I’m not going to write another think piece about The Interview. But you’ve heard the rallying cry from comedians and bloggers and critics and journalists by now. Their point being: don’t let the terrorists keep a dumb (if a bit subversive) comedy from the masses because you’re being threatened by hackers. I see the importance of freedom of expression. What I also see is a giant massive protest online. Great, all for it. How I wish that the same outrage was directed at how the Sony hack showed the lengthy and systematic sexism that pervades Hollywood. Look, Seth Rogan/James Franco movies will live on. There will be fifty or so made. Hordes will flock to theaters. Money will still be made. No worries on that front.
The movie’s reviews are in the same realm as Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, currently sitting at 50%, just like this movie. One will likely go on to be a Best Picture nominee and the other will be adopted as a banner of American freedom. Anus and awkward gay jokes for ever!
But Robbie Collin over at the Telegraph did actually look more closely at what Aaron Sorkin told Maureen Dowd in a private email correspondence that has now been made news. While my own thoughts are this are that we shouldn’t be writing about what has been stolen and released to the public. We certainly shouldn’t be showing the hackers just how much damage they can do by hacking and releasing emails, which our media has gladly dived into. Pay inequality? Fuck that, let’s talk about what Scott Rudin said about Angelina Jolie. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams got lower points than Jeremy Renner on American Hustle when the women were THE ONLY REASON ANYONE SAW THAT MOVIE. But nowhere near as juicy as racially insensitive jokes by Rudin and Pascal.
On the other hand, now that it is news it’s fair game to talk about.
Sorkin essentially says that men act circles around women, that Natalie Portman’s acting in Black Swan was so much easier than what Colin Firth did in The King’s Speech. So, first, apples and oranges. Secondly, why not cite an actress who played a royal instead? Like Helen Mirren (whom he does go on later to call one of the only really good actresses working) in The Queen? But either way, calling what Natalie Portman did in Black Swan easier than looking sad and adopting a stutter is beyond insulting and into the realm of the super stupid. She did the lose weight and transform your body thing. She did the study ballet and mostly learn how to dance thing. She was captivating, ugly, dark – she deserved that Oscar by giving the far more daring, challenging performance.
But let’s set that to the side for a moment and talk about why women don’t get the same chances as men in film. Sorkin makes good points when he says:
“[Y]ear in and year out, the guy who wins the Oscar for Best Actor has a much higher bar to clear than the woman who wins Best Actress,” he wrote. “Cate [Blanchett] gave a terrific performance in Blue Jasmine but nothing close to the degree of difficulty for any of the five Best Actor nominees. Daniel Day-Lewis had to give the performance he gave in Lincoln to win – Jennifer Lawrence won for Silver Linings Playbook, in which she did what a professional actress is supposed to be able to do.”
And:
“Sandra Bullock won for The Blind Side and Al Pacino lost for both Godfather movies,” he continued. “Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep can play with the boys but there just aren’t that many tour-de-force roles out there for women.”
And again, he’s right. There is a huge amount of hypocrisy here, however, because what he isn’t getting is that the reason women win for roles like Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook is that the majority of the voters are STRAIGHT MEN. This includes critics, the industry votes and the Academy. The Screen Actors Guild is the only one of the majors that has a formidable population of women voters.
Meryl Streep redefined what actresses could do the same way Robert De Niro did for actors. Transformation was the key and Streep was and is a master at it. Any time you have her nominated you know she brought it. Therefore anyone who wins against her hardly ever deserves it. Ironically, she won her second lead actress Oscar for a role that wasn’t anywhere near her best. She continues to do great work and is the gold standard for actresses. That so many of them have been inspired by her is really why things changed for actresses in the 1980s.
The list of actresses who prove Sorkin wrong (taking out Streep from the equation) – * means they didn’t win the Oscar:
Viven Leigh, A Streetcar Named Desire
Bette Davis, All About Eve*
Bette Davis, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane*
Katharine Hepburn, Long Day’s Journey into Night*
Lee Remick, The Days of Wine and Roses*
Elizabeth Taylor, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Audrey Hepburn, Wait Until Dark*
Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde*
Liza Minnelli, Cabaret
Cicely Tyson, Sounder*
Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ann-Marget, Tommy*
Faye Dunaway, Network
Sissy Spacek, Carrie*
Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the Influence*
Jodie Foster, The Accused
Kathy Bates in Misery
Holly Hunter in The Piano
Angela Bassett, What’s Love Got to Do with It*
Jodie Foster, Nell*
Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking
Frances McDormand in Fargo
Emily Watson for Breaking the Waves*
Judi Dench, Mrs. Brown*
Judi Dench, Iris*
Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry
Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth*
Annette Bening, American Beauty*
Charlize Theron in Monster
Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine
These are a few of the standouts that I think prove Sorkin wrong about women overall.
But I do think he’s mostly right in terms of the kinds of roles women are given. However, Sorkin is not just part of the problem – he IS the problem. His dominance, his writing and his refusal to invest in women as actual people is the problem.
Sorkin’s female characters are always pretty, feminine and mostly well behaved, with just enough spark to be really fuckable and interesting. Well-behaved women seldom make history and well-behaved women can’t turn themselves inside out to show you what real acting is. We’re all too invested in their being perfect and pretty and above all NICE. Just look at how Julianne Moore’s masterful performance in Maps to the Stars is being rejected and her so much nicer and more digestible work in Still Alice is being embraced. By the way, both are magnificent awards-worthy performances. Just noting how we see women versus how we see men.
But to get performances on the level of what he’s talking about, none of those qualities can apply. But Collin really delivers this best in quoting McCarthy:
Don’t take my white, heterosexual male word for it. When I interviewed Melissa McCarthy last year, here’s what she told me: “At some point in the past it was decided that women in comedy are never supposed to be shown in an unflattering light. But in comedy you need all of your tools to be funny.
“You need to be able to look ugly, and act ugly, and be an a——, and then come grovelling back. So when actresses are cleaned up to the point that they look perfect, and dress perfect, and never act inappropriately, and never say the wrong thing, you’ve taken away every tool they have.
“And then they’re told: ‘And now be funny.’ Well, no wonder so many comic roles for women are just a wife standing there with her hands on her hips and sighing ‘Oh, Jim’. What else can you do? You have no personality left.”
The same holds for drama. Sorkin must surely realize there are more than enough great actresses in the business. He – and his fellow Hollywood scriptwriters – just have to allow them to be great.
We are fast becoming a culture that dumbs everything down to what PG-13 oriented young males will like. That isn’t the majority of ticket buyers but it is how we’ve conditioned those ticket buyers. Do we even allow for the Bette Davis’ anymore? Look at all of the ambitious young filmmakers in this year’s Oscar race. Is there a one of them who even thought about writing a film about a sick and fucked-up woman like there are sick and fucked-up men? Not a chance in hell unless your name is David Fincher or Gillian Flynn.
Sorkin is someone whose mind can be changed, I think. If he and others can only start to think about women as whole humans capable of everything from being the head anchor on a network news show to being a nightcrawler digging up dirty news, to being a young drummer who wants to be great. We are counting on the Sorkins of Hollywood to help open those doors.