a little better.

Twilight director still looking for daylight in Hollywood (Orange County Register)

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Tags: Catherine Hardwick, Martha Coolidge, Penelope Spheeris