Hollywood Slut-Shaming

I was reading a frankly depressing article linked on ONTD about sexism in Hollywood and saw a reference to this movie, What's Your Number, where Anna Faris plays a woman who is afraid that if she's slept with too many men already, she'll never get married. First of all, the book this is based on has the woman reading in the New York Post (not exactly the most respectable bastion of journalism in the first place) that the average person has 10.5 partners in their lifetime; she then sets a number for herself, saying that 20 will be her limit before getting married. Naturally, the story has her hitting that limit and then freaking out because she's not married yet, and she goes on a quest to seek out her former lovers and determine if she let The One slip away. I haven't read this book, but I really hope the point is not to encourage that kind of arbitrary quantification system.

But then again, maybe that's exactly what it does. ONTD's linked source describes the film as being about a woman who learns in a "ladymag" (oh, what a lovely, condescending little word) that if she sleeps with one more person than the 20 she already has, she'll never get married. So the NY Post has become a "ladymag" and the woman gets her "limit" advice from the mag, not her own relationship issues. Great. But that's not even the worst part.

Apparently, the studio is haggling over the number, trying to figure out how many partners they can give the character without making her a slut.

Did you hear that? That was my foot kicking something hard.

If this were an independent movie or a foreign movie, this would not be an issue. I'm FORCIBLY reminded of a theory I had several years ago, when the script was being written for the second Bridget Jones movie. Renee Zellweger apparently had some issues with the initial script, and I was musing over the plot elements of the book to try and figure out what might be amiss. After seeing the final film, I became convinced that earlier drafts of the script must have included both Bridget and Mark seeing (and sleeping with? I can't remember from the book) other people while they were broken up. In the book, there is nothing terribly appalling about this - just your normal obstacles to getting the couple back together. But I KNEW - especially after they turned Bridget's rival into a sweethearted lesbian with a crush on her - that somewhere, in some meeting, it had been decided that audiences wouldn't forgive Bridget (and probably not Mark either) for being with someone else.

At another point in the article, Anna Faris mentions a movie she made with Kate Hudson called Gold Diggers, which was supposed to be the feminine answer to Wedding Crashers. But she says that they couldn't really make it a female Wedding Crashers because, and I quote, "the big hitch was, nobody's going to like those girls if they seem like sluts... We realized we can't make an actual female ‘Wedding Crashers,' because then it would be ‘Call Girls.' " I'm telling myself that she said this sadly and with resignation, because ... *boils*

I'm also picturing that scene from Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, where Matthew McConaughey looks out upon this sea of former flings - I don't know how many there actually are, because I've never seen the movie, but in the trailer it sure looks like more than 20. Nothing wrong with that, though, is there? No, sir. Men can have all the conquests they want, with however many people they want, because they're Manly Men of Manparts.

I could draw a parallel here to female circumcision, a practice that is still used in many places in the world to make sex painful for women so they'll look upon it as a duty to their husbands, not a pleasure, and won't seek sexual encounters outside the marriage bed. Oh look, I just did.

The Oscar Time Capsule

Kristopher Tapley, of InContention.com, is a critic who frequently infuriates me, but who just as frequently allows the clouds of whiny punditry to part and lets the logic shine through. Case in point, this article about the inevitability of The King's Speech's frontrunner status, how that status was decided not just in the last week but at the end of the summer (when it received a five-minute standing ovation at its Telluride Film Festival premiere), and how that status (coupled with disappointment over The Social Network's fading star) is starting an inevitable backlash.

One thing to remember is the difference between these supposed early indicators - the critics groups and the Hollywood Foreign Press who put on the Golden Globes (all of which are pretty small groups of people) - and the real meat of the season - the guild awards and the Academy (each of whose membership runs at the several-thousand mark). The Social Network is an exquisite film that does exactly what it sets out to do, but the buzz around it became built up to the point of hyperbole in the early weeks of campaigning, mostly due to Rolling Stone's Peter Travers and his comment about "defining a generation" (which, by the way, I don't think is true, but that's a whole 'nother post). Meanwhile, if you stepped back from the stats and actually talked to Academy members (obviously, I didn't do this personally, but I've read a great deal of commentary from those who have), upon mentioning The King's Speech, you'd see many, many of them get that far away look in their eyes and gush like a teenager with a life-defining crush. People really love this movie. So do I. The "Camptown Races" bit brings me to tears every --- damn, there I go again.

But of course, once a film starts to become the more obvious frontrunner, people will try to knock it down. It already happened with The Social Network, back in those heady days of its reign atop the prediction lists. If it's not historians or the real people involved complaining because it isn't a documentary and leaves things out (e.g., Bertie's support of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement and whether or not Mark Zuckerberg had an "Erica Albright" in his life when he started Facemash), then it's the screeching commenters claiming that if the movie wins (just talking about King's Speech now) it will be a blight on the Academy's history, which ... really, now. Rotten Tomatoes is probably not a completely objective measuring stick, but it's probably as good as we've got, and while The King's Speech doesn't have quite as high a rating as three of its Best Picture competitors - The Social Network, Toy Story 3, and Winter's Bone - at 88% fresh it is still "better" (whatever that means) than 2008's Best Picture Slumdog Millionaire, 2002's winner Chicago, and 2004's winner Million Dollar Baby. I mean, it's not like we're talking about the embarrassment of 1956 known (sadly) as "Best Picture winner Around the World in 80 Days," for crying out loud!

As exciting as the race is to watch, it doesn't ultimately mean anything, other than that whichever film wins will possibly make a bit more money - or, in the case of The Hurt Locker, maybe not. (Side note, loosely related: Harvey Weinstein, sensing victory in the air for The King's Speech and hence more money for the studio, is trying to edit the film to get a PG-13 so that more people will see it. Director Tom Hooper, for his part, has no intention of cutting anything, and his DGA plaque could give him some pull there. But they may add ... bleeps. *facepalm*)

The Oscars are a time capsule. They are, to paraphrase Amy Poehler's genius deadpanning at the SAGs, the opinion of a certain group of people at a certain time. The Academy is not five guys in a room somewhere, nor are they some all-ruling Taste Police. Was Rocky really the best film of 1976? I don't think so, but it caught the collective cultural consciousness that year in a big way even if history would grow more respect and affection for its stellar competitors Taxi Driver, Network, and All the President's Men. Was Titanic really a better film than L.A. Confidential and Good Will Hunting in 2007? I say no to L.A. Confidential, actually, unless you cut out that bullshit ending, but who cares, really? Loads of people (not just Leo fangirls but people in the industry) LOVED that movie. Personally, I really love that the Academy so often votes with its 6000 or so hearts rather than with its heads.

I do think there's something to Matt Damon's old suggestion that you really can't properly appraise a film's merits until it's at least 10 years old (though I disagree that we should wait that long to give awards). But hey, let's try it. Let's take a look at what was up for Best Picture 10 years ago...

Chocolat
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Erin Brockovich
Gladiator
Traffic

Dudes, I love Chocolat as much as the next red-blooded gal, but it had no place on that list. Nor did Erin Brockovich, if you ask me. Of course, if we were really doing this proper, those same five films would probably not be the final five in contention now. So let's look at some of the notable films that might or might not make that list if we were to make it today.

Almost Famous
American Psycho
Amores Perros
Battle Royale
Before Night Falls
Best in Show
Billy Elliot
Chicken Run
Croupier
Dancer in the Dark
In the Mood for Love
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Memento
Nurse Betty
O Brother, Where Art Thou
Quills
Requiem for a Dream
Sexy Beast
Unbreakable
Wonder Boys
You Can Count on Me
Sunshine

At a glance, I see at least a few among those titles that might get in due to their directors having done excellent work over the last decade and bringing new appreciation to their 2000 films. Specifically, I see the films of two current Best Director nominees, Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky) and O Brother, Where Art Thou (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen). Plus a third film by a director many feel should have been in that mix this year - Memento (Christopher Nolan). Two of those three could respectably replace Chocolat and Erin Brockovich in a list of 5, and if we're going for 10, let's throw in all three. Billy Elliot should probably be in there too (its director, on the other hand, probably wouldn't be in the Directing slate if we were doing this now). I'd round the 10 out with Almost Famous, Quills, and Wonder Boys. But that's just me. Those movies have, I think, stood the test of time and people enjoy and respect them as much as, if not more than, they did during the films' original releases.

I'd better not go further than that, because man, can you imagine how different the movie business would be if we waited that long to give out awards for a particular year? Not just to movies but to actors and craftspeople as well? I mean, you could stage a comeback off an "Oscar bump." That is, if the Oscars still had as much prestige and pressure around them if they were ten years behind the times.

But then again, I kind of like the way it is now, being able to look back over Oscar history and see, with pleasure or regret, the films that were loved and revered at the time. It's certainly nice to have your affection for a film validated by an award show like the Oscars. I mean, who among us LOTR wonks could forget the anxiety and excitement that accompanied the 2003 Middle Earth Oscar ceremony (and the subsequent laying down of crowbars after Return of the King's clean sweep)? But the films we love should be the films we love, regardless of what some voting body declares is awards-worthy.

One of my favorite things to read between last year's Oscar season and this one has been a column called "Life Without Oscar," also on InContention.com. Chad Hartigan went through each Oscar year and picked one film that didn't receive a single nomination and highlighted it as an example that the Oscars are not the be-all and end-all of what a great movie is. There's a good deal of snooty arthouse fare among his posts, but there's also "Kindergarten Cop" and "What's Up, Doc" - just to give you a feel of the range of titles. :P

Not that it matters, since I don't get to vote on the Oscars, but my Best Picture pick of the ten nominees THIS year would be Black Swan, with Aronofsky as Best Director. Obviously, I always knew there'd be no way in hell my FAVORITE movie of the year would be in the race, even with ten nominees. :P But hey, you love what you love. Don't let any stupid critics or award shows (or me, of course) tell you what's worth admiring.

Unless what you love and admire is Twilight, in which case ... I don't even.

Seriously, Oscars?

Oscar nominees told to prepare two speeches. Producers are suggesting that people use their 45 seconds on stage to talk about what winning means to them and save their specific "thank you"s for backstage, where they can record another speech on the Academy's Thank-You Cam, videos from which will go up on the Oscars website.

First of all, it's a bit presumptuous to tell people what they can and can't do with their time on stage. I say as long as they don't streak like Robert Opal in '73, they should be able to do whatever the hell they want. It's THEIR NIGHT, for crying out loud!

The second thing that's wrong with that is that the whole point of thanking individuals in your speech is THAT IT'S GOING OUT TO A WORLDWIDE AUDIENCE. No one cares about the clips on the website, unless they're clips of something you missed that actually happened on the broadcast. When Meryl Streep won in 1983 for Sophie's Choice, she said "I have a lot of people to thank, and I'm going to be one of those people who mentions a lot of names. Because I know that two seconds ago my mother and father went completely berserk, and I'd like to give some other mothers and fathers that opportunity." I don't care if it's boring. I would MUCH rather hear someone speak genuinely to at least some of the people who are responsible for them being up there than to blather on about themselves as if it's all their doing.

They give a similar admonition about laundry lists of names most years, and I'm pretty sure it's been several years since anyone - aside from the tech people who are not writers or actors and should not be expected to burst forth rhapsodic up there in front of Jack Nicholson and everybody - actually did one of those. I hope at least one of the winners this year, though, draws attention to how wrong it is to ask someone to cater their speech to the damned television audience.

Look, I think anyone who has watched the Oscars more than once knows that the ceremony is going to be four hours long. It just is. Sometimes you get a three-and-a-halfer, but that's lucky. So stop acting like the world's most self-congratulatory award show is really about all those shlubs watching at home with their box of wine. That's disingenuous, to say the least. And it's a slippery slope when you only allow certain people to be recognized on television. I fear that by the time I get to go to the Oscars, the writing awards will be relegated to the non-televised portion because they're boring.

Speaking of "boring," though ... who needs all these silly suggestions when you can just bring out Will Ferrell and Jack Black to drown out the droners? ;-)

Dear Oscar pundit whiners

Why, oh why, do you continually complain about how predictable an Oscar race is? Your job, ESPECIALLY if you work for a site that focuses on the Oscars, is to look at all the factors that go into who gets nominated and who wins in the attempt to figure this out in advance. To make educated guesses in the hopes of being vindicated by the results.

No one reads your Oscar predictions because they want to know what you think SHOULD happen. They want to know what you think WILL happen. If someone truly wants to be surprised by nominations and winners, I'd suggest they not follow the race too closely. The Oscars are just like anything else - the more you know, the more you investigate, the less likely you are to get something you're not expecting. Someone who doesn't obsessively follow all the critics and guild awards has no idea what to expect on February 2, much less March 7 (nomination day and awards night, respectively, for you Oscar non-wonks who might be reading). Many of these people love following the Oscars and the nominations, just not the now exhaustive lineup of precursor awards.

I've been an avid follower of the Oscars since 1991. Since 1995, I've either been up watching the announcements live or (more recently, as websites got faster about putting them up) refreshing my internet browser to see the Golden Globe and Oscar noms as soon as they become public. Since those early years, I've become more in tune with things like momentum and backlash and overhype and all the ingredients, political and precursory, that go into those lists of nominees and winners. Yet instead of bemoaning predictability, I feel a nice sense of calm going into the awards season, having gained through the course of the long prediction game a fairly balanced, realistic look at what might actually happen, as opposed to pinning all my hopes on something that doesn't have the odds in its favor. I don't know if this is why other people follow such things, but it's why I do.

It frustrates, nay, angers me to see posts like this, and the comments that go with them, complaining about how "safe" the guild choices (or whatever we're whining about this week) are. The whole reason you look at something like the Directors Guild nominees is because you want to know/confirm - especially in this possibly less predictable Year Of The Ten - who the frontrunners are for Director and Picture Oscars. Right? It's not an earnest and singular curiousity about this body's opinion, completely divorced from its place in the Oscar race. If it were, you wouldn't be yammering about all the "frontrunners" who were deemed ineligible for the Writers Guild awards. You can look forward to the unpredictability of the WGAs all you want, but you know as well as anyone else that the absence of so many of the established frontrunners makes it fairly useless as a tool for predicting the Oscars.

So yeah, the DGA went with what you already guessed were the "frontrunners." Go you! You're one step closer to having been right about Oscar night! Yet instead of being happy about this, you moan about the predictability of the race.

Sweethearts, if you don't like predictability, you should really get out of the predicting business. Because, again like many things, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Excuse me if I don't pat you on the head and say "Poor thing" for doing exactly what I expect you to do when I read your articles.

And now The Brood is being remade?

I know hating on remakes is a popular pastime, but fer cryin' out loud. The Brood? REALLY? I hate to break it to the guy at FilmJunk - especially as there's like zero chance he'll ever see this - but just because supposedly not a lot of people have seen the original does not give a good excuse to remake one of the few truly original films left that hasn't been defiled by the Remake Machine.

Yes, remakes can be good, but I think we all know that good remakes are the exception to the rule. For every Cape Fear there's at least a dozen pieces of caca like the 2006 Wicker Man. And, as is pointed out in the article, it's getting so that someone can actually make their entire career out of nothing but remaking other people's films. I guess that's good enough for some people, but I can't imagine being creatively satisfied by such work. Rather like spending your whole life as an Elvis impersonator.

If you like horror movies, you should do yourself the favor of seeking out David Cronenberg's original 1979 film The Brood. It's one of his early films, but one that (along with Rabid and his first feature Shivers) established him as the king of "body horror." The concept is like nothing you've ever seen, the camera work stunning, and the infamous birth scene one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. I mean, "ewwwww!" with a capital "gaaaaaaah!"

The director attached is Breck Eisner, son of former Disney chief Michael, and the only major film he's made is the McConaughey vehicle Sahara (not to EVER be confused with the amazing 1943 WW2 film Sahara, starring Humphrey Bogart). And he directed the yet-to-be-released The Crazies, yet another remake of a horror classic by a horror maestro. So yeah, I might have a leg dangling over on the side of optimism, but the rest of me is in the "Why, God, why?!" camp.

Critics, I am putting you On Notice

That goes for you too, compiler of Entertainment Weekly's "Must List." Please, please do not use the word "Oscar" about any film or performance before the month of December. You guys are supposed to be the ones who understand how it works better than we plebes, and you're showing a SHOCKING amount of gullibility, which many of you do HABITUALLY at this time of year and into September, when the first wave of award-bait pictures washes over us all.


Let me tell you a story. I have a worn out VHS tape of Bravo network's "100 Scariest Movie Moments." I watch it way too much, and I've grown weary of the old commercials that I have to fast-forward through. Celebrity Poker Showdown ... Bravo's own "Why We Love TV" Reunion Week ... that horrible Hummer commercial where a clay-Godzilla-type monster mates with a robot and has a Hummer carbaby. But perhaps the most annoying commercial is for a film called Shopgirl that was coming out at the time. Claire Danes, Steve Martin (who'd written the novella on which the movie was based), Jason Schwartzman. I've never seen this film, possibly because of this commercial. There were all kinds of accolades listed for the movie, but the big one was about Danes, saying "She'll be hard to beat at Oscar time."

"Dude, where's my Oscar?"

Know what's wrong with that? October, when this movie was coming out and this comment being made (and for all I know, and I can't be arsed to look up when exactly this comment was published, the critic was seeing the movie weeks, perhaps months, ahead of time) is not Oscar time. It's not even when the studios trot out the films they really intend to push at the real Oscar time. I hardly need add that Claire Danes' performance, while I'm sure it was quite good, not only did not go on to win an Oscar, it was not even distinguished with a nomination. (I hope no one thinks, by the way, that I believe Oscar wins and nominations are actual indicators of a film's or an actor's/performance's worth. They absolutely are not. I'm just saying "she'll be hard to beat" is kind of an embarrassing comment to have made about a performance that turned out to be apparently quite easy to beat.)

The "100 scariest" tape goes into heavy rotation every year during the month of October, which happens to be when a lot of TV spots for award-bait movies air, most of them with at least one quote from a serious, respected critic who proclaims it or some actor's performance to be "the one to beat." I don't expect to hear such piffle this early in the year, but I've already heard it about one performance this year (funnily enough, regarding Claire Danes' fiance Hugh Dancy). And as I picked up my copy of this week's Entertainment Weekly, I turned to the "Must List" to find Meryl Streep in the number one spot for her charming turn as Julia Child in Julie & Julia. I smiled, having just seen the film myself, until I read the blurb and these famous last words - "It's her Oscar to lose." I rolled my eyes, even though, being Meryl Streep, she tends to be the exception to the rule, and even though she's on my own shortlist of Oscar contenders. But my list has only just begun; there are tons - TONS - of movies coming out in the next five months with doubtless hundreds of excellent performances in them. And while attaching the word "Oscar" to a review or a comment no doubt sells tickets, it also contributes to getting people - those who care about such things anyway - invested in them coming true.

This is something that I feel seasoned critics and industry insiders should already know, without a newb like me having to tell them, but apparently this is a lesson that needs learnin', and if no one else will step up, I will. Calm the heck down, people! There's plenty of time to make boneheaded and sure-to-be-shafted predictions after we've seen all the movies 2009 has to offer.