Today’s San Jose Mercury News has an incredibly depressing article about the scarcity of women directors in Hollywood. (By contrast, female directors are common in Europe.) But this part of the article, for me, was by far the most depressing and rage-causing:
Actress Julie Delpy has wanted to be a director since she was 17, when she wrote her first script. In 1992, having acted for great filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieslowski, she went to the NYU film school. She did well and graduated eager to get behind the camera. Years later, all she had to show for it was a short film and a indie feature that never saw theatrical release in the United States. She also had a drawer full of scripts that reflected her love of science fiction and other nongirlie topics. She couldn’t get any of them produced. “I was kind of losing hope,” she said. …
“This is why my first film is a romantic comedy,” said Delpy, now 37, with evident exasperation. “It is only because it is the first time people will give me money to make a film. People will trust a woman to do something with a relationship more than they will to do something with a war story or science fiction.”
“I would sell out to direct a big action movie if I had the opportunity,” she said. “I love to take risks, and I think I would do a great job. My dream is to do a science fiction movie, like ‘Close Encounters of a Third Kind,’ like ‘Blade Runner.’ But you need money to make ‘Blade Runner.’
I sometimes love small movies about relationships, which the article says are the only kind of movie that female directors are “allowed” to make. But honestly, a lot of romantic comedies and family dramas feel really cookie-cutter to me. And, as you can probably guess, I love science fiction. I would way rather see Delpy try to make another Blade Runner that she feels passionate about, than a dumb Woody Allen/Nora Ephron knockoff that she’s just doing because people expect it of her.
Why does Steven Spielberg get to make dozens of increasingly braindead films, when Julie Delpy doesn’t get her shot?
goddammit. That really totally hacks me off.
Then morons go around saying things like “well, why aren’t there any great women directors, huh? All the great directors are men. Women must not be very good at directing.”
Or, substitute for “directing” your favorite field where women are excluded and their participation is hampered by similar discrimination. Like, say, any science or engineering discipline.
So many shoes, needing so much puking; so little time.
Argh!!!
The comparison with Spielberg is unfair – he gets money to make godawful trash because he’s an established director (I think the technical term is “bankable”) that the studios can count on making money with. A relatively untried director cannot of course compete.
The depressing examples of sexism are all the much less competent male directors who get a shot at making any movie they like. Though directing is a hard world to break into, I think, lots of them have pretty restricted options too.
The “women directors can only make romantic comedies” idea is just another example of the “men are from mars women are from venus” idea. I really don’t like it, and it’s a self-reinforcing notion: women can’t direct anything but romantic comedies because nobody lets them. Time was when I refused to believe there were any differences at all between men and women, other than the physical. Now I’ve had to accept that there are differences, though how much are cultural and how much are biological I couldn’t say. That’s no excuse for judging people on their gender rather than their talent, though: even if only a few women have the right kind of brain to make a scifi movie, it’s quite likely that Julie Delpy is one of them, and it’s an injustice to assume she’s not.
Maybe the financiers are concerned that she’ll make an action/sci-fi movie without the requisite token female eye candy. You wouldn’t want a strong female lead to scare away the desirable 18-35 male audience. Meanwhile, George Lucas spent gazillions to create the awful Star Wars episodes 1, 2, and 3. Sigh.
Yeah, this kind of thing makes me see red. Have you seen the Guerilla Girls posters on the subject?
Oscars
Unchain the Women Directors
Sticker Campaign
I love those ladies!
I would love to see more movies like Blade Runner and Close Encounters get made. As far as I’m concerned this decade has sucked for science fiction movies. It’s not that they aren’t being made. They’re just not that good. I say give the lady a shot!
My mom and I watched “2010: Odyssey Two” on TV together several months ago. She has a tendency to not like science fiction movies, though there are some exceptions. I think it’s mainly because most sci-fi films out there have male-oriented themes: action and sexiness.
Anyway she liked this one. At some point she asked me, “When was this made?” I said, “The 1980s.” At the end she said, “Wow! They don’t make movies like this anymore.” With a tinge of regret I said, “Yep. They don’t.”
Anyway it would be great to see sci-fi revived in the movies.
I dream of the future.