F-centricity

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

The other day, I inadvertently provoked a little tussle between the producer Christine Vachon (Poison, Safe, Kids, Boys Don’t Cry, One Hour Photo, I’m Not There, Cairo Time), and the writer/director Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know and the soon-to-be-released The Future). It was at the San Francisco International Film Festival, during the Q & A after Vachon had delivered the annual State of Cinema address.*

Vachon, who I had been peripherally acquainted with back when she was producing, and I was writing articles about, Todd Haynes and Tom Kalin’s first films, had come to the festival fresh from producing the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, also directed by Todd Haynes. She was quite upbeat about her first experience working in television, and aptly optimistic about all the new platforms filmmakers are exploiting these days, even saying at one point, “The name of this address should be The State of Cinema is Not Necessarily Taking Place in the Cinema.”

I was expecting her to speak to these changes and had specifically come to hear her perspective on them. But among her ruminations on the subject, she offered one view that I was not expecting.

Recounting the origins of Mildred Pierce, she said, “When [Todd] finished I’m Not There, we had a discussion about what he was going to do next. I said, ‘You know what, Todd, maybe you should think about doing something for TV.’ Because I knew he was probably going to want to make a female-centric story, and I knew how hard that would be to do theatrically.”

That last sentence landed on me with a jarring dissonance. Had she said, “I knew he was going to want to make,” for example, an experimental film or an art documentary, or a radical polemic on American foreign policy, and then followed it with, “and I knew how hard that would be to do theatrically,” I would have thought little of it. But to hear her say “female-centric story” took me by surprise.

So, a little later, when the opportunity presented itself, I raised my hand. “You said earlier that you knew making a female-centric story would be pretty challenging theatrically, which is kind of a sad comment on the state of cinema today . . . “

She interjected, “Or a positive comment on the state of television today.”

“Could you say more on this topic from your experience and perspective in the industry?” I asked.

“Making female driven films is tough,” she said. “So what’s happening more and more is people are turning to TV. Look, TV is a lot less risk averse in so many ways. For content that is driven by women, particularly women in their 30s or 40s, I have a hard time as a film producer figuring out how to get those movies made theatrically. I don’t know what else to say about it. Theatrically, those films are difficult to make. On Television, they are not only not as difficult, but they get embraced. It’s where people go to see those stories. And why is that bad?”

I was disappointed by her answer. I certainly share her delight at seeing more female-centric stories being embraced by the TV industry, but I was kind of hoping to hear her share my concern about writers and directors finding their female-centric stories largely shut out of wide theatrical distribution. That’s what she means when she says those films are too hard to make theatrically. They are too hard to get financed because there is so little prospect of a wide release. And that’s what she means when she refers to the theatrical industry being risk averse. Female-centric stories are considered too great a risk to put money behind.

The difficulty of getting women’s stories produced is pretty well known in the film industry by now. I didn’t need her to educate me on that point. I asked the question because it sounded to me like she had declared them dead altogether. And I couldn’t just let that go by. I guess I would have liked to hear some personal ire at their unjust death, or at least be extended some words of comfort about their passing, or perhaps even a little hope that they might someday rise again. But apparently she’s not that sentimental. They’re dead. Let’s move on to greener pastures.

About three or four questions later, as I sat in my aisle seat, elbow on the armrest, chin on my palm, cheek mashed into my knuckles, I heard a female voice coming from the back of the theater way on the other side. “I just have to respond,” she began, “to the woman who asked about the difficulty of making woman-driven movies and your response saying especially those movies about women 30 to 40 years old.” My guardian angel had alighted.

“As a 37-year-old filmmaker whose movie is playing right now just up the street,” she went on, “I get it about being nimble and going where it’s actually possible to go. But when you say what’s bad about that, I do think there’s something bad about it. That’s such a disheartening answer for her. And it’s not a good thing. I mean it’s good that TV is supporting these stories. But there’s a lot that’s bad about [not having these films in theaters].”

I found out later that this 37-year-old filmmaker was Miranda July, who made an extremely respectable theatrical showing with her first feature Me and You and Everyone We Know and is now gaining significant attention for her second outing The Future, which I knew was playing at the festival. When I checked the schedule, I saw that, indeed, her film was showing exactly during the time of Vachon’s talk.

Vachon must have realized this was July speaking because she responded with respect, while also sticking to her position. “I’m not sure that I agree with you. Honestly, I feel like I’ve made a tremendous number of female driven stories and I’ve always figured out ways to make them and get them to the public. Look, I think nostalgia is the most dangerous emotion in the world. I really do. And I think nostalgia for a certain kind of filmmaking and distribution . . . “

July swooped down on this, “I’m not talking about the medium changing. I’m talking about the woman part of it.”

Then, like two celestial beings speaking over my head, Vachon countered with a comforting note. “Why not just focus on what is possible?” she said. “I don’t think it’s a bad time at all. Look at cable television right now. It’s pretty much all women-driven stories — Weeds and United States of Tara and Nurse Jackie and The C Word and all that stuff. It’s all female stories. That’s pretty amazing.”

July didn’t pursue the discussion further, perhaps out of her knowledge of how dog-on-a-bone persistent producers can be. Besides, her point had been made.

Producers are put on this earth to be nothing if not pragmatic. It is exactly that quality that makes them a good creative mate for a director, who is put on this earth to be visionary. Only by consummating producer pragmatism with director vision will a squirming, squalling beautiful new film ever be birthed.

Nonetheless, I’d like to call for a moment of silence to commemorate the death of the female-centric theatrically released film. While I am happy to be watching female-centric stories on the small screen at home, I still love the big screen movie-going experience, too. To have to accept dwindling opportunities to see them when I engage in that time-honored social ritual . . . well . . . I just hope it doesn’t stay that way. A moment of silence, please.

[An appropriately respectful moment passes.]

All together now:

Long live female-centric theatrically released films!

*******

* To hear a podcast of Christine Vachon’s State of Cinema address in its entirety, go to http://fest11.sffs.org.