Why are there so few female movie directors and why do their careers seem to have so little momentum?
Last night a friend and I stood in the 7th Avenue subway station in front of the token booth discussing this. I hate the conclusions we came up with which were about the really disgusting Hollywood boy's club, about how most movies are geared towards little boys, about how one box office disappointment (I mean disappointment, not disaster) will kill a female director's career flat*, about the Sofia Coppola exception (more to follow on this below), and on and on. It's all very dispiriting.
Far fewer women go into directing film than men. It's a much more complicated prospect. Whose career to emulate? Who would I like to be? There are so few women, and almost no American woman to look to to see how it was done before. I mean who wants to be a pioneer? It totally sucks having to justify your very existence within an industry that clearly doesn't want you there. Maybe I'm wrong, and please post comments if you think so. Through this and subsequent posts I will create a list of female directors, with some discussion of their careers. One more sweeping generalization before I begin listing: no female director has ever, or could ever in the current climate weather the various non-performing movies, egotastic lunacies, creepy scandals and drug fueled shenanigans of some of our most respected male film directors. For example. Women simply cannot afford to fuck up.
The List, Part 1: Oscar Nominees
Sofia Coppola: The only American woman EVER to be nominated for an Academy Award for directing a film, and is only the third woman to be nominated. Look. I love her movies. From her short "Lick the Star" through the problematic but still worthwhile Marie Antoinette, she is making truly interesting films. But, she is also the great exception as she has the weight of the film establishment behind her in a way that cannot be matched by any other woman working in US filmmaking today or possibly ever. The executive producer credit on each of her three features is her father, Francis Ford Coppola. I want to be really clear. The happy circumstance of her birth did not make her movies good. I particularly want to give a shout out to her adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, a nearly unfilmable tone poem of a book, which is absolutely pitch perfect. The fact of who her father is, and the power he wields within the industry got her movies made, which of course is step one to becoming a legend.
Jane Campion: Full disclosure- I HATED The Piano for which she was the second woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Direction. Moving on. She's had a really great career that seems to have faltered recently. Angel at My Table is fantastic (based on Janet Frame's three autobiographies, which knocked my brain out of the back of my head when I read them), Sweetie is a great suburban gothic, lot's of people liked The Piano although it did not work for me, Holy Smoke I have not yet seen, and In The Cut was a disaster. To me, this is a really solid career. She has a film about Keats in the pipeline, which is kind of worrisome.
Lina Wertmuller: I'm in really dicey territory here, as I (embarrassingly enough) have never seen one of her films. She got her start as Fellini's assistant director on 8 1/2. She directed the original version of Swept Away (i.e. not the Madonna one). Was a communist and a feminist. She directed her latest film in 2004 when she was 78 years old. She sounds super awesome, actually, and I'm sure she benefitted from never having to work in Hollywood where lefty feminists have traditionally not fared very well (the Streisand exception will be in a later post).
To be continued!
* After Waterworld, that douchebag Costner was allowed to make The Postman, possibly the worst movie ever made.
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