Warner Bros diktat: no more female leads

[Book Lover]

(this is the whole of the article, fyi. link included for reference)

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/warners-robinoff-gets-in-catfight-with-girls/

This comes to me from three different producers, so I know it's real: Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead". This Neanderthal thinking comes after both Jodie Foster's The Brave One (even though she's had big recent hits with Flightplan and Panic Room) and Nicole Kidman's The Invasion (as if three different directors didn't have something to do with the awfulness of the gross receipts) under-performed at the box office recently. "Can you imagine when Gloria Allred gets hold of this? It's going to be like World War III," one producer just told me. (I put in a call to Glo, who comments below.) Of course, Warner Bros has always been male-centric in its movies. But now the official policy as expressly articulated by Robinov is that a male has to be the lead of every pic made. I'm told he doesn't even want to see a script with a woman in the primary position (which now is apparently missionary at WB). Oh yeah, the fact that so many Warner Bros movies have been sucking at the box office for the last two years is all the fault of females. (Then again, Robinoff's poorly performing Superman Returns was criticized for its girlie-man portrayal of the superhero.) As regular readers of my own box office reports know, chick flicks haven't been doing well at the box office lately. But Robinov's statements aren't about women's movies as a genre, they're anti Hollywood actresses. Besides, neither The Brave One nor The Invasion were classic chick flicks, either. "It's a phenomenal thing to say. What are we in the 1700s where women are back to being barefoot and pregnant?" a producer railed. "What's next -- fire all the Warner Bros women executives?"

UPDATE: Noted women's rights attorney Gloria Allred just gave me this statement in response to what I've posted above: "If that's what he said, when movies with men as the lead fail, no one says we'll stop making movies with men in the lead. This is an insult to all moviegoers and particularly women. It is truly unfortunate that women get blamed for decisions which are made by men. Instead of taking responsibility for their own lack of judgment about which scripts to make, directors to hire and budgets to OK, some men in the movie industry find it easier to place blame for their lack of success on women leads and to exclude talented female actors from the top employment opportunities in Hollywood in favor of macho males. If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros."


edit: removed jpg text

[aquart]

1. Robinov ain't that bright, is he?

[tomreedtoon]

2. It's Hollywood "thinking." It'll change in a few months.

Remember how Disney said cel (hand-drawn) animation was dead? And then a bunch of cel-animated features won Oscars?

Remember how movies with black leads were anathema? And look at the box office posters now.

This is Hollywood Thinking. It works for about six months...and then, someone produces a movie that contradicts the "new reality" and becomes a success, and that idea gets abandoned.

Hollywood Thinking makes Bush Thinking look good by comparison.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. Screw Hollywood.

I haven't seen a mainstream movie in I don't know how many months. With so many good indie films out there, why bother?

[Warpy]

10. Agreed! Hollywood produces trash for mass consumption

by total morons under the age of 25. It's like candy, fun for a bit and absolutely nothing to provide nourishment.

Real film comes from indies and from overseas.

Hollywood might redeem itself at some point if it rediscovers actual dialogue. Of course, that might mean spending money on actual writers.

[Katherine Brengle]

4. Men already account for something like 70% of all television and movie characters --

him saying it out loud is disgusting, but this has been going on forever.

[Nobody]

5. I've been playing "Count the Females" since I was a teenager

It has to be a damn good movie to get me so involved in the story that I forget to play.

This game is how I noticed that the first Star Wars movie had exactly two female characters in the entire flick. You know about Leia, but the other one barely had any screen time at all.

Ice Age has all of the animals except the pathetic love-sick critter be males. I mentioned to the friend that recommended it that I expected that all life on Earth would go extinct in one generation. The only female human died, the baby was male, all the humans they met up with to give the baby back to were male.

Dark City's aliens were all corpses dug up so they could have physical bodies. Why were they all male? Look carefully at the crowd scene and they're all male, every last one of them. How could the aliens be so sure of getting a male corpse each time? I know women live longer than men, but this is ridiculous.

There are countless shows in which there is one woman at the top and no women in the middle ranks or the bottom ranks of the same organization. Dungeons and Dragons movie (the queen is a mage, no other mages are female), Flash Gordon has a General Kala and no female lower ranking soldiers, and in the Lord of the Rings trilogy there is Eowyn who is a formidable warrior. If she's a warrior, there should be other women warriors, too, and they shouldn't be stuck below ground during the all or nothing battle at Helm's Deep. And how many crowd scenes with only males in shows like Babylon 5 and Star Trek.

Yes I've noticed all this without even trying. I've even been trying NOT to play Count the Females, but this is so ingrained and automatic that I can't help but notice.

Movies that are ahead of their time include many James Bond flicks. Yes the women are often scantily clad, but more often than that they're dressed to the nines and occupying important positions in their organizations. Pussy Galore led an all-female squadron of pilots (Goldfinger) and there were two women in Octopussy who could be termed villains, one had a connection with Bond that led her to help him and she leads a group of formidable women good at unarmed combat, the other is an unredeemed assassin who gets a "Before I kill you Mr. Bond..." moment.

300 had only one woman, but when a man made the classic accusation of slut, he wasn't automatically believed. She drew HIS sword and killed him. By the way, historically the Spartans valued women far more than did the ancient Athenians. Go Sparta!

Aliens 4 starring Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder had not two but THREE women in strong roles that included a lot of screen time. There were also a lot of male characters, too, in fact they still outnumbered the women. But the fact that the "Rule of Two" was violated by having three women in the ensemble cast drove some people I know to describe Aliens 4 as a chick flick. Go figure.

Let's just say that before I see a Warner's Brothers flick, I'll play Count the Females on IMDB and no females appear in any of the top three spots on the cast list, I will see something else. I have only so much time and money to spend in the movie theater.

[Katherine Brengle]

7. Now I'm not going to be able to help doing that.

[Captain Hilts]

12. I'm actually a Big Fan of Pussy Galore. She was great! They should have had a series starring her!

[Love Bug]

14. I agree with most of what you've said, but I take exception with your comments

about Babylon 5. Ivanova. Delenn. Talia Winters. Na'Toth, Lyta Alexander. Captain Lochley. Number One. All strong female characters who's primary purpose was not just eye-candy (I'm assuming Na'Toth would be Narn eye-candy!) while the men did all the work. There were some strong female one-off characters, too like Catherine Sakai (Sinclair's girlfriend and independent miner), Dodger (GROPOS and Day of the Dead), and President Luchenko.

There were many females playing aliens and there were always females in the backgrounds, whether in the Zocalo, Downbelow, Medlab or in C&C.

The major female characters of Babylon 5 aren't primarily in nurturing roles (not that there's anything wrong with that). They are warriors, politicians and leaders who play key roles in their universe's conflicts.

Other than that, I agree with you! :7

[Donald Ian Rankin]

15. A few thoughts.

:-I think the basic point - that women are not merely underepresented, but massively underepresented, in movies, is a good one.

:-I could write an entire essay about why there aren't more women warriors in LotR, and why from an artistic point of view that's actually necessary, but I won't.

:-What I find really striking is not the small number of women in action movies - those are aimed almost purely at men, after all - but how few, and how bland, the roles for women in comedies are. Nearly all Hollywood comedies are told from a male point of view, and most female characters in them are either love interests or running jokes.

:-Vide also children's movies, where male viewpoint characters form a large majority.

:-Despite much of what you'll read in this subforum, depicting violence against women is massively taboo - far more so than violence against men. That severely limits the number of minor roles for women - any character who is going to get beaten up on screen without intending to scandalise and horrify the audience is almost certain to be male. This, I suspect, explains your observations of zombies.

[Captain Hilts]

20. GOOD point about women in comedy. nt

[DemBones DemBones]

6. This is stupid and senseless -- oh, it's Hollywood.

I love old movies on TCM because there are more women in them and not just as ornaments. Lots of strong roles for women in the old days.

IFC also has a lot of good films. "Amelie" is a good one which will be on IFC at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Thursday. C'est en francais avec 'subtitles'

It is very sad that Hollywood continues to cast men as romantic leads until they're quite old but dumps most women completely when they turn 30, as if older women didn't have lives. Jane Fonda is the only one I can think of who was in films for decades.

The problem is probably that the movie-going demographics skew young and perhaps more male than female; certainly there are a lot of action flicks that don't have much appeal for women. ("The Long Kiss Goodbye" was an exception because the female lead, Geena Davis, played a very tough character and it was an exciting movie. They should make more action flicks of that caliber.)

[Scout]

8. may i make one small correction to your post?

i'm 90% sure that great Geena Davis movie was "The Long Kiss Goodnight"

[DemBones DemBones]

13. Thank you. You are correct. I always get

that title wrong. It just occurred to me that it's slightly similar to one of the Travis McGee titles by John D. MacDonald, "The Deep Blue Good-by." I've read all those books several times so maybe that's where I get it from, same number of words in each and "Goodnight" and "Good-by" are similar and are the last words in the titles.

It's a great movie, especially the first time when it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and maybe I'll remember the title after this. :reprogramming brain: :hippie:

[Katherine Brengle]

9. There was a short period where

strong woman characters were being written regularly, but it didn't last long.

[Captain Hilts]

11. Women don't support women's sports or movies.

There are verifiable, financial reasons male stars get paid more.

Sad, but true.

[Katherine Brengle]

17. Not sure what you mean by that.

If you mean that men have most of the money and therefore spend it on things that benefit them as a class, then yeah, I'd have to agree.

[Captain Hilts]

19. No, that's not what I meant at all. Women do not pay to see women play sports...

they pay to see men play sports.

And they prefer to watch men in films. This pattern goes back to the 1930s. The top stars are always men.

[iverglas]

21. "they"?

Quite the generalization there. I don't pay to see anyone play sports, myself ...


And they prefer to watch men in films. This pattern goes back to the 1930s. The top stars are always men.

And that explains Bette Davis, and her top billings, and her wildly successful movies ...

Here. Learn something new every day:

http://www.amazon.com/Complicated-Women-Power-Pre-Code-Hollywood/dp/0312284314

From Library Journal
Between 1929 and 1934, Hollywood was governed by a voluntary code of decency. During this period, women characters were often tough-talking, sexually aggressive, and independent. Under pressure from church and state decency groups, a code with enforcement powers was implemented in 1934. The effect of the 1934 code (which remained in effect until the late 1960s) has been hotly debated recently. LaSalle, film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, makes it clear what he thinks, blasting the code as a measure "to prevent women from having fun. It was designed to put the genie back in the bottle - and the wife back in the kitchen." He calls the code, as enforced by Joseph Breen, "anti-art," antiwoman, and anti-Semitic. However, LaSalle's main purpose is to celebrate the short-lived era of "complicated women," as personified by the early films of Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, and others. In particular, this book is an unabashed valentine to Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer. It features insights on significant scenes from precode films and evaluates some modern counterparts to the great ladies of the early 1930s. This book is more narrowly focused than other recent books on the subject - such as Thomas Doherty's Pre-Code Hollywood (LJ 7/99) and Mark A. Viera's Sin in Soft Focus (LJ 11/1/99) - and some may disagree with the author's conclusions, but it is recommended for large film and women's studies collections. - Stephen Rees, Levittown Regional Lib., PA

Maybe the problem just is that women don't get the opportunity to watch women in films doing much other than being generally weak and servile ... and, with the demise of the code, taking their clothes off and moaning a lot for men ...

[bjorkfan]

16. So much for "liberal" Hollywood....

For all the lip service Hollywood pays to progressive causes, they seldom put out a truly foward-thinking concept. How many average-looking or even ugly actresses (excluding the elderly - another ignored group) can you think of who get regular work, compared to ugly actors?

Television is the same. Think about all the hot wives and girlfriends with their dumpy husbands. Remember how much tail Woody Allen got in his movies? They would never have Camryn Manheim married to Jake Gyllenhaal.

[ismnotwasm]

18. Idiot.

I'm not a movie fan in general, but a good movie is a good movie (accounting for taste of course) No matter who is in the lead. Art aside, even If it's purely a money making proposition, this is as asinine a statement anyone could come out with. Not surprising, but asinine. How many stinkers have had male leads? We gonna quit putting men in because Costner can't sell outside of direct to cable?

How about better movies with decent parts for women? How about great movies with great parts for women? "Lead" doesn't always mean the movie is "good" or even watchable.