Hello, Film Geeks!

I am a USC film student and just about the biggest film and TV lover in the world. I usually see three movies per week in theaters and watch TV religiously. I obsess over Cannes, Sundance, the Oscars, and the Emmys, and write detailed rankings and reviews of every film I see each year. In short, I’m a film nerd. It is my absolute goal to become the Chairman/CEO of a major film studio or TV network in my lifetime. And I’m also female.

As a woman, I often feel overwhelmed knowing that the odds are stacked against me. Just this summer, I interned at a major talent agency where half of the assistants are female. (A good sign, I thought!) However, at the top, only one of the 12 partners is a woman. In fact, at every one of my internships, the CEO of the company has been male.

The findings of the Women’s Media Center’s 2014 report on women in film were especially troubling:  

• Women represent 28.8% of speaking characters in top grossing films.
• Only 6% of the top 100 films hired a balanced cast of women and men.
• In the 250 top-grossing films of 2013, women accounted for only 16% of all directors, EPs, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors.

It’s depressing.

Even worse, perhaps as a result of the lack of female executives, filmmakers, and writers, I find it difficult to relate to female characters in most of my favorite films and TV shows. Women are typically love interests, manic pixie dream girls, nagging wives, rape victims, or that quirky Zooey Deschanel-type who pretends to be relatable while clumsily falling over every two seconds. For every actress like Julianne Moore, Jessica Chastain, or Meryl Streep, there’s Sofia Vergara spinning around on a pedestal at the Emmys getting everyone to stare at her ass and then telling anyone who’s offended to lighten up.

My favorite directors (The Coens, Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Haneke, Tarantino), actors (Fassbender, Tom Hardy, Daniel Day-Lewis), and producers (The Weinsteins, Scott Rudin) are ALL male. And my favorite TV shows (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The Wire) star complex male antiheroes, while women only get the supporting roles in these great shows.

I’m sick of it. Even in reality TV (which I won’t even call a guilty pleasure, because I feel no shame in watching it), it’s harder for women to win competition shows like Survivor and Big Brother. Almost all of those winners are male due to unfair casting and challenges. It’s rigged.

So I’m writing this blog to vent and also to educate people. Hopefully, through my rambling, I can connect with like-minded people who also want this industry to improve its problematic portrayal of women in film and TV as well as the problematic lack of females working behind-the-scenes. Also, I hope to enlighten people unaware of these problems already and get them thinking about and engaged in the topic of women in film. Only through education will audiences demand that Hollywood change its practices.

I’ll also try to change it up every week. One week, I may want to analyze the role of women in a foreign film I’m obsessed with (my greatest passion will always be indie film), and the next week I may cover a studio blockbuster. One week, I may discuss a critically acclaimed series like True Detective from a feminist perspective, and the next I’ll examine The Real Housewives. I also want to focus on behind-the-scenes industry news (The Hollywood Reporteris my Bible), Oscar season (which officially starts this fall!), the Bechdel test, sexist movie advertising, and much more, so that I can analyze women in Hollywood in a variety of ways. 

And while there’s a lot for female film fans and aspiring female filmmakers to be upset about, there’s also a lot to celebrate. So, I will try to dedicate many of my blog posts to celebrating progress women are making in the industry (just think of the great work Megan Ellison, Sofia Coppola, Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, and Jane Campion are doing), as well as venting about what needs to improve.

Thanks for letting me ramble and I look forward to continuing my rambling as well as clarifying this crazy outpouring of emotion, name dropping, and film references over the next few months.

Finally, to quote the great Roger Ebert, I’ll see you at the movies! 

FEMINIST MOVIE/TV RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK: ORPHAN BLACK