Meryl Streep Makes Golden Globe History

With her nominations for Doubt and Mamma Mia!, Streep becomes the most nominated actor with 23 nominations. She has six wins (which ties her with Jack Nicholson).

'Mamma Mia!' — No 'Doubt' Meryl Streep makes Golden Globe history (LA Times)
photo: Sylvain Gaboury/PR Photos

Why Wasn't Meryl Streep on the Newsstand Cover of Entertainment Weekly?

I find this very strange (as have several of the readers of the blog.)

When I got my favorite magazine (EW) in the mail this week I was so excited to see Meryl Streep on the cover declaring her the "Queen of Hollywood." We all know that she was always the queen in terms of content but now, at 59, she's a bona fide box office star. Check out my piece from earlier this week.

So now it had come to light that the Streep cover was only sent to subscribers and that Twilight was put on the cover for newsstands. I know that Twilight is a huge hit and I am thrilled, but it had been on the cover only weeks before. Why did it need to be on the cover again?

And isn't it just ironic that the whole story about Streep was how she has become commercially viable and then it turns out that she's not commercial enough for newsstands.

Some body please explain this to me (or as Rachel Maddow would say- somebody talk me down.)

Here are the different covers (from last week- this week features Jennifer Aniston who is not known for her box office prowess):

Meryl Streep is the Queen of Hollywood

Meryl Streep is having a good year. In fact, she's had a couple of good years. Looking back on her career she's had some really big peaks: 1979-1985 with films like Kramer vs. Kramer; The French Lieutenant's Woman; Silkwood; Sophie's Choice; and Out of Africa. A big valley in the late 80's and early 90s with She-Devil, Death Becomes Her, and Postcards from the Edge. But mostly she's been steady, consistent, fantastic actress whose films got nominated for awards but didn't make a lot of money.

Until now.

Now she's a box office star. It started with The Devil Wears Prada and has been cemented with Mamma Mia!

EW's Christine Spines has this week's cover story on Streep and her resurgence. One thing I love about Streep is that she has never been afraid to talk about how Hollywood treats women. She never suffered (at least as far as I can tell) a backlash for her honesty and outspokenness. Everyone who writes a script for a woman over 40 wants her first. She's on the top of every list. I also love that Streep is a feminist and supports women's organizations like Equality Now.

Here are some great quotes from the piece:

But given that Hollywood treats actresses over 40 as if they've passed their sell-by date, Streep's transformation into a bankable movie star at age 59 is astounding.

Studios are now carving out space in their summer schedules, between the Pirates and the Pixars, for a Streep film. ''A Meryl Streep slot,'' says Sony Pictures chairman Amy Pascal. ''Who ever thought you'd say that?''

Nobody. The common assumption is that women will go see movies starring men, but men won't buy a ticket to see a movie about a woman. Streep has changed the game. Of the 50 highest-grossing films of all time worldwide, only one is female-driven: Mamma Mia! ''She's the hottest actress in America,'' says Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Streep's August '09 film, Julie and Julia, in which the actress plays chef Julia Child.

There's a poetic justice to the fact that Streep's career has also eclipsed those of her male contemporaries — Pacino, De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and even Nicholson — almost none of whom can match her box office clout. She's clearly loving her new power. ''It's all completely improbable and sort of great,'' she giggles. An unrepentant feminist, Streep seems to take particular joy in beating the guys on their own turf. ''Well, they have their own fun,'' she allows.

Her crusade, at this point, is to show Hollywood how much money can be made from female-driven movies.

I've never paid attention to that stuff, but this was just bringing it in. It's so gratifying because it's the audience that nobody really gives a s--- about.''

I wish I could report that since Streep is doing so well things are filtering down for other women, but it doesn't look so good. Think about Diane Keaton. She was on top of the world with Something's Gotta Give, and now she's had two stinkers in a row and one that went straight to video which I recently wrote about. In general, the scripts looked terrible. That seems to be a consistent problem with films by and about women. I know there are good scripts out there. Let's get some of them into the pipeline.

Meryl Streep: Box Office Queen (EW)

Mamma Mia -- Feminist Creative Power on Film

I've been following the press leading up to the opening of Mamma Mia! this week and I have to say, while there have been some negative reviews (and I will be very interested to see if it is mostly guys who hate the film), the overall tenor of the press has been much kinder than it was to Sex and City. There are no nasty articles about any of the women's appearances, or the shallowness of American women for liking the film.

Some of the reviewers have questioned Streep for taking on this type of "light" role, but she has embraced it wholeheartedly, and clearly enjoyed the experience of working with an all female team.

So I can't help but wonder, did we conquer film sexism in the last month? Are women's movies going to be welcomed differently because of how nasty the treatment of SATC? Why is it that this movie --the second one this summer-- which seems poised to have women getting ready to see it with friends and daughters alike getting different treatment?

One reason I think is that most of the critics and blogger are distracted this weekend. When SATC opened it was the dominant film on its weekend (and we don't like women to be dominant at anything); Mamma Mia will be counter programming against the Batman flick.

But I am still wondering -- is Mamma Mia less threatening to the movie industry and the culture than Sex and the City was? Is it that Sex and the City had, well, sexy women and sex while asking some serious questions about our culture, while Mamma Mia comes off as a fun musical about a wedding?

The irony is that this fun musical about a wedding bucks every Hollywood convention, and it makes Mamma Mia one of the most feminist movies of the year. Way more feminist than SATC. It's got women power -- mature women power-- written all over it.

• All the creatives are women over 50.
  
• It stars women.
• Is written by a woman -Catherine Johnson.
• Is directed by a woman - Phyllida Lloyd.
• Is produced by a woman -Judy Craymer.
  

And, it's already a success overseas having made $24 million since its release a couple of weeks ago.

I think its going to open pretty big here. Hopefully at least $25 million this weekend. It already has a built in audience (just like SATC), the show has been running on Broadway for years, has played all over the world, and Abba has got to be the world's most well known band.

It's amazing that Universal Pictures gave these women the power they did to make this film, but not surprisingly, it was another woman, Donna Langley, the president of production at Universal who made the call to trust these women.

Here's some great info on the film's history from a recent NY Times piece:

Ms. Craymer said that she hadn’t been trying to make a feminist point when she first enlisted Ms. Johnson and Ms. Lloyd to help realize her notion of an Abba musical or when she started hiring people for the film. But somehow, as she sought to fill the movie crew with others who “got” the “Mamma Mia!” factor, she ended up with even more women, including the production designer, Maria Djurkovic; the costume designer, Ann Roth; and the editor Lesley Walker.

Ms. Lloyd agreed that “the female team thing” resulted from “personality and talent rather than, ‘Oh, we’re going to have an all-girls team.’ ” But, she added, “I think it was fundamental.” And she reminded Ms. Craymer of something that happened when they first started thinking about the show: “I remember you saying that you asked Benny and Bjorn what they felt about having a woman director, and they actually said they actively liked collaborating with women.” Ms. Lloyd went on to surmise that the men’s Scandinavian ease with women in positions of power informed the whole project.

So I guess it's progress that this film has escaped the sexist overtone of Sex and the City. But I'm still wondering why Sex rubbed people so bad.
The Mamma Mia Factor Times Three (NY Times)
photo credit: Fred R.Conrad/ NY Times
from left to right- Catherine Johnson, Phyllida Law, Judy Craymer

Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Meryl Streep

Two pieces on Meryl from the Guardian as Mamma Mia! is opening there this weekend. (I saw it last night, corny, hysterical and fun- fuller assessment to come)

She attributes the strong roles she's landed in the last decade to the rise of female executives such as Amy Pascal and Sherry Lansing. With male executives, she says, they don't employ older women 'because they don't want to see their first wife in a movie'. Super trouper of the silver screen (The Guardian)

But why did she accept the role? "It's a requirement of popular culture that you strike an ironic distance. This doesn't. It's a film about women and their whole experiences being hopeful and youthful and older and suffering the regrets that you have over a long life. It's visceral and I love that."

What happened to all those strong celluloid women? "It's a very big question," says Streep. "Women's real change in our society has been disruptive, but feels evolutionarily necessary. So now 60% of the kids in college are women. More than 50% of medical students are women. They're not at the top in government and business, but there is real change and I think that has terrified everybody. It's terrified men and it's terrified women." As a result, she thinks, "women have performed a compensatory step back". Streep starts imagining out loud what the women who have made that step back tell themselves. "'I won't be sexy if I'm this - even though I want to be paid an equal amount, I still want to appear sexy, I still want to appear fragile, so I'll lose weight.' That's my theory about what women are doing anyway."

How does this theory play out in Hollywood? "Before the war," says Streep, "there were strong women in cinema played by women like Barbara Stanwyck, Hepburn and Crawford, who were allowed to be strong and dominate movies because they were in no way a threat. In the real world, the characters they played were a fantasy. Basically, women were at home. When the second world war - in which women had been working and liked working - was over, in the 50s, suddenly there was Marilyn Monroe, Jill St John and Brigitte Bardot because women could not be seen as strong any more. And that was because, in the real world, it was no longer just a fantasy that there were strong women."

But why did the era of the 70s and 80s, when there were once more strong roles for women in Hollywood, come to an end? I can understand why men might be terrified of strong women, but why would women find them frightening too? "Because," says Streep, "women want to be with men." She starts to laugh and shrugs as if to say - it happens. "You're so slow!"

A legend lightens up (The Guardian)

photo: lahiquera.net

Pondering the Chick Flick

Most women who work in the film business in any capacity absolutely hate the term "chick flick." They all wish the term had never been invented (who should we blame for this?) since it seems that even films made before the term was coined in the late 1980s with this definition -- "a motion picture intended to appeal especially to women" (Webster's On-line Dictionary) -- have been shoved into this category. And let's make no mistake about this: the chick flick is a pejorative and demeaning. And to take it a step further: by assigning films that star women or are about women as "chick flicks" we take away any power the women might have since quite frankly we can't say anything of import in a "lite" "chick flick" film.

It used to be the women could star or co-star in romantic comedies, but the reality in Hollywood today is that most movies that star women and are about women are no longer coined romantic comedies, they seem to be stuck with the chick flick moniker. We all know that there are other movies and stories that star women and deal with issues of substance, but most of those films now have to go the indie route and will usually not get seen by a large audience.

The studios are not in the business anymore of making movies that star women because quite frankly they don't play well overseas and the international market has become a huuuge priority for the studios. Just look at the handful of recent releases starring women from this year: You have Nim's Island (which I have not seen yet and is more targeted at kids even though it stars Jodie Foster); The Other Boleyn Girl; and the one true success this winter 27 Dresses.

The others like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Penelope, Mad Money, Bonneville, some better than others, all struggled, with Miss Pettigrew (the best movie of the lot doing the best with $10 m so far.)

As you can tell I am ambivalent at best with regard to the chick flick and so when I saw the NY Times story this morning with the Title "Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks (and Hopes to Lure the Guys) it made me want to tear my hair out. The premise is that Hollywood is all nervous about two movies now shooting Confessions of a Shopaholic starring Isla Fisher and directed by P.J. Hogan (a guy) based on the Sophie Kinsella novel, and Julia & Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams directed by Nora Ephron and based on the best selling memoir of the same name.

The male producers of the film are really trying to make it clear that these films are for a wide audience not just women. Uber producer Jerry Bruckheimer said about his film Shopaholic: “We all have spending habits, a lot of us do,” and Laurence Mark said about Julie & Julia: "We hope this will be a movie for everyone who likes eating."

What pissed me off about this is that they never have these conversations or issues with movies that star men. Why is everyone so nervous about movies that star women? It's probably because that Hollywood is predicated on the fact that women will go see movies that star men and that men won't go see movies that star women.

But women go to the movies, we bought over 50% of the tickets in 2006 (according to the MPAA) and in fact older women are growing as an audience. It's just that we don't run out on opening weekend because maybe we have other priorities and also maybe because the theatres are too crowded. I think that Hollywood should a) make better movies that star women cause no one wants to see a stinker; and b) stop worrying about getting men to come see movies about women and try and figure out how to get WOMEN to see these movies cause we all know they are doing a bad job at that.

Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks (And Hopes to Lure the Guys)