#The Bechdel Test
Guest Post: Bechdel Ain’t Just for the Ladies: Westerns, and Protagonists Who Are Not Like Me
A director friend of mine was making a Western when we met, but I hadto admit that Westerns had never much appealed to me. When I was a kid, theywere on TV every Saturday, and my genuine assumption...
Fun Home is Coming to Broadway: The Graphic Memoir Turned Musical Aims to Open in Spring 2015
After a successful run at The Public Theatre, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical reimagining of Fun Home is hopefully going to be ready for a Broadway debut next spring. Fun Home has already...
Lego Movie Sequel Director Regretful Original Film Fails Bechdel Test, Wants to Do Better
Although I enjoyed The Lego Movie immensely (it’s clever and funny and visually stunning), I wasn’t really looking forward to the inevitable sequel — until now. Lego Movie 2 director...
The Continuing Case for Having More Women in Film
Yesterday, the numbers crunchers at fivethirtyeight.com, the guys and gals who have predicted elections, took a crack at the conundrum of women, movies and money. Not surprisingly, they found what...
Guest Post: Pass the Bechdel Test — A Grassroots Campaign Aimed at the Film Industry
The marginalization of women at the movies hasn’t changed since the 1940s. That’s what Dr. Martha Lauzen’s latest research paper, “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World” for the Center for...
The Bechdel Test is a Good Indicator of Box Office Performance
Movies that pass the Bechdel test make significantly more money than movies that fail the test. That’s the conclusion that Vocativ.com writers Versha Sharma and Hanna Sender came to when they...
My Latest Forbes Column: A Closer Look at the Bechdel Rating
Last week four non-profit movie theatres in Sweden (yes, Sweden again) released a ratings system named after the Bechdel Test. For those uninitiated, to pass the Bechdel Test, a film has to have two...
Swedish Cinemas Push Hard for Gender Equity
What is it about Sweden? What’s in the water? On the heels of my recent piece about what the Swedish government is doing to combat the gender disparity in the directing ranks, now comes news that...
Screenwriter John August Ponders the Bechdel Test
I haven’t written anything before about the Bechdel test which in a nutshell is a way of determining if women matter in a film. The test was designed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel and it has become...