Hollywood and women directors, part 1

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AFTER THE SHOW
Movies, TV, Culture and Society

Number 491, March 21, 2010

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HOLLYWOOD'S PREJUDICE

AGAINST WOMEN DIRECTORS

Kathryn Bigelow's best director Oscar
win doesn't mean it's a new day in L.A.

By John Greenwald

This is the first of two columns.

Why has the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences taken 82 years to award its best director statuette to a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, for "The Hurt Locker" (2009)?

Was it because the 6,000-plus members of the Academy are sexist bigots? Or because the film industry itself employs so few women directors -- 13 percent, according to the Director's Guild -- that there are too few women to chose from? The academy isn't prejudiced against women directors. It's the entire film industry.

Not that Hollywood has - usually as writers and film editors -- usually as writers and film editors. Today, women are involved in just about every aspect of filmmaking, including behind-the-scene roles -- except as directors of photography. Of 2007's 250 top grossing films, women shot only 2 percent.

Movies have always been a man's business, from the men who run the conglomerates that finance and oversee the studios, to the electricians and gaffers who do the heavy lifting on the sets. Movie credits always list a "best boy," who helps set up the lighting and other electric equipment on a set. There's also a "script girl," though none of these job titles necessarily reflect the age or sex of the people who hold them.

There are two reasons so few women direct, neither pretty.

First, it's men who put up the money to make pictures, and it's not small change. A "modest" Hollywood production like "The Blind Side" (2009) cost $29 million to make (plus marketing and distribution). "Avatar" (2009), one of the most expensive films ever made, cost $237 million.

Investors can put the same amount into a new software company with a reasonable idea of how much profit it will make, and when. But, as most everyone in Hollywood will tell you, every movie is a crapshoot; and more pictures lose money than make money.

In that high-stakes context, men are more likely to invest with people they can relate to -- other men. True, in recent years, women have been production chiefs at some of Hollywood's six major studios. In 2005, women ran four. But this year, that number dropped to two, according to the Women's Media Center, and those women all reported to a male boss.

Second, when investors meet with the key people who are going to spend their tens of millions, most important is the director, after the studio chief. Directors are like military generals, but few of them have to contend with a film director's endless decisions, details and problems.

A director heads the creative and production team for a movie 24/7 for a year or longer. They work with the writer on the script, spend three or four months shooting on sets or on location, more months supervising the editing, the sound, the special effects common to almost all films today, and the music and marketing. Plus, the actors.

Many people, including a few female studio bosses, don't think women don't have the physical stamina, obsession, ambition, leadership skills and armor-plated ego to carry all that off.

Against this prejudice is the fact that women have long been directing -- documentaries. By some estimates, half of all recent documentaries have had women at the helm. Few ever make it to the big screen, because most never get theatrical release. But you can see them on cable TV, especially HBO, and on PBS.

Sheila Nevins, president of documentary and family programming for HBO and Cinemax, is perhaps the person most responsible for employing female film directors. She's overseen nearly 500 documentaries. They've earned nine Oscars, 13 primetime Emmys, 22 news and documentary Emmys and 18 George Foster Peabody awards.

But if women have mastered documentaries, what's the outlook for another Kathryn Bigelow? Not good. Next week's column will explain why.

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WOMEN DIRECTORS WHO ALSO
SHOULD HAVE WON AN OSCAR

In his MTV blog, Josh Wigler, lists five female directors who also deserved an Oscar, in addition to Kathryn Bigelow. Here's his list, with some comments of my own. -- John Greenwald

* Amy Heckerling for "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982). Not only "because it's a terrific film," Wigler writes, but "because of the insane amount of budding talent in the picture. In many ways, this was the birthing ground for icons such as Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Forest Whitaker, Cameron Crowe and more. Heckerling's eye for talent makes her worthy of a retroactive award."

* Penny Marshall for "Big" (1988). All the films in Wigler's list are independent and off-beat, except for this major studio production, which proves a woman can handle it. It was also Tom Hank's first great performance, and made his career. "The iconic piano scene ... has Oscar written all over it," Wigler writes.

* Kimberly Peirce for "Boys Don't Cry" (1999). Hilary Swank won best actress and Chloe Sevigny was nominated for best supporting actress. But the Academy passed over Peirce.

* Mary Harron for "American Psycho" (2000). This deeply troubling film may have been too much for the Academy's mainly conservative voters. But that's why Harron deserved to win.

* Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation" (2003). Coppola's brilliant, touching character study about two people lost in the uncertainty of their separate lives won for her original screenplay, though she did receive a best director nomination.

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Readers can e-mail John Greenwald at johnedit@comcast.net For recent columns, go to www.johngreenwald.blogspot.com. Copyright 2010 by John Greenwald. All rights reserved

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