And I’m still depressed, even though it’s been two days since I read the article.
It was in Sunday’s New York Times and it was film critic Manohla Dargis’ take on the fact that women are a disappearing breed in the movies nowadays and that they’ll be even more invisible this summer. Although I know Dargis is right and I spend way too much time bemoaning the scarcity of women on the big screen, it still bummed me out to read her piece.
For example, her first paragraph:
“If you’re a woman who roared, snorted or sniggered at “Bridesmaids,” if you like watching other women on screen, you should see it again. Because that hit comedy written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, turns out to be one of the few occasions this summer when you can enjoy a movie about and with women released by a major studio.”
What does this all mean for screen adaptations of my novels? Nothing good. I’ve been told by any number of “industry people” that rom coms are over, that movies for women must be raunchy like “Bridesmaids” or they won’t get made, that stories about women don’t sell overseas, that women will go to see men in films but men won’t go to see women.
How did we get here? And more importantly, how do we get out of here? I loved Nora Ephron’s movies and I could watch appealing actresses fall in and out of love with the men of their dreams every night of the week. Am I a disappearing breed too?
