Flickgrrl

"Those huge success include Nancy Meyers' Something's Gotta Give, Amy Heckerling's Clueless, Gurinder Chadha's Bend it Like Beckham, and Julie Taymor's Frida."

I liked Clueless, and never saw the other three. But "huge success" is a rather relative term here I would guess.

Box office (total US gross):

Clueless: $56,598,476
Something's Gotta Give: $124,685,242
Bend it Like Beckham: $32,541,719
Frida: $25,885,000

Contrast: I chose these at random without checking numbers first,

Old School: $75,155,000
MI3: $133,501,348
Casino Royale: $167,365,000
Finding Nemo: $339,714,978

I'm not sure what the solution is here, but the lesson is obvious, you can make a ton of money making the same spy vs spy movie that has been made 1000 times already, or you can take a risk on a movie like Clueless where you have a very defined demographic, and hope it croses over.

Even bad formula thrillers with big name male leads break a 100 million. Changing this would depend on the American movie going masses to actually give a crap about what they see, when in reality, there just there for the explosions by and large.

In addition I was quite shocked by the Nemo number, here you don't even have to hire real actors, or have a set and you make 300 mil?

What is the incentive to big houses to change what they are doing? Next year we'll have another Rambo, the year after that, another Die Hard, then another Indian Jones. Their numbers will dwarf those of the "huge success" above.

I'd love to know what you think could cure this other than requiring IQ tests to buy movie tickets.

YT:

As we know, filmmaking is a global industry. These are worldwide figures on three films, I didn't have time to get the worldwide on "Clueless."

Something's Gotta Give:
$266,728,738

Bend it Like Beckham: $76,583,333

Frida: $56,298,474

These are films w/o special effects and made relatively inexpensively as opposed to "Casino Royale" and "Finding Nemo," thus their ROI (return on investment) was probably greater than any of the (very excellent) films you cited.

None of these films would have been successes unless they crossed demographic lines. Men I know and hear from loved all of them.

What could cure this? Make films for everyone instead of for demographic niches. That's why Nemo was so successful/

Thanks for your comment,

It's fairly basic. Men simply don't want women to succeed. I can't pinpoint why. Maybe, they're a threat. Maybe men genuinely dislike women. Whenever I mention that to a guy, his homophobia antennae come up, saying "I'm not gay." To which I reply, there's a difference between liking women and wanting to have sex with women. Perhaps it's too intricate a concept. Anyway, bottom line: For most men, women - particularly bright, talented, successful women - are a threat and must be suppressed. Can you imagine your average male movie executive being confronted by a brainiac such as Elaine May in the '70s? I can and my image isn't pretty. I'm still convinced that "Ishtar" was imprinted to fail. Call me a conspiracy theorist but those are my thoughts.

Who calls Warner Brothers- "Warners?"

Hollywood hates women. That's why so much of their stuff is just shit.

Joe writes: "There's a difference between liking women and wanting to have sex with them." Possible illustration ... David Mamet?

To be complete, this discussion must include the costs of producing and marketing these movies. My guess is that MI3 cost 3 or 4 times more to market than CLUELESS, when corrected for inflation, etc. The budget was probably 10 times as great, even when corrected for inflation. Factor in DVD and television revenue, numbers which are not readily accessible, and you can start to get an idea of the economics that drive the decisions of what films get made. That said, perhaps the biggest unmentioned factor is the foreign market, which now provides well more than half the revenue from feature films.

Simply put, action films with male stars make more money internationally. Light on dialog, as well as the kind of idiosyncracies that don't translate easily from culture to culture (that they also lack the intelligence that makes moviegoing more than a purely visceral experience merits further discussion at another time), these films cross borders and make money.

Parenthetically, it's worth mentioning that, domestically at least, theaters make roughly 70% of their money from concession sales. Exhibitors don't drive production decisions, but it's a fact that male-dominated films attract male-dominated audiences, and that's the audience that shows up at the mulit-plex for dinner.

Here's a question for you, Carrie, and anyone out there who might know the research: does word of mouth spread more effectively among men or women?

To Not Anon: Warner Brothers has been referred to as Warners for nearly 80 years in industry trades.

To JDM: The line between lust and hate, as that between love and fear, is eyelash-thick. I don't think Hollywood, to the degree we can ascribe a unified consciousness to it, hates women. I think the emotion is lust tempered with fear.

Abramorama: I have never talked to marketing gurus about whether WOM (word-of-mouth) is gender related, though I do remember a distinctly unliberated sociology professor begin a lecture with the phrase, "The past century has seen the rise of three powerful forms of communication, "Telegraph, telephone and tell-a-woman." On a related note, according to Variety, one of those aforementioned industry trades, the film "Across the Universe" is getting incredible WOM from teenage girls.

I hate to say it, but this "sexism in Hollywood" line of reasoning is really an issue for sophomores. This clearly has nothing to do with the industry - it's to do with the market. Filmmakers don't have any responsibility to women or minority/ethnic groups. To suggest, as you seem to do here, that we in the US (or worldwide) are being deprived of films by conspirators interested in keeping men in the industry's driver's seat is - to put it mildly -naive. Or, to put it strongly, the product of someone who has been fortunate enough to make a living writing movie critiques.

"What could cure this? Make films for everyone instead of for demographic niches. That's why Nemo was so successful"

I hope you don't mean that across the board, Carrie. "Mysterious Skin," "Daughters of the Dust," "32 Short films about Glenn Gould," "Orlando" etc. weren't made for "everyone." I know those aren't big studio films, but still. With that mentality, Hollywood would have kept making films like "Star!" and "Dr. Dolittle" in the 1960s, and not risked money on projects like "Midnight Cowboy".

OLV26,

No one is saying that Hollywood has a responsibility to demographic sectors. We're saying that making movies with women on the screen and behind the camera is good business.

Dan,

No one is saying that every movie should be made for everyone. And goodness, Star! was good for no one.

Thanks for your posts,

You wrote:

"A decade ago when out of 130 Oscar nominees there was only one African-American, people of color in Hollywood protested the "blackout" and the industry responded by opening doors and opportunities."

"Opening doors and opportunities????" That's news to me. You must explain how that is - what, Black folks start getting awards for playing typical "urban-themed" roles or directing films that fulfill the usual assumptions and White fantasies about "Black life." You call Three-6 Mafia's horrid Dirty South rap soundtrack receiving an Oscar an "opened door?" Denzel Washington can't get an Oscar for his heart-moving portrayal of Malcolm X, or his moving performance in Glory (and many other great films unmentioned), but "since we're opening doors, let's give the Negro an Oscar for playing a heartless, greedy and corrupt Black ghetto cop." Halle Berry finally gets props - but after she does saucy, almost NC-17 rated sex scenes with Billy Bob Thornton. Interesting message there: blame "gangsta rap" for degrading women, but give Oscars to Black women only when they play into sexual stereotypes prevalent since slavery. Puh-leaze ... don't blow that White women liberation smoke in my face, cuz that's how it comes off.

Jin Megen,

Agree that Denzel Washington was robbed for "Malcolm X," which was 1993, about three years before the "Blackout" protest. The protest was a public shaming. Among the fruits of that protest were "Ali," "Ray" and more colorblind casting, which has advantaged Will Smith and Don Cheadle. Yes, it rankles that except for Halle Berry, there are no bankable African American women on screen. Yes, it rankles that there are few African American women behind the camera. And that when one such as Kasi Lemmons makes a terrific movie like "Talk to Me," the distributor fails to promote it.

Thanks for your post,

It makes sense that most women in movies are treated as accessories to the men: that's how the men producing the movies treat the women in their private lives.

Exactly what demographic did Jodi and Warner's expect to attract with "The Brave One"? I don't go to movie theatres much any more but did regularly for four decades and don't know any woman who would have really wanted to see this movie. It's a formulaic action-driven vehicle. Like it or not, men prefer to see male action heroes (unless they look like Angelina)and vigilantes, and woman largely prefer not to see them at all. Jodi's been doing a lot of movies that grown women don't find all that appealing - locked in a panic room, one's child disappearing on a plane and no believing her. I can't remember the last time I thought she had a good role - Summersby, The Accused?