By Robert Goldrich
In a Los Angeles Film Festival session titled “Women Who Call The Shots,” panelists including showrunner Marta Kauffman (co-creator/executive producer of Friends), writers/directors Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Lovely & Amazing), reflected on various topics, perhaps most notably the lack of women filmmakers who are indeed calling the shots. In fact, prominent industry studies have actually found a decreasing number of female directors and execs in positions of power.
Kauffman—who is currently working on the new Netflix series Grace & Frankie starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin— thinks on one hand that the situation isn’t necessarily as grim as research suggests, noting that her writers’ room primarily consists of women and “my company is all women.” But Kauffman clearly sees a double standard, recalling a female costume designer who took time off to raise her children. When she decided to return to the workforce, she was asked, “What have you done lately?” Kauffman affirmed, “We have to stop that shit.”
Indeed an attitudinal adjustment is needed in some cases, continued Kauffman who recollected a male director who whenever he wanted a rewrite on a scene in Friends and even when standing right next to Kauffman would call out for her partner/series co-creator David Crane.
Granik meanwhile noted that she is seeing more women getting opportunities in the documentary discipline. Granik, an Oscar nominee in 2011 for Winter’s Bone (Best Adapted Screenplay), has wrapped her first documentary as director/writer, Stray Dog, which screened at the L.A. Film Fest.
Prince-Bythewood related that the lack of opportunities for women filmmakers and execs “makes no sense.” She affirmed, “Talent has no gender.”
And Holofcener said when she reads the entertainment trade press, she sees “a white male” industry, which she finds “sad and upsetting.” Describing herself and her fellow panelists as being among “the lucky ones,” Holofcener said she was honored to be part of the festival session. At the same time, her participation is a double-edged sword. While the panel celebrates women directors, “we’re being segregated” with this type of event. Part of her, she noted, bemoans that she’s on another “f-ing women’s panel.”
Review: Director John Crowley’s “We Live In Time”
It's not hard to spend a few hours watching Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield fall and be in love. In "We Live In Time," filmmaker John Crowley puts the audience up close and personal with this photogenic British couple through the highs and lows of a relationships in their 30s.
Everyone starts to think about the idea of time, and not having enough of it to do everything they want, at some point. But it seems to hit a lot of us very acutely in that tricky, lovely third decade. There's that cruel biological clock, of course, but also careers and homes and families getting older. Throw a cancer diagnosis in there and that timer gets ever more aggressive.
While we, and Tobias (Garfield) and Almut (Pugh), do indeed live in time, as we're constantly reminded in big and small ways — clocks and stopwatches are ever-present, literally and metaphorically — the movie hovers above it. The storytelling jumps back and forth through time like a scattershot memory as we piece together these lives that intersect in an elaborate, mystical and darkly comedic way: Almut runs into Tobias with her car. Their first chat is in a hospital hallway, with those glaring fluorescent lights and him bruised and cut all over. But he's so struck by this beautiful woman in front of him, he barely seems to care.
I suppose this could be considered a Lubitschian "meet-cute" even if it knowingly pushes the boundaries of our understanding of that romance trope. Before the hit, Tobias was in a hotel, attempting to sign divorce papers and his pens were out of ink and pencils kept breaking. In a fit of near-mania he leaves, wearing only his bathrobe, to go to a corner store and buy more. Walking back, he drops something in the street and bang: A new relationship is born. It's the... Read More