I was a happy person a couple of months ago. I walked out of seeing Zero Dark Thirty very much liking the film, but also sighing a bit in relief that Kathryn Bigelow had hit another one out of the park. I was convinced she would make history with her second best director nomination and that the film would be a strong contender for best picture.
Things were going very well for the film at the end of 2012. It was on many top 10 lists, won numerous critics awards and Bigelow became the first woman to win two best director awards from the NY Film Critics Circle. It looked like Zero Dark Thirty was the film to beat come Oscar night.
Then the shit hit the fan. I gotta give a heap of blame to Senator Dianne Feinstein who took to the media and basically declared that the film lied about enhanced interrogations AKA torture. Even though others like Leon Panetta and former Congresswoman Jane Harmon disagreed, sadly, the film was never able to recover from that moment. As a recent LA Times article mentions, the filmmakers wanted to fight back when the controversy started but were told by the studio and awards consultants to wait until the national release date of January 11 as not to compromise the box office. While that was a good money strategy since the box office is at $88 million domestic and over $100 million total, that strategy severely compromised the film in awards land.
It just seems so typically Hollywood to me that this film produced, starring, directed and released by strong women — Megan Ellison, Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow and Amy Pascal is going to come up short on Oscar night. The women involved with this film have been highly scrutinized and you would be kidding yourself if you think that gender doesn't play a role.
Let's look at Megan Ellison. She is the young woman who financed the whole film. She's not even thirty and she wrote a check for the whole thing. She even got Jessica Chastain to take the part. It takes some serious guts to do what she does. She could have taken her money form her dad and gone off and do anything or have other people spend it for her and she can just show up on awards night. But she's different and that's what makes people crazy. She's not your typical Prada wearing female producer in Hollywood. And now since Hollywood is so hurting for money, she's gone to the top of everyone's list.
Here's how Vanity Fair described her in a recent profile:
Pretty but a bit overweight, with hunched shoulders, she has a slacker vibe. She drives a gray ’89 Aston Martin or rides one of her motorcycles, often has a Camel cigarette in hand, and rarely wears makeup. Partial to butch, grunge chic, she usually wears a uniform of army boots, denim jeans, and a hoodie pulled over the T-shirt of an old-school rock band, like Led Zeppelin or AC/DC. She can come across as well read and shy, but then might say something strangely blunt and uncomfortable and laugh at it.
Aside from the snark on her weight (boo on you Vanessa Grigoriadis) I find the description of this woman very liberating. How cool is it that she plays by her own rules. Her money buys her freedom from having to look the part. Male investors like Stephen Bing can go around in t-shirts and sneakers, yet when a woman doesn't look the part it warrants a description in a profile.
She's now entered the big leagues with multiple Oscar nominations and I'm sure the scrutiny will only grow especially if she continues to shroud herself in mystery and not do interviews. I like the fact that she is not known. I like the fact that she plays by her own rules. But Hollywood doesn't like that at all. She's unique, there are not many, if any female producers like her, as Amy Pascal says: “And you know what? Sometimes when you’re a woman, people judge you a little more harshly. I think that if Megan was a guy people wouldn’t be jumping on her as much.”
Jessica Chastain gave the performance of her career in Zero Dark Thirty and yet probably sealed the deal on not getting her Oscar when she stood up and defended her director at the Golden Globes in an incredibly feminist burst of appreciation. It's interesting to watch the difference between Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence. I am a fan of Lawrence's in general. But she's been playing up her youth and lack of substance way too much in these last weeks. She's everywhere acting all goofy. While that might endear her to Academy voters, it just confirms for others that she is quite young and maybe its too soon to give her an Oscar. Whereas Jessica Chastain has behaved like the adult that she is. While people might think she was an overnight sensation with her breakout part in The Help, the woman has been working and working for years. There's nothing overnight about her.
And let's also remember that Kathryn Bigelow refuses to talk about being a female director and refuses to discuss anything related to gender at all. But we all know that she's taken many hits because she is a woman. She stuck to Mark Boal in the beginning of the press tour for the film seeming really unsure of her voice, but as the controversy grew, her presence and gravitas in the media grew. And then she started going on TV by herself and she was great and it made me wish that she had been talking by herself the whole time. But the kicker for me is that for all her desire to be accepted into the most boys club of boys clubs, the world of directors, we know that she's still a girl and they are pushing back which was evidenced by her not being nominated.
When I talk about women directors not being included in top tier film festivals or not getting honors the response is usually that there are not enough women operating at that level to be noticed. That it's not the fault of the festivals or the awards because women are just not there or they make films that are just not good enough. What this year's Oscar race illustrated to me is that all those lines about women directors are bullshit because when a woman does get to the top of the heap she still can't get the recognition she deserves and has earned. I am so sick and tired of hearing about Ben Affleck not getting nominated for best director. That movie has used his snub as a strategy to get that film the top honor – best picture. There has only been minimal outrage about the Kathryn Bigelow snub. That's what I am going to remember about this year- that a woman should have been nominated and she wasn't. There are not many years when women can get into the top tier and that she was left out still makes me deeply angry.
Happy Oscar watching.
'Zero Dark Thirty's' sharp turn from Oscar glory (LA Times)
Caution: Heiress at Work (Vanity Fair)
All the rest from Women and Hollywood
Sexism Pushes Its Way Into the Oscar Campaign
Critics and Film Lovers Respond to Kathryn Bigelow Snub
Michael Moore: Zero Dark Thirty is a Movie About 'How We Don't Listen to Women.'
