Women at the Box Office This Weekend

New to NY and LA this weekend is A Previous Engagement a comedy starring Juliet Stevenson written and directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin. (Disclaimer- I have been working on the marketing of this film.) Read my interview with director Joan Carr-Wiggin

Then She Found Me continues its roll out to Phoenix, Denver, CT, southern FL, Atlanta, IL, Baltimore, MA, Detroit, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Houston.
Here's my review

Also opening in NY is The Tracey Fragments starring Ellen Page, that is getting its US release due to Page's fame. Pretty cool. Here's an analysis of this film's release that I found interesting from Karina Longworth at Spout: Tracey Fragments and the Ellen Page Conundrum

Remaining in Theatres for your viewing pleasure are:
Baby Mama
Nim's Island (which over the last month has made a respectable 42 m with a budget of 37 m)
Under the Same Moon
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Under the radar success story: Hats off to Fay Ann Lee for self distributing her film Falling for Grace which was number 1 Harkins Camelview in Phoenix and is now in its fourth weekend there! She's looking for a national distributor. Ideas?

A Previous Engagement- Written and Directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin

I met Joan and her husband and producer David Gordian over a year ago as they were struggling to get a distribution deal for their film A Previous Engagement starring Juliet Stevenson. We became friends and I have been working with them over the last couple of months to try and get the word out about this comedy, which is unique in this film climate, because at its center is a woman over 50.

Joan Carr-Wiggin answered some questions about her film and why its so hard to get women's stories made in the business.

Women & Hollywood: What made you decide to write this story?

Joan Carr-Wiggin: I really wanted to tell a story about an older woman taking control of her life. Not in a "she realizes taking care of her family is the most important thing when she becomes terminally ill" way. I see so many fascinating, funny, and complicated older women living great lives, but I don’t see women like that in films.

W&H: Did you know that you would be directing it when you wrote it?

JCW: Yes. That influenced the script. I don’t think I’d enjoy directing something too depressing. I write a wide range of scripts, I even wrote a sci fi one once which was a lot of fun, and I’ve written some very dramatic pieces, but I’m only interested in directing comedy. Preston Sturges is my favourite director, and I agree with the theme of his wonderful movie Sullivan’s Travels. Watching comedy makes life a little easier for people.

W&H: Most women filmmakers struggle to get financing for their films, but you seem to have had an easier time with it. Why do you think that's the case and what secrets can you share with other women looking for financing?

JCW: It's really hard to finance any kind of character-based film in Hollywood, not just one about women. One of our biggest advantages is that my husband David Gordian, who produced the film, raises our financing in Canada and Europe, which are much more welcoming of women directors and character-based films than the American system. And the less money you need to raise, the more freedom you have as a filmmaker. We’re only interested in doing smaller character driven films that feature performances rather than stunts and explosions. We have no desire to make a number one film at the box office. We just try to make a movie we’ll enjoy ourselves. But Hollywood always wants to maximize gross revenues, even if the budget and the advertising costs wipe out their profits. It’s a “bigger is better” mentality, and we just don’t share it at all.

W&H: The line that resonates the most in the film is: "if people really knew who their mothers really were the world would end." Why do you think it resonates so much?

JCW: It's one of those things everyone knows is true but no one ever talks about it. I think most of us, as we get older, start to glimpse that our mothers were much more complicated than we realized, and we often regret not getting to know the real woman underneath.

W&H: Why do you think it’s so difficult to get films about women over 40 made?

JCW: There's a tendency in Hollywood to see films that have a young and male sensibility as universal, and to see films that have an older and female sensibility as only appealing to a niche. But I’ve discovered that A Previous Engagement strikes a chord with a lot of men as well as women. So their premise just isn’t accurate. Part of the problem is that even when Hollywood does make a film about an older woman, it often ends up presenting an absurd caricature instead of a real woman, so of course the film fails. And then Hollywood uses its failure as an excuse not to finance interesting and promising films about older women. But I was an economist before I was a filmmaker, so I know there are many economic models which can allow films to be made and distributed. I think smart filmmakers should just turn their backs on Hollywood. It operates on a business model which functions, fairly efficiently, for the delivery of simplistic movies for the lowest common denominator. And sometimes I enjoy those movies myself. But usually I don’t, and I would never want to direct one.

W&H: Why do you think that the climate is so hostile to women directors?

JCW: Sexism is the short answer, and that explains a great deal of it. Women make up about 6% of film directors, so there are actually more women law partners, politicians and even astronauts proportionally than directors. The fact that Hollywood lags so far behind other industries helps to explain why they continue to make movies that don’t show women accurately. And they use absurd excuses to resist change, such as the myth that directing is a difficult job for mothers. Except for during the actual filming, which is a small part of the overall job, the hours are flexible and a lot of work can be done from home. And of course no one talks about directing being too demanding a job for fathers. But I’m optimistic that things will start to get better for women directors with the rise of digital cinema and the internet, which are both breaking down the entire economic model of the Hollywood production and distribution system. The world is changing in wonderful exciting ways, even if Hollywood isn’t.

W&H: What advice would you give to other women filmmakers?

JCW: Watch great movies, and remember that once you get past the financing struggles, actors and crew people are really accepting of women directors. A Previous Engagement was an absolute joy to make. And be persistent.

A Previous Engagement opens today in NY and LA.
A Previous Engagement

What Does the Demise of Picturehouse Mean for The Women?

Yesterday, Warner Brother shut down its two indie operations Warner Independent Pictures (headed by Polly Cohen) and Picturehouse. Warners, if you recall, if the studio headed by Jeff Robinov who declared his love for women by stating that he didn't even want to read any scripts that had women leads (earlier post Do Women Matter to Hollywood?.)

Picturehouse led by Bob Berney (who brought us the awesome Whale Rider) has a couple of women friendly films on track to be released within the next several months: First is Kit Kittredge: An American Girl based on the American Girl dolls which stars Abigail Breslin, Julia Ormand, Joan Cusack and is directed by Patricia Rozema from a screenplay by Ann Peacock. It's a family friendly film with a G rating and Abigail plays a young reporter. Sounds cute. Film will be released in early July.

Second is The Women an update of the classic film written and directed by Diane English starring Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and Candice Bergen and Bette Midler. Yowsa. Every time I write this cast I can't help but get excited.

Now that The Women is technically in the hands of Warner Brothers which has a horrible track record with women, what will they do with this film? I'm nervous. I really hope they don't dump it (the release date has recently been changed from October to September 12). I remember what happened when the Weinsteins left Miramax and there were a couple of films that never got released properly. Hopefully they sell it or partner with someone who can figure out how to market this to women (not that anyone is Hollywood is good at that).

Anyone know what's going on?

Lioness- a film by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers

I've been going to the Tribeca Film Festival for a couple of years now and one of the strongest parts of the festival has been the documentaries. Each year I manage to see a couple that I can't get out of my head. This year one of the films was Lioness, a film about women soldiers on the front lines in the war in Iraq. Yes, women soldiers are on the front lines in Iraq. Just like the farce of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the policy that prohibits women in combat does not reflect the reality of this war. Team Lioness was created out of necessity on the ground in Iraq in 2003 to diffuse tensions with women civilians and children during raids and operations where soldiers were on the hunt for insurgents.

This film focuses on five of the earliest Lionesses, their lack of training for the missions, (because women are not in combat so, of course, the can't be trained for the combat they won't be seeing) their experiences in battle, and what it was like to come back home to a world that doesn't acknowledge or understand your contribution to the war effort. The most moving story for me was that of Shannon Morgan, a young woman who joined up in the wake of 9-11 in order to get money for college. Shannon knew how to shoot and was so tough that the guys requested her to be attached to their missions. Shannon was sent out on the most potentially volatile missions. She got caught in a firefight and had to kill in order to not be killed herself. Killing screws up everyone and when Shannon came back from Iraq with PTSD needing therapy there were no services available for a woman soldier who has done what she has done. The therapists don't have any context or training to help her.

No matter how you feel about war, especially this war, this film illuminates an important issue that needs way more attention. But the defense department can't bring the issue to the Congress or to the public's attention because women in the military is still such a hot button issue they can't afford to be told to pull women out. Women make up 15% of the force in Iraq and with a force stretched thin, losing necessary soldiers is not something that can be contemplated. So again, here we have another story of women being invisible and denied rights and services for political expediency. What else is new?

Directors Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers answered a few questions about the film.

Women & Hollywood: What interested you in making this movie and how did you find out about the Lioness program?

Daria Sommers: Like many Americans we watched the war unfold over the first year and we began to get a sense as a footnote that women were engaged and involved in the war in a way that marked a historic shift in the role that women were playing especially in the army. So we took that as a point of departure and decided to investigate and ask questions to find out what was going on.

W&H: Were you surprised that the Army agreed to work with you?

Meg McLagan: I think we were initially surprised because like many people we had a pretty uninformed understanding of how the military works and how decentralized it is. It's not as monolithic as it appears from the outside. We wrote a letter stating our interest in exploring the issue of women in combat and in talking to female soldiers who have come back from Iraq. They gave us permission and facilitated our visits to a couple of bases. At that point we were starting to learn about the Lioness program and identified names and individuals.

DS: Because the Lioness program happened below the radar and on the ground in Iraq and it wasn't a formalized program, in a way we knew more about the story than the army did here.

W&H: Do you think they keep themselves in the dark because of the controversy regarding women in combat. Is there a disconnect between the reality of the battlefield and the political conversation?

MM: The question is who is having those conversations here. Those conversations and policies are driven by congress and the folks in congress, like Duncan Hunter, who felt strongly about pulling women back from certain roles in 2005 are civilian politicians. They don't have day-to-day working knowledge of what is going on in Iraq. I think the army does know but they can't afford another big debate and they can't afford for Congress to say you need to pull them back.

DS: The whole issue of women in combat is one that is uncomfortable in the culture. It does reflect a disconnect because on the one hand there are people who might respond well, fine, ok. But there are factions in the country for whom this is really an uncomfortable subject.

W&H: In your material you say that the program is still publicly denied and they are not properly trained. There was one woman in your movie Shannon who really doesn’t have the services she needs and by publicly denying the program, and by not providing services it is another way of keeping the women invisible.

MM: We are hoping that people will see this film as not about Iraq but about the women soldiers and their experiences. Our interest is in telling the story from their point of view and putting it out there for people to respond to and talk about. We want to acknowledge what they have been doing and to hopefully move the conversation along to bridge this disconnect between the policy and reality. It allows them to be taken seriously in political terms, it allows them to come to the table politically.

W&H: I've seen a bunch of the Iraq movies both fiction and non-fiction and your movie feels different. Those films overwhelm you with the battles and this seems to be more about the human aspects of war.

DS: Even though the events that trigger our narrative are in Iraq our goal was to create a film that reflects back more to our own culture. In some ways its less about Iraq but it is about the "gray zone" that these women have had to occupy where they are not officially trained to go into combat and as a result, they don’t get the specific kinds of services that they need because they are all created on a male model.

MM: We were really interested in their qualities, their competences, their abilities to overcome the challenges they faced both on the battlefield and then at home to have to take care of sick parents and children. We wanted to look into their multifaceted lives.

W&H: You mentioned that people come up to you thinking that women have been in combat because some Hollywood movies (Courage Under Fire, GI Jane) have portrayed women on the battlefield. That seems to be another disconnect between what movies teach us and what really exists. How do you have that conversation?

MM: We see the film as educating people. Most people say either I had no idea or I saw that film with Meg Ryan and I thought women have always been doing this. For us its been interesting because its been either one reaction or the other. We see this film as educating people in addition to telling a compelling story. We are educating people about something very few people know about.

W&H: When did you start working on this movie?

DS: About three years ago.

W&H: And you just finished it?

DS: Yes.

W&H: Have you worked together before?

MM: No, this was our first project together.

W&H: How did the work relationship come about?

MM: We were friends through the writers room and we were talking about the war and were noticing that women were there but were never reported on in and significant way except for the Jessica Lynch incident. It was a very organic friendship and collaboration. It took us time for us to decide what we wanted to do and then to raise the money and do all the research.

(Women in photo: L to R: Specialist Shannon Morgan, Major Kate Guttormsen, Specialist Rebecca Nava - photo credit: Yori Irisawa)

Sex and the City - Will it be the Biggest Women's Movie Ever?

Building on this thread over at cinematical Will 'Sex and the City' Quietly Become Summer's Biggest Hit?, I must respectful disagree about the word quiet. There is nothing quiet about this movie. People are going nuts. (Update- heard from the folks at Fandango and Sex is the top selling film, selling more tickets than Indiana Jones -- which comes out earlier -- and is the most visited page on the site.) In fact, they've been going nuts since the film was shot, where people were lining the streets during the shoot.

The only thing that's been quiet is the fact that none of the plot details have been revealed. I'm on the internet all day long and I have found nothing. I've never seen anything like it for a film about women. It's like people actually want this film to succeed. Writers like ones in the NY Post and the NY Daily News have written reviews without revealing anything; bloggers and who are usually so keen on breaking news about plots are not writing anything either. I bet that part of it is that the guy bloggers who are usually the news breakers really don't care much about the film film because it is well, about women.

The film is ironically being released by New Line which is going out of business and will be subsumed (after the requisite job losses) by Warner Brothers run by Hollywood's resident admitted sexist, Jeff Robinov (see my earlier posts on him: Do Women Matter to Hollywood?)

So I'm thinking, can this be the biggest women's film ever?

What's interesting to note is that in the summer one really big film opens on each weekend. Women's films are never considered really big, but this film is, because there is no real competition opening on its weekend. Granted, Indiana Jones opens the week before and there will be many people still wanting to see that film, but Sex and the City has its own weekend. That is a story in itself.

I've looked at the numbers of how other women's films have opened and I really think this movie can break the records. I think that the film (depending on how many screens it opens on) can open with 50 m.

The top grossing opening weekends of movies starring women are:

• Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - 47 m (Angelina Jolie)
• Charlie's Angels- 40 m (Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Lui)
• Sweet Home Alabama- 35 m (Reese Witherspoon)
• Panic Room- 30 m (Jodie Foster)
• The Devil Wears Prada- 27 m (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway)
• Erin Brockovich- 28 m (Julia Roberts)
• V for Vendetta- 25 m (Natalie Portman)
• Flightplan - 24 m (Jodie Foster)
• Mean Girls- 24 m (Lindsay Lohan)
• Double Jeopardy- 23 m (Ashley Judd)
• 27 Dresses- 23m (Katherine Heigl)
  
• Princess Diaries- 22 m (Anne Hathaway)
• Freaky Friday- 22 m (Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis)
  

So, as Oprah said on her lovefest for the film last week, (and she also said that she has never not shown the ending of the film to the audience) take your girlfriends and head to the theatres on May 30th.

Women will make or break this film. Because of the big buzz and hype this film can be a changemaker. We have the added bonus in that the film is supposedly really good.

I am psyched, a movie about women, the celebrates women, that's actually a good movie. Can't wait.


Stay tuned for part 2 - a discussion of Sex and the City and feminism

The Business of Being Born Comes to DVD

In case you missed this film in limited release this past winter, the film is now out on DVD. Here is a rerun of an interview I did with director Abby Epstein and my review.

If you are in NY, both Abby and Executive Producer Ricki Lake will be signing copies of the DVD today, at 1pm at the Borders in the Time Warner Center.

Purchase the DVD at: The Business of Being Born

Women & Hollywood: How did you become involved with this film?

Abby Epstein: Ricki Lake and I became friendly when I directed her in "The Vagina Monologues" Off-Broadway. We stayed in touch and I knew that she was planning a homebirth for her second child, although at the time I thought she was completely nuts! A few years later, Ricki had finished her talk show and relocated to LA so I stopped by to see her new house and have a visit. I had just completed my first doc "Until the Violence Stops" about the worldwide V-Day movement and Ricki was looking to start a "dream" project about midwives and birthing. I was completely ignorant on the topic but intrigued by Ricki's passion, so I asked her for some reading material and she gave me a book called "Spiritual Midwifery" by Ina May Gaskin. Then Ricki showed me the home video footage of her homebirth (which we use in the film) and I was completely blown away. We began from there.

W&H: How did your involvement with the film effect your own birth experience?

AE: On the one hand, I was very fortunate having spent 2 years researching birthing options in NYC before I became pregnant. I was not only a highly informed customer, but I had attended several births and did not have any more fear about the birth process. So, I felt like I had all these amazing people to choose from when it came time to selecting a provider (of course not all of them took my HMO, so that limited me a bit) But on the other hand, I was put in a position where there became pressure to include my birth in the film - which I resisted. I had no interest in turning the cameras on myself and was unsure whether we were in fact going to document my birth until the very last moment.

W&H: Explain why you chose the title The Business of Being Born.

AE: Truthfully, we couldn't think of anything short and catchy. None of us really loved the title but it seemed to encompass the broad range of aspects we were looking at in the birthing "business."

W&H: It seems that you and Ricki are both on a type of crusade here - using the film to help educate and organize women to take back their own bodies and their births. Did you ever expect the film would morph into this type of movement?

AE: We never expected that the film would have such an impact on mainstream birth culture. I think we suspected that it would hit a nerve, but we honestly just wanted to put the information out there in a bold way - not watered down. It all stemmed from Ricki's personal experience and grew organically from there. But we have definitely started a movement along with other writers and activists - Jennifer Block's book PUSHED was published at the same time we premiered, which was amazing. I think we are on a crusade to inform, but not to convince women to have natural births or homebirths. The modern woman wants information and options - but no one should feel pressured or regretful about their choices.

W&H: There seems to be a lot of women directing documentaries these days. Why do you think that is?

AE: I think that documentaries often have more substance than features and women are attracted to material that is potent and meaningful rather than commercially viable. Of course, there is also the fact that docs are low-budget and don't pay well (if at all!) so there is less competition.

But mostly I think that docs are usually self-generated passion projects where a director can have total control and women are organized, not afraid of hard work and always like a bit of control!

W&H: What's next for you?

AE: We are still opening the film in major cities (Chicago, Seattle, Boston, DC) so I am busy with that until April. Then, I am planning some vacation time with my family! Ricki and I are in the midst of writing a book based on the movie which will come out in April 2009 and a follow-up DVD that will accompany the book. We are also hard at work on our website - turning it into a resource for birth information and options. So, I will still be busy with all things BOBB for a while and then I plan to direct an independent feature film. I'd like to get back to working with actors and writers, which is truly what I love.

Review: The Business of Being Born

Welcome to the New, Post-Female American Cinema

That's the title of the lead article in the NY Times summer movie preview and I gotta say it sure looks like Manohla Dargis has been reading this blog cause everything she writes in this piece I've been writing about since the day I started blogging. The piece is great and reiterates the point that Hollywood has given up on women especially in summer. (It's worthy to note that things don't markedly improve throughout the rest of the year, especially not for studio movies -- which are the movies that most Americans get to see in their towns. Indie movies might make it to cities with art houses or are released under a banner like "AMC Select" or Regal's "Cinema Art" Both the $150 million hit Juno and the current Then She Found Me were released in this pattern.)

The question is what can be done about it, and does anyone with any power care?

Some quotes from the piece and my analysis:

And, frankly, it is hard to believe that anyone in a position of Hollywood power would be so stupid as to actually say what many in that town think: Women can’t direct. Women can’t open movies. Women are a niche.

Remember Hollywood is a town where its ok to be a sexist, it's even a badge of courage and why shouldn't it be -- the boy crap movies make the money. I've said this before and I'll say it again, we (women) need to use our economic power TO GO AND SEE the good female centric films. I'm not saying that we should see any and all women centric films or the bad women directed films. I don't want to see bad movies that are directed by either men or women. I want to see good movies. But if we don't support the women making good films and the good films that have female leads, we're toast. And don't think they don't know exactly who is seeing their movies. They have detailed research (like political exit polls) and know gender and age breakdowns.

Nobody likes to admit the worst, even when it’s right up there on the screen, particularly women in the industry who clutch at every pitiful short straw, insisting that there are, for instance, more female executives in Hollywood than ever before. As if it’s done the rest of us any good. All you have to do is look at the movies themselves — at the decorative blondes and brunettes smiling and simpering at the edge of the frame — to see just how irrelevant we have become. That’s as true for the dumbest and smartest of comedies as for the most critically revered dramas, from “No Country for Old Men” (but especially for women) to “There Will Be Blood” (but no women). Welcome to the new, post-female American cinema.

I gotta say this is a good point. There is a huge disconnect between women gaining power in Hollywood and the women appearing onscreen. My question is are there too few women in senior enough positions to have any power? Can that still be? Or are women making decisions like guys cause its all about money and not about content?

Last year only 3 of the 20 highest-grossing releases in America were female-driven, and involve a princess (“Enchanted”) or pregnancy (“Knocked Up” and “Juno”). Actresses had starring roles in about a quarter of the next 80 highest-grossing titles, mostly in dopey romantic comedies and dopier thrillers. A number of these were among the worst-reviewed movies of the year, including “Premonition” (Sandra Bullock) and “The Reaping” (Hilary Swank), the last of which was released by — ta-da! — Warner Brothers. The days of “Million Dollar Baby,” for which Ms. Swank won an Oscar, and “Speed,” which rocketed Ms. Bullock to stardom in the summer of 1994, feel long gone.

Knocked Up does not count in my book as a female-driven movie. I would count Hairspray as a female driven film but that came in at #24 and The Golden Compass came in at #39 (using stats from Box Office Mojo).

There may be more women working in the industry now — Amy Pascal is a co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment — but you wouldn’t know it from what’s on the screen. The reasons are complex and certainly beyond the scope of a seasonal rant like this one. Some point to the lack of female directors, whose numbers in both the mainstream and independent realms hover at around 6 percent. Others blame the female audience, though the success of “Baby Mama” indicates — just as the summer hit “The Devil Wears Prada” suggested two years ago — that if given something decent that speaks to their lives and lets them leave the theater without feeling slimed, women will turn out.

Among the pleasures of the movies are the new worlds they open up, but there are pleasures in the familiar too, like seeing other women bigger, badder and more beautiful than life. And whether it’s Sigourney Weaver in “Alien,” Rosario Dawson in “Death Proof” or Meryl Streep in whatever, I am there. The black filmmaker Tyler Perry has built his success partly on the truth that when audiences look up at the screen what they want to see are faces much like their own. In 2008, when a white woman and a black man are running for president and attracting unprecedented numbers of voters partly because they are giving a face to the wildly under-represented, you might think that Hollywood would get a clue.

Nah.

These last two paragraphs resonate. Women will see movies that are good and speak to them. But the problem is that women (especially older women) still might not show up exactly how Hollywood wants them to show up, on the first weekend. I think that it will happen occasionally, and I am betting big on Sex & the City making it happen in a couple of weeks, but it's not something that's going to happen every weekend. So wouldn't it be good for Hollywood to pay attention to what happens in the second weekend or third or fourth? Baby Mama which was number one last week dropped off 40% in its second weekend, but Harold and Kumar which was #2 last weekend dropped almost 60%. Do movies with women have longer legs because women don't only go out the first weekend? If anyone has research, I'd love to see it.

But more importantly, we need to learn from Tyler Perry model like the article says and start our own studio. We need to make movies that we want to see and use the great marketing experts out there who know how to market to women (cause Hollywood clearly is not employing them). I'm ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need a whole new model cause at the rate we're going sooner rather than later there will be no women in the movies at all.

Full article: Is There a Real Woman in This Multiplex?

Flying- Confessions of a Free Woman

Jennifer Fox is a brave woman. She turns her camera on her life and her friends and family's lives and asks a question so many of us have asked (although probably not out loud) - what does it really mean to be a free woman today?

This six part documentary premieres tonight on Sundance at 9pm (two hours air over the next three weeks). I've only seen the beginning but I am hooked and can't wait to watch the rest. It starts off like this: "I never wanted to be a girl in the way a girl was supposed to be. I wanted to be a boy because they could do anything they wanted to."

AWESOME.

Here is a woman taking on all the challenges of having grown up with the benefits of feminism (keep in mind she is a privileged, white American woman). She's 42 years old in the film, her best friend gets sick, and after many years of ambivalence about motherhood (because she was desperate not to become her mother) she finds herself pregnant.

This is a must see!

More info: Flying

Women at the Box Office This Weekend

Summer Movie Season Has Arrived
Thanks to women, Baby Mama did well last weekend, but since the summer movie season kicks off today, Baby Mama will have a hard time competing against Iron Man and the romantic comedy Made of Honor.

Then She Found Me rolls out into SF, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Seattle and expands in the NY area. If you live in these areas and are interested in seeing a good movie by and about a woman, GO SEE THIS!

If you have someone in your life who likes the big summer flicks here's my take: Iron Man stars Robert Downey, Jr. as the thinking man's action hero. While Downey, Jr. might not be your typical action hero (he's actually a brilliant scientist) the movie is typical action fare which requires you to leave your brain at the door. The script sucks, the suit is fun, Gwyneth Paltrow is underused (typical supportive female role), Jeff Bridges acts like a psychotic Lex Luthor and Terrence Howard sold out to get in a big movie. If you suspend belief and all sense of reality...do I need to say more?

Made of Honor is My Best Friend's Wedding ten years later and starring a guy. (Julia Roberts was in the original, which is far superior) Patrick Dempsey aka McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy plays Tom, the guy who created coffee collars, and after 10 years of sleeping around he realizes that his best friend (Michelle Monaghan) is the woman of his dreams. Only it's too late since she just met the man of her dreams in Scotland. Hijinks ensue to cancel the wedding. Who knows if McDreamy can cross over to the big screen (he tried it before in the late 80s and then we didn't see him for over a decade) but at least he's got Grey's to fall back on. Michelle Monaghan is so much better in the indie drama Trucker I saw at Tribeca this week, but hey it's really about Dempsey so really, who cares about the girl.

Other Women at the Movies
Hats Off- directed by Jyll Johnstone Opens in LA
Then She Found Me
Baby Mama
Nim's Island
Under the Same Moon
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Penelope
My Blueberry Nights
Stop-Loss

TV This Weekend
For you TV viewing pleasure, most all of England's top actresses appear in the three part mini-series Cranford based on the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins, Imelda Staunton, Francesca Annis and many other populate the town of Cranford where things must be done just so, and gossip makes it round quicker by person than it does on the internet. The show airs at 9pm on PBS for the next three Sundays.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell- Tribeca Documentary by Abigail E. Disney and Gini Reticker

Pray the Devil Back to Hell, is a powerful documentary about the courageous women of Liberia who stood up and said no more to war and through their sheer determination and grit were able to transform a country. The film premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival where it was just awarded the prize for best documentary feature. In awarding the prize the jurors said: “In a relentless pursuit of peace, the women of Liberia show us how community, motherly love and perseverance can change the fate of a society. Pray the Devil Back to Hell is a reminder that we have the power to say “Enough!” to the atrocities of our world."

The film is produced by Abigail E. Disney and directed by Gini Reticker. Both Abby and Gini were able to answer some questions about the film and their extraordinary collaboration.

Women & Hollywood: You and Gini seem to have a real collaborative relationship beyond the typical producer/ director.

Abby Disney: Gini trusts me a lot and vice versa. We decided we didn't want to work that way.

Gini Reticker: We hadn't seen each other for years and we ran into each just after Abby had been to Liberia. We were totally on the same page about what was important in the story. It was wonderful to have her and she was also respectful of me in the edit room. She would make suggestions that respected my experience. It's been an incredibily dynamic relationship.

W&H: Talk about where you got the title from.

GR: One of the main character in the film Leymah Gbowee says that Charles Taylor could pray the devil out of hell and it was such a great expression. What the women did by banding together is that they prayed the devil back to hell. I don't think that it was only Charles Taylor as the man, but it was the evil force they saw. The country had lost its moral compass and the women came forward and said hey, let's get this under control.

W&H: Abby, you financed the film yourself?

AD: Yes, it seemed easier rather than having to go to people to ask for money. It gave me nimbleness and an ability to react more quickly and to think independently without having to answer to anybody.

W&H: What was the budget?

AD: We spent around $800,000. It was not an easy shoot. There is no power in Liberia so you need generators. We had to build our own sets and I was not about to go without insurance. As the producer I felt very responsible for everyone and their safety. And Gini is well respected as is Kirsten Johnson, the Director of Photography, and these are people who should be paid appropriately.

W&H: Talk a bit about what you've learned from your first foray into the movie business.

AD: I didn't have a lot of the problems women have because I didn't need to go and ask for money. I didn't have to talk anyone in charge of the purse strings and convince them as to why this was important because I knew this was a tough sell. Even if there are women in charge they are still accountable to men. So they are very averse to taking risks especially if its seen as a "women's thing." It's difficult to get anybody in the mainstream media to understand this. That's why I felt I was uniquely positioned to get this done.

W&H: Can you talk about working as a woman director and any difficulties you have faced.

GR: For me working in documentaries has really been easy and its been manageable with having a family which has been really nice because I had some control over my career. I've always been drawn to women's issues. Before I made documentaries I worked in women's health care and that is what drew me to working on my first film. I think that working in documentaries has been the ideal profession for me.

W&H: You've been involved in women's issues for a long time but never felt compelled to tell a story before.

AD: I've felt compelled to tell a story before just not compelled enough to do it.

W&H: Why was this different?

AD: Everything lined up on this one. Part of it is how old my kids are and how much time I had. This really was a story that was going to be erased from the historical records that was really worth holding onto.

W&H: Talk more about how women's accomplishments get erased from history.

AD: Yesterday I was talking to a high school class after a screening and asked them if they heard of Sacagawea and of course they had. They had, because there were women who worked and resurfaced the memory of her. She was not in the historical records as I was taught it when I was in high school. This is the persistent manner of how we have defined authority as not to include women. If they don't look authoritative they don't get captured in the media which then gets converted into the historical record. We clearly knew what was going on in Liberia. The news media didn't look at what the women were doing here as authoritative, and they simply did not point their cameras in that direction. We had no problems finding the footage of the killings, the shootings and the maimings, but when the women were working for peace the cameras were not pointed in that direction. That tells us a great deal about what the news media thinks is worth telling and how much of what genuinely happens we don't hear.

W&H: You mentioned before that we tend to see women in Africa as victims not through their accomplishments and that it was important for you to tell this positive story.

GR: Most of the media you see on Africa portrays Africa and Africans as victims and not agents of their own lives. I feel that the people that I met there are just like you and me. As a documentary filmmaker I am always drawn to what I have in common with someone rather than that which makes us different. I feel the common bond of humanity is fascinating and so I was hell bent on making sure the women were able to tell their own story and they were portrayed in the way I saw them. I also felt that by doing that it is much easier to be inspired by them.

W&H: Our country is not aware of the global women's movement and you have an opportunity to bring some international feminism tothis country.

AD: I don't think it will be hard. When I tell people about the 12 countries that the film has shown in about how the women in Kurdistan and Georgia wept and then wrote a peace agenda. I think this will be very appealing to women if we get it to them through the right medium, through the right messenger and in the right form.

W&H: Media, messenger, form? Explain.

AD: Well, obviously, all of those things come together in Oprah Winfrey. We are going to work on finding the right messengers on TV, radio and the internet to bring this message to women.

W&H: How are you going to get the film out there? Do you have a distributor?

AD: I'm not going to a distributor with my hat in my hand begging them to distribute the film. If we don't get a good deal we will distribute it ourselves.

W&H: Hollywood doesn't seem to be interested in women's stories. What are your feelings about that?

GR: The thing about Hollywood not liking women's stories, I think it's a case of blindness to a real market, to a real hunger. That's the response we are getting from this film. There is a hunger for stories that are more hopeful that show a different side of things. The distribution of this film will be fascinating. We will try to have a theatrical release but we are getting requests from people who want to fill movie theaters around the country. We're getting more requests to show the film than we can deal with at this time. We are trying to harness all that and also look at alternative distribution models but I think we will probably do a hybrid and do everything. I would have to say hats off to Abby because she has enormous aspirations and energy and she is really committed to this film and to the ideas behind it.

W&H: And you will create a curriculum and other educational devices?

AD: the opportunities through educational institutions, religious institutions, through girls clubs, youth organizations, women's organizations are vast and there is a curriculum for each one of these groups.

W&H: A lot of times people say movies are just movies that they don't have the power to make change and to effect people.

AD: Movies are just movies if that's how you go about making them. of all the media we have this is the closest in tone and feel to the dream which comes from the deepest part of ourselves. we do such a disservice to ourselves to not use this medium with the respect it deserves because it has innately such enormous power to address our deepest needs and our deepest values and deepest longings. That's why my uncle (Walt) was very good at what he did. He understood that it had enormous power to go right into the center of who a person was and that's why i wanted to make this film. I couldn't write this as a book, I couldn't go around the world and tell people the story, you needed to have everything come together in music and visuals and sound in the way it does in this film and I think Gini has done an effective job in making sure that whole thing coheres.

W&H: What would you uncle say about this film?

AD: I'm not sure. I know he was a man of his time in many ways, politically he was very conservative and he was afraid of communists but I also know he had a good center, a good heart and I don't think this film is a politics film it has a real appeal to people without politics. sometimes you need to strip away politics and restore a dialogue without politics. and in that way, I think he'd love it.

W&H: What do you want people who see this film to get out of it?

GR: The response to far has been tremendous that whatever I thought that i wanted people to get out of it, they're getting much more out of it. I feel that people are being inspired in all sorts of different ways that I could never have imagined. There are people who see this as instrumental to doing peace work. I woke up yesterday morning to an email from women in Tiblsi, Georgia saying that they had seen the film and shown it to other women, their region is having heightened militarism with ethnic overtones and they decided to take up the mantle of the women of Liberia and are starting their own peace movement. What could be better than that. Women in Sudan say its going to change their lives. On that level its beyond my wildest hopes.

W&H: What are you doing next?

GR: Abby and I are continuing to work together and are co-producing a 4 hour series on women in conflict for Wide Angle on PBS.

Check out the Pray the Devil Back to Hell Trailer

Bordertown- Another Film About Women Goes Straight to DVD

One of the most brutal and under acknowledged stories over the last decade has been the mass murders of young Mexican women workers. There have been a couple of documentaries (notably Lourdes Portillo's Senorita Extraviada), yet this is another women's issue that continually gets pushed under the carpet.

I got excited when I read a couple of years ago that director Gregory Nava and Jennifer Lopez were teaming up to create a fictionalized version of the story, Bordertown. We all know its hard to make films about women, even for a star like Lopez (who has a very mixed record in films.) But to make a film about such a tough subject has got to be even harder. But they made it and premiered it a couple of years ago at the Berlin International Film Festival where it was received poorly. THINKFilm still picked it up and was going to release it, but that never happened. (I think it may have played only in El Paso, Texas.)

So here's the case of another women's film going straight to DVD. The film has a cast that includes Martin Sheen, Antonio Banderas and Sonia Braga. These are not no-names.

But the subject proved too tough. Women being murdered. Who really wants to see that?

I do and finally did. It's not the best movie, Lopez is uneven and let's just say she's a better singer than actress. She plays Lauren Adrian a reporter from the fictional Chicago Sentinel sent by her editor (Martin Sheen) to cover the murders. She is a woman trying to run away from her past, trying to deny that she could just as likely have been these women if her life hadn't turned out a little differently. But, when she gets on the ground and starts digging, she changes. The government of Mexico is covering up the murders, intimidating witnesses and making people disappear. It's creepy to watch how systemically these murders are denied. The film does go off the rails at times in the thriller aspects, but there is no denying its a powerful story.

The most important moments of the film come at the end when Lauren files her story accusing NAFTA and corporate America for complicity in the murders. With NAFTA in the news again because of the presidential elections its interesting to see another perspective of how people are affected by this free trade which Lauren calls "slave trade." The story gets spiked and Sheen (who remember was the one who encouraged Lauren to go and tell the story) is the one who stabs her in the back. She goes after his integrity as an editor and he offers a line I would guess is being repeated all across the newspaper business: "corporate America is running the show and the news agenda is free trade, globalization and entertainment."

It sure is and this political drama seems to be a casualty of these same issues. Let's not forget these women who are being murdered in factories that make our cheap computers. Rent it and see for yourself. It's available on Netflix.

News Briefs

Here's some random interesting things I saved over the last couple of weeks:

• In an AOL/moviefone poll more Americans are looking forward to Sex & the City the Movie rather Indiana Jones. Interesting. Moviegoers have "Sex" on the brain: pol (Reuters)

• Rebecca Traister at Salon talks to Amy Poehler about Baby Mama and the legacy of funny film feminists. Feminism is the New Funny (Salon)

• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day- a little movie, that's doing quite well. Shocker. How a 1938 novel led to a surprise box-office hit: A filmed Cinderella tale of a governess fashioned into a London socialite has taken $12m in the US (The Guardian)

• Juliette Binoche never went Hollywood even after an Oscar (Boston Globe)

• The awesome actress Fiona Shaw is taking a shot a directing...an opera She has a deep understanding of what it takes to release performances from people: what she can do is dazzling (The Guardian)
  

• Essence Magazine is taking on TV

• Hillary Swank will star in the Mira Nair film of Amelia Earhart. Richard Gere co-stars.

• The 13th Annual Nantucket Film Festival announced that Meg Ryan will be honored with the Compass Rose Acting Tribute Award. Ryan will be on hand to present the second Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award, which gives a cash prize to a promising female writer/director at the festival.

• Nia Vardalos will co-star for three episodes of the funny sitcom My Boys airing this June

• Gena Rowlands on Her Life and Career (The Telegraph)

Miley Cyrus Hoopla

I'm going to let others who have thought about this more speak to the issue of Miley Cyrus and her backless photo in Vanity Fair. I find it interesting how we are willing to exploit young womens sexuality when it suits us. Look at all the fuss over the TV show Gossip Girl. Two week ago those OMFG ads with teens having sex was plastered all over NY and nobody made as big a stink as they have over Miley's back. This show appeals to the older tweeners and the kids on that show are drinking, doing drugs, having sex, staying out late, wearing provocative clothes (check out the picture on the cover of last weeks NY Magazine) but you know, its just a TV show...it's not real. Right. These girls are in a no-win situation. They get ridiculed for not being cute or skinny or sexy and then get punished when they try and look the part. Maybe that's why the Miley Cyrus thing has caused such a kerfuffle.

Here's Nancy Gruver's (from New Moon) take:

Like an iron grip in a velvet glove, the hypersexualization of girls in the media holds actual girls hostage under the pretense of entertaining and informing them. And, like in the Stockholm Syndrome, it's not surprising when girls start to identify with the all-powerful culture that's holding them hostage. Stockholm Syndrome in Media

And the always interesting Germaine Greer:

We train female children to be manipulative and to exploit their sex. From the time she is tiny, a girl in our society is taught to flirt. She is usually dressed like a mini-whore in pink and tinsel, short skirt, matching knickers, baby-doll pyjamas, long hair falling over her face. She learns to court attention and, when successful, to hide her face. If she's lucky enough to get to be a big sister she might get over this sleazy conditioning, but very few daughters these days get to grow out of being "daddy's girl". When the time comes she is likely to reject approaching womanhood, desperate to keep her thighs skinny, and nearly as desperate to acquire hard, high breasts. The idea of growing into her own body is charmless, frightening. Sexing it Up

I'll post other interesting ones that I find.

The Guru of Stats- Dr. Martha Lauzen

Dr. Martha Lauzen is my idol. She is the woman who has been tracking women's representation behind the scenes in the TV and film business for over a decade. Her studies, The Celluloid Ceiling and Boxed In, are the studies used by everybody who tracks issues related to women working in the business. She runs the newly created Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University

She recently appeared on a Movies by Women podcast (click on episode 14, but check out all the other great podcasts they have) to discuss issues related to women working in Hollywood, especially women directors. I highly recommend listening to the podcast but here are some highlighted quotes:

• Most women (across the country) don't understand the under-representation of women in the business.
  

• There has been a multi-year decline in women directors (working in films).

• 90% of what we see is a white male view of the world. We are so used to it that we don't even see it.

• People in Hollywood don't want to be called racist, but they don't mind being called sexist.

• When women have power to hire, they do hire more women.

• This notion that women won't or can't get along or don't hire women is not true. It's a myth which has political undertones that we see across all media. As long as women believe they can't trust each other, it's damaging to women as a group.

• We need to get the word out that women are under-represented and that this is a cultural problem.

• The privilege of denial is when people in positions of power encounter a point of view that does not jibe with their own and they say it does not exist.

So what can we learn from this? Being a sexist is a badge of honor in Hollywood, and denying that there is a problem is an effective tool being used to keep women out of positions of power. There has got to be one male executive whose daughter wants to be a director. I wonder what he would do if his daughter was denied a job just because she's a woman. There needs to be some kind of affirmative action committee to deal with this. It's such BS.

Sexist Blog Comment of the Day

This comment comes yesterday from the blog Hollywood Elsewhere. I hate giving sexist comments additional air, but this one can't go by without a WTF! No wonder these women start botoxing themselves at 30. God forbid you should actually look your age. Shame on you Jeff Wells for this lame ass comment.

Slight Disparity
The only "hmmm" issue that may affect What Happens in Vegas is a cultural- chemical rapport thing, given that the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz romance may seem to some like an older-woman, younger-guy thing. (Which Kutcher is obviously familiar with in real life.) Kutcher turned 30 two months ago; Diaz is now 35. Thing is, Kutcher looks his age (if not a year or two younger) and she looks...well, like she's almost nudging 40, no? The last time Diaz radiated anything close to a spring-chicken glow was when she costarred in There's Something About Mary ('98).

It's perfectly fine and cool for this kind of relationship to be depicted, of course. I don't have any surveys to point to, but there are presumably plenty of slightly older women going out with slightly younger (or markedly younger) guys. It's interesting. I can remember thinking when I was in my early 20s that the best women to know were in their early 30s -- past the foolishness, earthier, more passionate, etc.

YUCK! Cameron, says it best in the the picture to the left.

Women Make Tina Fey Comedy Number 1 at the Box Office

Women went to the theatres this weekend and made the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama $18.3 million this weekend. A whopping 68% of the audience was WOMEN so we proved women we are moviegoers and we can definitely open a movie. 55% of the audience was over 25 so that means that us older women (yes, Hollywood thinks you are old if you are over 25) attended the film.

Members of my girl posse and I went to see the film and we enjoyed it. I still wish that Tina would have written it (the film was written and directed by SNL writer Michael McCullers) cause, at times, it felt that they were trying to hard to be funny. But Tina is awesome. (and if you don't watch 30 Rock on Thursdays on NBC, you are seriously missing something really funny.) The thing about Tina is that she's funny while being awkward and uncomfortable and unsure of herself which is the crux of her appeal. While the funny guys of Judd Apatow's comedies are pathetic schlubs that no girl would want to be with (but who always seem to get the girl), Fey is the real girl who is insecure in life while confident at work AND she's funny, so it's a winning combination. After this weekend both Tina and Amy's phones should be ringing off the hook with new jobs.

Tina plays a 37-year-old-woman who has been "getting promotions instead of getting pregnant" and finds out she can't have kids. She hires a surrogate through a questionable agency run by the freakishly fertile Sigourney Weaver and is matched up with Amy Poehler, a poor woman looking for some fast cash. Honestly, they don't really do a service to surrogacy since it is a serious process, and most surrogates are women who have previously had kids and are carefully vetted. But it's a movie, and a comedy, so we'll let a lot of that go.

What was great to see was comedy vets from SNL and The Daily Show supporting the work of Fey and Poehler. I'm used to seeing the boys support the other guys so it was great to see them support the girls. Steven Martin also gets in on the game and plays the new-agey boss of Tina. Tina also has a love interest in the adorable Greg Kinnear. Their relationship is so different from typical comedy relationships because they actually seem like they could be a couple. They are around the same age and they have things in common, and oh yeah, he actually has a job and doesn't get stoned all day. He's a mature adult which, you know, is more attractive to women looking for a partner in life.

I'm not saying this is a perfect movie, cause it's not. But I have to say that I was so happy to go to a movie where I didn't want to throw something at the screen, and when I left I still had a smile on my face.

Women & Hollywood on Other Feminist Blogs

Word is starting to get out about the blog. Here's a posting from the feminist blog Echidne of the Snakes

Feminism & film (by Suzie)

After many years of promiscuous movie-going, I now avoid ones that don’t have at least one significant female character. I prefer ones that revolve around women, written and/or directed by women. I’m voting with my dollars.

This baffles some friends, who don’t see gender when they look at a movie like “No Country for Old Men,” but accept the idea that men won’t – or shouldn’t – like a “chick flick.” (I hate, hate, hate that term and “chick lit,” which mark stories by and about women as trifles that could not possibly interest men. Ugh, now I have to wipe the foam from my mouth.)

A few years ago, a feminist friend was trying to get me to see “The Perfect Storm.” I argued, “But it’s all about men.” She replied cheerfully, “But in the end, they all die!” The movie is an interesting commentary on the construction of masculinity, but then again, there’s no shortage of movies about men who die while doing something dangerous, adventurous or heroic.

To find movies by and about women, I like Melissa Silverstein’s Women & Hollywood blog. This week on DVD, I saw Julie Taymor’s “Across the Universe” and Amy Heckerling’s “I Could Never Be Your Woman.” About Taymor, Silverstein asks what it takes to be an “auteur.” (A penis seems to help.)

In another post, Silverstein explains why “I Could Never Be Your Woman” was released last month, direct to DVD. In the movie, the character played by Michelle Pfeiffer worries about getting too old to be competitive in Hollywood. You might think: “She’s Michelle Pfeiffer, for the Goddess’ sake!” But Heckerling told Entertainment Weekly: ''There was some concern about doing a movie with an older female protagonist — not anybody's favorite demographic.''

In an interview with the AV Club, Heckerling talks about women trying to look young to keep their careers alive.

It's been that way from Sunset Boulevard on. Hollywood is the dream factory, and no one dreams about older women. It's a youth-and-beauty-obsessed place that sells a certain image. Of course I have sympathy. If you look at all the pictures of women in magazines, everybody's got a forehead that looks like a billboard. Completely blank. When I was 20, I had these furrowed lines between my brows, because I was always angry. And I was 20. I don't think that was a mark of age; it was just my personality. Yet these people think that when you have a completely blank head, you can put advertising on it. That's not youthful. What is that? Some of these young girls that I find and put in films, I see them in a magazine a year later, and they've got big fat lips and stick figures. And you go, "Why? Why are you buying into this?"

Women at the Box Office This Weekend: Baby Mama and Then She Found Me

This is a rare, good weekend for women at the box office. While I have not yet seen Baby Mama, I encourage everyone to go and see it. Here's why.

First, because Tina Fey and Amy Poehler rule! The first episode when Saturday Night Live returned after the writer's strike that Fey hosted was clearly the best in a long, long time. Secondly and more importantly, they are bucking the trend of the guy-centric comedies. I am so tired of Hollywood comedies being by and about the guys. While Baby Mama is written and directed by a guy (I'm waiting for Tina Fey to start directing her work too, but she is busy with 30 Rock so I'll give her a break) it's the first time in a long time that a female comedy duo has toplined a movie. When was the last one? Do we have to go all the way back to The First Wives Club? I'm no film historian but I can't remember a single female buddy comedy since then unless I want to count The Devil Wears Prada (which I don't.)

There is a lot of pressure of Fey and Poehler this weekend, and in turn the pressure is on all of us to support this movie. I can't understate the importance of this film doing well. If it does well maybe then, Hollywood will see that women can open a comedy and we might be given a reprieve from spending the rest of our lives seeing Judd Apatow comedies. (By the way, not all his films do well, but his juggernaut has not been threatened in any way.)

Here are some points from last weekend's LA Times piece on Baby Mama:

The unwritten rule of Hollywood comedies is like that classic admonition given boxers the night before a fight: Women weaken legs. Here the legs are a movie's potential at the box office. Which is why it seems unusual -- if not illegal -- for two females, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, to have the leads in a buddy comedy, "Baby Mama," opening Friday.

"Baby Mama" begs to differ. It's almost like an experiment in comedy science class: What if these roles went to funny women who've earned their shot at big-screen success?

Hollywood comedies are normally marketed to 14-year-old boys, but your movie is more adult and well-mannered than that. It's also about a sensitive issue -- women becoming single moms by choice. Do you think it's a harder sell for Universal because there's no movie star or large-breasted woman on the poster?

Poehler (laughs): Everything is a harder sell until it's a success and then it's not.

Fey: There was no movie star on the "Superbad" poster until they were movie stars.

Poehler: I think we both tend to be kind of late bloomers. We've always been attracted, both of us, to late bloomers in general anyway. There's a lot of women in comedy right now that are actually our age. It's the same kind of thing, really strong women, let's say who were mentioned in that Vanity Fair article. All similar age. I don't know what that means. Fey and Poehler gamble with 'Baby Mama'

On the other hand, for those in NY and LA, this weekend opens the Helen Hunt directed film Then She F