Less than 30% of all speaking characters in the 100 top-grossing films are female. “If filmmakers just added five female speaking characters to their current slate of projects (without taking away or changing any of the male characters) and repeated the process for four years, we would be at parity.”
Year: 2014
Categories
Envy For The Music Biz
Maybe the grass is always greener, but lately that other side of the entertainment industry has been looking all sparkly and bright to me.
Okay, pushing the boulder up the hill is such an exhausting task, your mind can’t help but wander and consider maybe there are some upsides to letting it all crash and burn and then starting over. What happened when the music business flamed out? They didn’t die. Have they risen from the ashes, stronger and wiser, with new tools in their belt, a commitment to get it right this time?
Welcome to the game that everyone trying to make a movie wish they would never have to play but do: Unhealthy Obsessive Persistence and Unlikely Approval! (Applause) What do we have for our contestant behind Door #1… wait, Door #1 is locked? Then what’s behind Door #2? A brick wall you say? What about Door #3? It just revolves back to point A. Congratulations! You don’t win! (Audience moans) Adding insult to injury, I have to pay for my own craft service.
At times, working to get a project noticed appears to dip into pointlessness,
Staying relevant. It is a fear actors, directors, content creators, and to be honest, most human beings grapple with constantly. The more than half-century year-old Sunset Boulevard exemplified this fear in the delusional Gloria Swanson. And while I’m sure this obsession is a random extraneous facet of the greatly evolved human consciousness, it may be spin-off on our desire to survive.
This wasn’t part of Birdman. This was Emma Stone actually telling MK the truth.
Recently Jon Brooks at KQED wrote up a very nice piece on Tom Noonan’s WHAT HAPPENED WAS (1994). That film won multiple awards at Sundance but barely go seen. Unfortunately it does not sleep alone in my bed of barely seen almost-masterpieces. As strong as my track record may be, it still holds some flops, misfires, and damn bad luck experiences. It’s great that Tom’s flick may get some of the love it so richly deserves, albeit twenty years after it’s debut.
On my pleasure planet, Frank Grow‘s revolutionary LOVE GOD (1997) would have turned our business on its head.
If the best solution is the easiest solution, what takes us so long to do it? The film industry complains about piracy. But what do we do about it? If you want to find a movie available illegally, all you have to do is search for it. But what if you don’t want to have the artists or their supporters suffer? What if you want to make sure that they are compensated for the work they have created? How do you find the legal sites?
Now there is a solution. Finally…
You’ve given me the support I needed to go forth and try to get this done. Granted, I had enough support from the beginning to actually believe there was a chance I could not just make movies, but make good movies. That is a real gift, an advantage few have. Courage, faith — those things were there, but so was doubt and fear. Love and hate. The wolves in battle.
What if it didn’t work? And then when that was true, when it did stop working, or at least start to stop working for most, what made me think I could help build something better?
What gives us the strength to make big decisions? To change our path? To take on new burdens?
