Why can't I direct Superman?
November 20, 2015 9:23 AM   Subscribe

I want to direct good stories. I don't care whether it's a guy fighting a giant freakish eagle or he's trying to decide what to do about his divorce. I don't know why women are marginalized to talk about love and fashion.
The Women of Hollywood Speak Out (NYTMag).
posted by DirtyOldTown (50 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Both the numbers and the anecdotes are really damning. Other industries have been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern era, but Hollywood is strangely resistant. Maybe they need a sternly worded letter from the Justice Department?
posted by Dip Flash at 9:27 AM on November 20, 2015


‘‘There is this guy, [Trevorrow],’’ Bird said, ‘‘that reminds me of me.’’

‘‘Would I have been chosen to direct ‘Jurassic World’ if I was a female filmmaker who had made one small film?’’ Trevorrow mused in an email to Slashfilm.com. ‘‘I have no idea.’’


NO OF COURSE YOU WOULDN'T OLD DUDES DO NOT SAY THAT YOUNG FEMALE COLLEAGUES REMIND THEM OF THEMSELVES

CHRIST ALMIGHTY, COULD YOU BE ANY MORE CLUELESS
posted by sciatrix at 9:33 AM on November 20, 2015 [19 favorites]


FYI: clicking on any of the single shot portraits in the piece will show you a quote from that particular artist on women and Hollywood. The pull quote at the top is one of those, from a director named Letia Clouston.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:39 AM on November 20, 2015


Matt Damon proved Rees right on the first episode of HBO’s reality show ‘‘Project Greenlight’’ this season when he interrupted another producer, a black woman named Effie Brown, after she urged hiring a female director who might bring more sensitivity to the tale of a prostitute. ‘‘When we are talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film,’’ he told her. ‘‘Not in the casting of the show.’’

Look, Matt, I like you and all, enjoy your movies. But:

WHAT
THE
FUCK
MATT?
posted by nubs at 9:42 AM on November 20, 2015 [16 favorites]


Previously.
posted by sukeban at 9:44 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


(Those two quotes do not sum up the article, which is really quite good. But jesus christ, the young male director they start by mentioning is just devoid of any kind of savvy whatsoever.)

Film is one of those industries where I just keep hearing about this stuff, and yet there doesn't seem to be any broader consciousness about it in general culture outside of feminist spaces. I've observed that within academia, it's the fields in STEM that know (in theory) that they have a problem that my female friends have had relatively good experiences in, and the fields in humanities that don't have a broader narrative of "we have issues with this" that have friends who have experienced a whole bunch of really shitty experiences. I wonder if we are finally ready for a broader conversation about just how sexist (and racist, etc.) the film industry really is, or whether this is another blip on the radar which will just sink into the mud.

I mean, the Hathor Legacy has been talking about this stuff for years. But almost all of the "let's make these stories more inclusive!" waves I've seen have been more in television than in film, and that's where I see the content that actually takes the time to tell more nuanced stories. Film just seems to be too expensive, which lets the gatekeepers hide behind the projected tastes of "middle America" (or here, "foreign audiences") when it comes to keeping out more diverse perpectives.
posted by sciatrix at 9:46 AM on November 20, 2015


When I began reporting this article several months ago and asked some male moguls in the entertainment industry for their perspectives, they shrugged the issue off as ‘‘bogus’’ or ‘‘a tempest in a teapot.’’

‘‘Not that many women have succeeded in the movie business,’’ one top entertainment boss told me, while insisting on anonymity. ‘‘A lot of ’em haven’t tried hard enough."

When I phoned another powerful Hollywood player to ask about the issue, he said dismissively, ‘‘Call some chicks.’’

NAME THESE ASSHOLES.
posted by chococat at 10:00 AM on November 20, 2015 [13 favorites]


The fact that Trevorrow seems to kinda suck as a director makes this all the more bitter.
posted by French Fry at 10:02 AM on November 20, 2015


From the article:

‘‘I’ve gotten into watching old movies on TCM,’’ Jennifer Lee, co-director of ‘‘Frozen,’’ told me. ‘‘And what kills me is the female characters are fantastic, complicated, messy, and they aren’t oversexualized, and I love them.’’

This is so fucking true and astonishingly depressing. Somehow the way in which our media marginalizes women has gotten subtler, more complex, and more pervasive.

The fact that Trevorrow seems to kinda suck as a director makes this all the more bitter.

This is what happens with this sort of casual nepotism. You get a bunch of replacement level directors that aren't adding anything interesting to the films. The worst is the real lack of technical rigor, which is especially annoying considering how "they don't get the film nerd stuff" is used as an argument against women.
posted by selfnoise at 10:06 AM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


When I phoned another powerful Hollywood player to ask about the issue, he said dismissively, ‘‘Call some chicks.’’

we must drive them into the sea
posted by poffin boffin at 10:07 AM on November 20, 2015 [12 favorites]


The more I talked to people, the clearer it became that if the luminous Hollywood of my childhood was obliterated for good, it all started with ‘‘Jaws’’ in the summer of 1975, which would devour half a billion dollars at the box office. America fell in love with the blockbuster, and Hollywood got hooked on the cohort of 15-year-old boys.

Interesting... this is true in video games as well. Nintendo really started the tradition of pushing games heavily towards male children (and kids in general) after the Atari crash.
posted by selfnoise at 10:11 AM on November 20, 2015


‘‘Not that many women have succeeded in the movie business,’’ one top entertainment boss told me, while insisting on anonymity. ‘‘A lot of ’em haven’t tried hard enough."

Jesus Christ. Haven't tried hard enough.... meanwhile, how many 20-something white men have directed a couple of stylish music videos and immediately been given a $50,000,000 movie?
posted by Huck500 at 10:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Yeah, how many women world have been given the Fantastic Four movie after one mediocre found footage film?

The system is set up not to change, though. The best we can hope for is that Hollywood is like Detroit in the late sixties, bloated and inefficient, and cruising for a fall.
posted by happyroach at 10:34 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


In baseball, the addition of statistical rigor to the management of players has resulted in new measures of player performance. One of these, "Wins Above Replacement Value," came to mind when I read selfnoise's remark, "You get a bunch of replacement level directors that aren't adding anything interesting to the films."

I would love to see some objective analysis -- "Awards Above Replacement Value," perhaps, or "Gross Above Replacement Value" -- that measures whether a given director is worth anything more than would be a name drawn at random from the Directors Guild of America membership roster. Whether the backers want a shelf full of awards or just to earn back 105% of the studio's money, they should pick a metric and find someone to meet the goal.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:35 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


I dunno, wensetvedt, that kinda gives too much credit to the cult of directors. Writers not getting enough credit is its own, separate, admittedly lesser issue. But there is definitely a case to be made that if you wanted to reward the minds behind Safety not Guaranteed and Chronicle, for instance, that you'd have been better served hiring Derek Connolly and Max Landis, respectively.

But getting lesser acclaim as a writer than you deserve is a way, way lower-level problem than having difficulty securing the work you deserve because of your gender.

Getting back to the main topic, Letia Clouston has a series of interesting sci-fi short films on her YouTube page. Here's episode one of her Broken Toy series. A little disjointed, but she does a lot, stylistically with zero money.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:45 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


But getting lesser acclaim as a writer than you deserve is a way, way lower-level problem than having difficulty securing the work you deserve because of your gender.

I think he's proposing measuring how much work someone "deserves" based on objective metrics.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 10:49 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


So today I learned that a significant number of my favorite movies/TV shows were directed/written by women. Yay! I had already known that some of my favorite episodes of my favorite show were directed by a woman too.

It now makes me wonder...maybe there's so much utter crap on television because mediocre-talent guys are taking all the space that the above-average-talent women would have gotten if casting (is the same term used for picking the behind-the-scenes people?) was actually merit-based? Just one more thing to get angry at sexism about...
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:53 AM on November 20, 2015


I think he's proposing measuring how much work someone "deserves" based on objective metrics.

He is. And what I am saying is, attributing the relative success or failure strictly to a director is wrongheaded, as it ascribes too much credit from a collaborative enterprise onto one person. It is a problem because it would cause you to give points to middling directing who found success with fantastic scripts as well as to penalize talented directors saddled with bum scripts.

To go back to the baseball analogy, he may be hoping for Wins Above Replacement, but we are, at best, only in a position to count lousy stats like RBI or pitcher Wins.

Not the point of the thread, though. Let's read and talk more about these awesome women.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:56 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Even the idea of "objective metrics" doesn't really apply to film (or TV) in general. The success or failure of a film has so many factors involved it's impossible to measure that way. As DirtyOldTown says, sometimes a good director gets a bad script and vice versa. Sometimes there is trouble with the actors, and sometimes good actors can carry a weak film. Sometimes a good film just doesn't catch on with audiences and critics for whatever reason, and perhaps later is recognized as a classic. And sometimes really bad movies catch fire.

And beyond that, just because a director doesn't produce mega hits or win tons of awards it doesn't mean they're talentless hacks who could be replaced by any random other director. There are plenty of directors who do good work that haven't smashed the box office or conquered the festival/award circuit.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:05 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think he's proposing measuring how much work someone "deserves" based on objective metrics.

He is. And what I am saying is, attributing the relative success or failure strictly to a director is wrongheaded, as it ascribes too much credit from a collaborative enterprise onto one person. It is a problem because it would cause you to give points to middling directing who found success with fantastic scripts as well as to penalize talented directors saddled with bum scripts.


That will average out just like it does in the baseball analogy.

And you can bet that studios do measure this. That's the whole point of the studio: they are investors trying to maximize their returns (in whatever form). Presumably if they're choosing untalented people, they are "leaving money on the table", so it's in their best interest to choose the most talented people.

Not the point of the thread, though. Let's read and talk more about these awesome women.

Half the article was female executives among others pinning the discrepancy on women; half was it being pinned on the industry. Resolving that question requires statistics — not slinking back to one's biases.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 11:05 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you'd like to propose a system for objectively measuring the contributions of individuals within the filmmaking process, by all means do so. I would only point out to you, though, that the cited example that might be used as a guide for this, major league baseball, has had people attempting to do this for forty years, and with mixed results, despite baseball being flat out lousy with things that can be quantified and despite large portions of the game in which results are strictly derived from a single person's work rather than from a collective, the latter of which condition only barely applies here and the second applying not at all.

If you think there's a way to separate a director's contribution from their other collaborators, from writers, from the actors, from the producers, from the FX team, from the editor, from the composer... even from the marketing team whose work can sink a good film or prop up a bad one, by all means, go to it.

From where I'm sitting though, that is the kind of thing that is fun to speculate about, but probably fantastically impossible as an actual practical thing.

I do not think "Let's come up with baseball-type stats for art!" is a particularly sound way to address this issue.

No disrespect to wenestvedt, who is the bee's knees. And I wish it were a thing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:15 AM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


I have come to this thread to say that Lexi Alexander's "Punisher: War Zone" is 100% awesome over-the-top goony action and ultraviolence and I would watch any superhero movie that Lexi Alexander directs, ever. If you don't believe me, you can trust Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas, and special guest Patton Oswalt, on the subject.

In conclusion, any argument that women cannot or should not direct superhero movies can be rebutted in five words: Lexi Alexander's "Punisher: War Zone."

Summing up, Lexi Alexander. Punisher: War Zone.

Thank you.
posted by Shepherd at 11:17 AM on November 20, 2015 [13 favorites]


You absolutely should follow her on Twitter as well: @LexiAlex. She talks about this stuff all the time.
posted by kmz at 11:19 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Anyway, my primary objection to placing all of the credit/blame for a movie at a director's feet isn't even just that it's impractical, it's that inevitably, it would be used as a weapon against women. A male director gets $185,000,000, top shelf editor and director, top flight stars, an amazing script, and a massive marketing budget behind him and succeeds, so he's a "winner." A woman directs a film with a bare bones budget, less acclaimed and cheaper collaborators, terrible stars forced on her by the studio, a script being rewritten until the last minute, and no marketing support and she's a "loser." Worse still, the latter case would probably be used as "evidence" why hiring women as directors doesn't make sense.

There is no reliable way to separate out the value of one artist's contribution to a collaborative enterprise. And trying to cobble one together would be at least as likely to hurt women directors as to help them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:22 AM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


I always feel like I do movies/tv wrong somehow.

Unless it's a "name" director, like Spielberg, I couldn't tell you who directed the last movie I saw.
(Damien Chazelle, according to Netflix. Whiplash, great movie, you should watch it)

I've been watching The Flash tv series, which has had 21 different directors (3 female) according to IMDB, and I certainly couldn't tell you who did what.

I will say though, when I was binge-watching House of Cards (12 directors, 3 women), the episodes directed by Robin Wright stood out instantly, enough that I actually watched the credits to see who directed them.
Which, of course, is due more to her style than to her sex, but it does reinforce the idea that when you give more people a chance, you get better results, even in something known to have such a set style like House of Cards.
posted by madajb at 12:02 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


There is no reliable way to separate out the value of one artist's contribution to a collaborative enterprise. And trying to cobble one together would be at least as likely to hurt women directors as to help them.

The whole point of this article is that the studios — whose job it is to "separate out the value of one artist's contribution" — are biased. So, the next step is to measure this bias. It's not easy, but without statistics, there is no convincing argument for a particular change.

Anyway, my primary objection to placing all of the credit/blame for a movie at a director's feet isn't even just that it's impractical, it's that inevitably, it would be used as a weapon against women.

Honestly, we have to be unafraid of the truth whether or not it supports our preconceptions. We have a surprising observation that there are few female directors. There are many theories. Now we build models and test them. Your example that male directors are more heavily invested in can be accounted for in the models, among other things.

I recently saw the fantastic Mommy by Xavier Dolan who made his first film at 19 for $450k. Pretty amazing story. Do you really need a big studio backing to prove talent?
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 12:17 PM on November 20, 2015


I've been watching The Flash tv series, which has had 21 different directors (3 female) according to IMDB, and I certainly couldn't tell you who did what.

The role of a director is very different in TV and movies. The director of a movie is basically the creative leader and overall manager of the production. In TV, directors manage the production on an episode-by-episode basis. The overall leader of the creative process and the person in charge of managing the entire run of the series, however, is the showrunner.

I don't know what the numbers look like for gender diversity among showrunners. I'm sure they're not good; I don't know if they're better or worse than for film directors. We are in a period where some female showrunners are getting a lot of serious attention and acclaim, though. I'm thinking Shonda Rhimes, Jill Soloway, and Jenji Kohen in particular.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:17 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


All of these ladies are so amazing. Ugh. It just makes me feel really sick when a Screenwriting Magazine I subscribed to one time, celebrated a subscriber for getting a bunch of scripts sold at a pitching conference. His scripts were extremely sexist, ribald, and devoid of content or substance, other than catering to the same cis straight white male demographic that Hollywood always has sold to. And the newsletter made sure to especially point out that one of the agents was a woman.

My very supportive mom and other friends in the marginalized communities I work with always encourage me to write scripts and have them be made, but I feel sick because I have faced whiteness in the editor's room before, and they literally can use any reason and excuse to say that "It is not important enough/It is not interesting enough/Who can we sell it to?" and not even name explicitly their point of view. I don't even know who would read these scripts, that I haven't even built the strength yet up to finish drafting. How do I even navigate that suffocating whiteness and toxic masculinity, when I know so many other POC and women's stories have been sold and shredded apart by whitewashing involvement?

And I am even more skeptical of those "Diversity Fellowships" because diversity is a poison word to me. It's tokenizing, and there is no promise of deeper understanding of fighting and retaining people of color and women in the industry. They don't have to, because they're white and normative. But maybe I am too cautious, and it should be supportive and maybe it will be subversive? But how can I be too cautious, when I am unsure and feel so unsteady? I just want a safe space to work and not feel shredded by biases that are not under my control, but that is systematic injustice, and the world has coordinated itself to thrive off of it.

The fight and discussions need to keep going, and we have to force the hands of power to start letting go.
posted by yueliang at 12:32 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


Summing up, Lexi Alexander. Punisher: War Zone.

Hell, yes. That movie is straight up amazing.
posted by Huck500 at 12:37 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ok, I think I finally absorbed the pull quote from the OP and here's my pitch:

Scientists have dosed a Bald Eagle with cutting edge growth hormones and now it's on an eyeball-plucking rampage through the Mall of America. Only the worlds premier birdologist(Beyonce Knowles) can stop it.

Think of it as a modern reboot of a Hitchcock classic. I'm calling it BIRD.

(starring Benedict Cumberbatch as SuperEagle 1124C)
posted by selfnoise at 12:37 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


esprit de l'escalier, I would be really interested to see a methodology for this, I'll say that.

In sabermetrics, the aforementioned quixotic quest to quantify baseball, the most nebulous, hotly contested areas are the ones in which the input of multiple players makes it challenging to suss out who did what and/or when subjective input comes into play: game-calling on the part of a catcher, for example. Huge, nasty fights erupt about this, and pretty much not one subject under this banner has even a modicum of consensus. There isn't a single aspect of attempting to quantify directors' individual contributions that doesn't involve hundreds of people. And there are few ways to quantify outcome that aren't purely subjective. Awards? Really? We think awards make objective sense now? Even box office dollars won't help. What if the film didn't get released? What if it did, but only on 12 screens?

I'm not arguing against the spirit or intended use of coming up with baseball card like stats for directors. I'm arguing that it's impractical. Hell, it's so hard in baseball, that it ends in blood feuds, and baseball is a game of universally recognized outcomes with countable numbers, many of whom can be attributed to a single person. To do that for art? Criminy.

I think the key for women getting more acclaim for their work is: a) giving them more work in the first place; b) not coming up with rationalizations for why their successes "don't count"; and c) not taking individual cases where something that involved female input didn't work out as proof positive women can't be counted on.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:42 PM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]


There's times when I'm really embarrassed to have been a STEM major.
posted by kmz at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's really interesting to me that TV seems to be doing a better job with this than movies are. TV is not all that great, but there are more women in positions that allow them to call creative shots, there's a more diverse group of women, and the stuff they're creating is getting more mainstream acclaim. I don't know if that's because TV has typically been a less-prestigious medium than movies, or that TV shows are cheaper to produce so the suits are more likely to give women a shot, or what. But I mean, the creators of Jane the Virgin and Fresh Off the Boat are women, not to mention the usual suspects like Shonda Rhimes and Jenji Kohan.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:58 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I once read where a film executive explained what he (obviously "he") considered to be a truism: a younger child will go see anything an older child will see, but an older child will not see anything a younger child wants to see; a girl will go to see anything a boy will go see, but a boy will not see anything a girl wants to see; an adult will see anything a teenager will see, but a teenager will not see anything an adult wants to see; therefore, to reach your maximum audience, your target market is a sixteen year-old boy.

There are about five different levels of stupid in that line of reasoning, but I don't doubt that much of the Hollywood establishment believes it, not literally, not 100% without exceptions, but by and large, yep, I bet they do. A quick look at the local multiplex marquee makes that easy to see.

And with the entire skewed focus on adolescent males, the sexism that goes with this spills out behind the camera as well.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:07 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


The role of a director is very different in TV and movies. The director of a movie is basically the creative leader and overall manager of the production. In TV, directors manage the production on an episode-by-episode basis. The overall leader of the creative process and the person in charge of managing the entire run of the series, however, is the showrunner.

Sure.
But if there are X percentage female directors doing TV, then there should be a similar percentage doing movies.

Even in the semi-random two shows I mentioned, one is 14% female directors and one is 25%.
The article is talking about single-digit percentages in movies.
And The Flash, especially is a comic-book, action show, which is the kind of movie genre women supposedly cannot direct.
posted by madajb at 1:59 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


In her black-and-cream miniskirt and black Balenciaga hightops, Headland was a magnetic presence with a throaty voice and a booming laugh.

Oh, we're doing that, in an article about women being scrutinized in a way men aren't? OK.
posted by ckape at 2:34 PM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


In her black-and-cream miniskirt and black Balenciaga hightops, Headland was a magnetic presence with a throaty voice and a booming laugh.

Oh, we're doing that, in an article about women being scrutinized in a way men aren't? OK.


So I got to the end of this article and it said "by Maureen Dowd" and I was like "OOHHHHHHHHHHH, ok yeah."

Not to say it's a bad article. I am a bit worried that she wrote this because a less visible writer might get backlash or just have zero access.
posted by selfnoise at 2:41 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


“My message to the upper-class white men hanging onto this sinking ship: Your slate is 30 more superhero movies. If you’re going to steal power and hold onto it with an iron grip, at least be interesting about it.” - Rose McGowan

McGowan is certainly on point with this observation. The comic book superhero movies have gone beyond the point of saturation to where it's now kind of a given that Hollywood will keep cranking out Meatheads In Capes movies by the boatload. I don't think we need to do statistical analysis and run algorithms to figure out why, exactly, it is that an industry dominated by rich older men keeps tossing lucrative cooke-cutter film projects at inexperienced soon-to-be rich young men, while they all wax philosophical about women in Hollywood just not wanting to succeed badly enough.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 3:57 PM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]




You guys keep talking statistics, I want to hear more of poffin boffin's drive-them-into-the-sea idea.
posted by emjaybee at 6:03 PM on November 20, 2015 [4 favorites]


esprit de l'escalier: "That will average out just like it does in the baseball analogy."

But a team plays 162 games in a season, right? A director who has made anywhere near that many movies has already got a pretty good career going.

esprit de l'escalier: "So, the next step is to measure this bias. It's not easy, but without statistics, there is no convincing argument for a particular change."

"not easy" is understating it. How do we separate a movie that flopped because a woman director wasn't good at her job, from one where a biased producer kept interfering, and a biased marketing exec didn't push it as hard, and a biased voter didn't vote for it in an award show, etc?

And what are we expected to prove here? From the article, "women were only 1.9 percent of the directors for the 100 top-grossing films." How about we assume there's some bias at work here until someone can objectively prove that men really are 52 times better at directing top-grossing films?
posted by RobotHero at 7:09 PM on November 20, 2015 [9 favorites]


*walks back in to thread, surveys damage, hangs head*

I'm sorry!

I only meant to make a small point about how having ANY evidence of effectiveness is pretty much impossible -- so how can the canny accountants in the studios suddenly be so rigorous in their decision making without admitting they have almost never seen the alternative?

I totally agree with DirtyOldTown about the complexity and futility of statistics. In a game with as many granular actions as baseball, it's still hard to tease out the contributions of the various players. In the giant artistic and commercial endeavor that is a Hollywood movie, it will be even harder -- to the point of impossibility.

The answer isn't to not try, but to give more women chances to participate in the process so we have more examples by which to judge their efforts. For example, Spielberg has a great reputation that is built on a lot of good films, which he could only do because he had been given opportunities; maybe there would be as great a woman director if she had as long a resume -- but the lack of opportunity is a self-fulfilling prophecy against that outcome.

So...small sample size error, maybe? With an obvious solution?

Anyway, more good movies, please, and fewer bad movies. And consider it a grand experiment to give people underrepresented in the business some chances to Create Some Data, if you will.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:02 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I only meant to make a small point about how having ANY evidence of effectiveness is pretty much impossible -- so how can the canny accountants in the studios suddenly be so rigorous in their decision making without admitting they have almost never seen the alternative?

I do think that's a big part of it. When the movie industry concentrates so much of their funding into huge spectacles with huge marketing and production budgets, they're not inclined to take chances. They stick to known formulas at pretty much every level, so it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't want to deviate from that, even down to the white male director in a baseball cap. (This concludes my understanding of baseball. I know what the hats look like, and cannot speak to any analogies beyond that.)

I've seen several different directors say that, once you get past a certain budget, the decision making falls more into the hands of investors, who are primarily concerned with protecting their investments and may not even have any background in filmmaking at all. So in the context of the death of mid-budget cinema, there's a larger piece of the movie funding tied up in these investment projects.

You're not going to get any relevant statistics from that. There are too many complicating factors, too few examples, and at the same time, not enough diversity in many areas to reach any conclusions. And I get the distinct impression that the role of directors in those big budget movies is diminished pretty significantly by the financiers. Directors get fired if they don't cooperate with investors. And even if they started giving some of those projects to women, there would be no way to tangle out how much of the success or failure of a project was hers.

Ultimately, the problem is just big, dumb unfettered capitalism, and the solution would just be to start fettering it.
posted by ernielundquist at 10:01 AM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


"not easy" is understating it. How do we separate a movie that flopped because a woman director wasn't good at her job, from one where a biased producer kept interfering, and a biased marketing exec didn't push it as hard, and a biased voter didn't vote for it in an award show, etc?

And what are we expected to prove here? From the article, "women were only 1.9 percent of the directors for the 100 top-grossing films." How about we assume there's some bias at work here until someone can objectively prove that men really are 52 times better at directing top-grossing films?


The problem is that the bias can be at any stage of the process: there may be fewer women in film school, there may be fewer women directing low budget films, there may be fewer women who are applying to direct big budget films. Even the article postulates a number of theories to explain the discrepancy.

If you assume what you want to prove, the only people who will agree with you are people who already agree with you. If you want policy changes, you need to convince people who don't agree with you, and that is going to take evidence.

In the giant artistic and commercial endeavor that is a Hollywood movie, it will be even harder -- to the point of impossibility.

And yet, this is someone's job. Someone goes to work every day figuring out on whom to invest their budget. I thought the point of this article is that these people are biased, and that this bias leads them to select men who are less talented. If you think these people are biased, then don't you want to measure this bias so that you can convince others? I am not convinced that the studios' job is "impossible": that all directors are equally good and they couldn't possibly know a good one from a bad one. It sounds ignorant to me.

Ultimately, the problem is just big, dumb unfettered capitalism, and the solution would just be to start fettering it.

What are you imagining? Of course the studios want to make money. That is the point of their business; it is required for their continued existence.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 3:56 PM on November 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you want policy changes, you need to convince people who don't agree with you, and that is going to take evidence.
Yeah, no. Because the problem is not that there's a lack of evidence showing that women can be good or profitable directors. The problem is that "can women be good and/or profitable directors?" is a disgusting, fucked-up, bigoted question. It assumes that female directors are so defined by their gender that nothing else about them matters. Why should a female director be lumped in with other female directors and forced to prove that women, as a category, can succeed? Why shouldn't she be compared to other directors who are similar to her in some other, more significant way, such as their training, experience, aesthetic sensibility, or what have you. The answer is not to show that women, as a gender, are capable of passing some test. It's to stop demanding that women pass a gender test and to treat them as directors, not as women directors. And I don't think that you stop people from being bigots by presenting enough evidence that bigotry is irrational. I'm not sure how you do that, actually. Maybe you lobby to fire the bigots and hire new people who are capable of doing their jobs competently.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:20 PM on November 21, 2015 [13 favorites]


What are you imagining? Of course the studios want to make money. That is the point of their business; it is required for their continued existence.

I don't work in film. I don't know the industry, and I am not imagining any specific solution. But nothing is going to change if nothing changes.

I've worked in heavily male dominated industries for decades, and have experienced plenty of sexism in the workplace, and yet I don't think I've ever overheard anyone with hiring authority explicitly say that women were not being considered for employment, much less had anyone tell me that to my face. But apparently, that happens in film pretty regularly.

So probably a good place to start would be with enforcing existing laws. Others have suggested affirmative action programs. Others have suggested driving them into the sea.

There is no invisible hand controlling the film industry. It operates under the same type of flawed and entrenched biases that control just about every other industry. Their formulas for successful projects were established in a sexist culture, and as a result, the formulas perpetuate sexism.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:21 PM on November 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


If you want policy changes, you need to convince people who don't agree with you, and that is going to take evidence.

Yeah, no. Because the problem is not that there's a lack of evidence showing that women can be good or profitable directors.


No one is saying that. What people are suggesting is that there is bias, unconscious or conscious, in the selection that leads to suboptimal choices. That's what you would measure.

…The answer is not to show that women, as a gender, are capable of passing some test.

No, one answer might be to show, first, that studios individually are missing some excellent diamonds in the rough who happen to be women and if so to create studios that would make use of those diamonds.

Maybe you lobby to fire the bigots and hire new people who are capable of doing their jobs competently.

This is crazy. You can't "lobby" to fire someone who works for a private company because you have an unsupported hunch that they might be biased. Also, calling them biased is one thing; calling them bigoted — I don't think there's any evidence for that.

There is no invisible hand controlling the film industry. It operates under the same type of flawed and entrenched biases that control just about every other industry. Their formulas for successful projects were established in a sexist culture, and as a result, the formulas perpetuate sexism.

Sure, maybe, but feminism was also established in a sexist culture. I don't think that matters. I think what matters to me is the liberal ideal of liberty of the individual: both my liberty to watch whatever I like, and other people's liberty to do whatever they want with their artistic dreams; to hire whoever they like. I think if you want to work within a liberal framework, and you want someone to do things differently you have to appeal to their dreams by helping them to see how female directors might help their dreams be realized. These revenge fantasies of "driving them into the sea" are unjustifiable and farfetched.
posted by esprit de l'escalier at 9:47 PM on November 21, 2015


I would love having a statistical stick with which to beat Hollywood studios, demonstrating with data that their reprehensible sexism is also just bad business.

It is difficult to argue someone into a belief that goes against their interests (as they see them), but easier when you make them want to change their minds.

The Hollywood production system is a shabby, shallow creature. We deserve better, but the system has to be tricked into wanting to do the right thing. (And as a cis-het-white dude, this is familiar territory. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 8:44 AM on November 22, 2015 [1 favorite]


I think what matters to me is the liberal ideal of liberty of the individual: both my liberty to watch whatever I like, and other people's liberty to do whatever they want with their artistic dreams; to hire whoever they like. I think if you want to work within a liberal framework, and you want someone to do things differently you have to appeal to their dreams by helping them to see how female directors might help their dreams be realized. These revenge fantasies of "driving them into the sea" are unjustifiable and farfetched.

Nobody is telling you you can't watch whatever you want, within some legal guidelines. Big franchises and blockbusters aren't going anywhere, and nobody is proposing making them illegal or anything. (The driving them into the sea thing, I'm afraid, is a done deal, unless Obama decides to veto it at the last minute.)

But it's simplistic to assume that the market works like that, responding eloquently to consumer demand or whatever. The motion picture industry is not some organic thing. It's a big industry that is heavily dependent on marketing to fuel consumer demand. The big movie industry has a vested interest in flattening their market by establishing the most mass appeal entertainment they can, so as to draw the largest number of people possible with as few products as possible. That's not artistic vision, it's capitalist vision, and reasonably competent people should be able to competently produce those consumer products. The decision to hire a director to make a movie based on an existing script of other 'property' is a business decision, like any other business decision in any other industry, and it should be regulated and overseen just like any other industry.

And when you look at the statistics that are available, in terms of gender disparities, in order to entertain the notion that the system is merit based, you'd have to assume that women are just incompetent at filmmaking.

But that's not true. The evidence of women's filmmaking competence is pretty overwhelming. Women have been making film all along. It is very likely that the very first narrative film made was made by a woman, in fact, and throughout film history, women have been responsible for many technical and creative innovations that are fundamental to the industry as it exists today.

So when you see studio executives saying things like, ‘Not that many women have succeeded in the movie business, A lot of ’em haven’t tried hard enough," you know that guy doesn't know shit about film as art, because if he had even the remotest clue, he'd know that women have been hugely successful at the creative and technical side of filmmaking ever since filmmaking has been a thing.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:38 AM on November 22, 2015 [5 favorites]


Mod note: Comment removed; if you're getting to the point of dismissing someone's criticism of systemic sexism as angry flailing, it's past time to step away from the conversation.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:19 PM on November 22, 2015 [3 favorites]


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