"Hollywood has realized that the best way to deal with its female troubles is to not have any, women, that is. (NYT)
Yet, after those Warner Brothers
titles fizzled, the online chatter was that the studio’s president for
production, Jeff Robinov, had vowed it would no longer make movies with
female leads. A studio representative denied he made the comments. 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.
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.
Nowhere is our irrelevance more starkly apparent than during the summer, the ultimate boys’ club. Over the next few months the screens will reverberate with the romping-stomping of comic book titans like Iron Man and the Hulk. The sexagenarian Harrison Ford will be cracking his Indy whip (some old men get a pass, after all, especially when Steven Spielberg is on board) alongside the fast-talking sprout from “Transformers.” Hellboy will relock and load, tongue and cigar planted in cheek. Action heroes like Will Smith, Brendan Fraser, Nicolas Cage, Mark Wahlberg and Vin Diesel will run amok, as will funny guys like Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Jack Black and Seth Rogen.
And in August, Anna Faris stars in a comedy called “The House Bunny,” in which she plays a Playboy Bunny who is ejected from the Mansion because she’s too old. In a trailer for the movie Ms. Faris’s pretty-in-pink character responds to her firing with surprise. “I’m 27!” she yelps. “But that’s like 59 in Bunny years,” a male friend explains. In Hollywood years too, he might as well have added."
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