‘Women in Hollywood’ An interview

‘Women in Hollywood’ An interview with Empire Magazine’s Hellen O’Hara

New perspectives on cinema grant us a greater appreciation for the wide scope of filmmakers and diverse subject matter that makes film what it is. Considering new perspectives on cinema enables us to further our understanding of the issues of today and the struggles of others. Cinema, and its many different perspectives, is an invaluable tool for this reason. This sentiment is explored in fascinating detail by Helen O’Hara, ‘editor-at-large’ of Empire Magazine and author of Women Vs. Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film. We sat down with O’Hara to talk about her book, the status of cinema today, and the importance of new perspectives on film.

O’Hara’s book chronicles the complex history of women in Hollywood cinema, ranging from the silent era to the #MeToo movement of today. It serves as a crucial counteragent to over a century of deliberate downplaying of female filmmakers – and their influence on cinema – by an industry that is still male dominated. Forgotten pioneers of the filmmaking world, such as Alice Guy and Anita Loos, have had their contributions to the industry airbrushed from the ‘canon’ of cinema. The effects of this systematic airbrushing of history negatively impacts practically all prospective female or minority filmmakers today. This topic epitomises the importance of new perspectives to cinema, a fact not lost on O’Hara.

O’Hara affirms that it wasn’t pre-destined that cinema would end up as another patriarchal cultural institution. “Not all of it was deliberate, some of it was Hollywood trying to advertise sound, and make it clear that sound was worth investing in.” This, in turn, led to the death of silent film – where the male/ female playing field was considerably more level. “That was kind of an unfortunate side effect that women were affected by.” But it’s impossible to ignore that hostile forces pushed female filmmakers out of cinema over a prolonged period, and still continue to do so. A toxic inclination still stains the industry: O’Hara points out the “subconscious [attitude] of saying ‘what does a director look like? He looks like that guy; he doesn’t look like her’”.

Representation in cinema has long been an issue, and O’Hara concedes that everyday can be a battle. “I’ve been doing mental gymnastics for years; I think you have to as a female film fan,” O’Hara explains. “You’re always mentally adding a caveat, you just know he’s had opportunities that a female director or star wouldn’t have had... you just have to mentally acknowledge that and move on, or you’d just get really depressed, angry and frustrated.”

This perspective on film is the product of cinema’s grotesque track-record with marginalising female, LGTBQ+ and non-white filmmakers and actors. To even have to hold this attitude while consuming cinema is an injustice, and it’s one that is distressingly ever-relevant even today. The consequences of this underrepresentation both in the canon of cinema and in the current landscape are far-reaching.

O’Hara, in her book, shares one alarming anecdote of how Amma Asante – BAFTA award-winning director of A Way of Life (2004) and Belle (2013) – reacted with horror at the notion of directing her own screenplay. Only after her agent insisted that she was more than capable of directing her feature debut herself did she grab the reins – the rest is history. Asante’s instinctive desire to entrust her work into “the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing” – subconsciously, she imagined a male director – is an indictment of the status of equality in cinema. “It’s really antithetical to anybody in Hollywood to admit that there are structural forces standing in their way,” O’Hara explains. “It’s quite hard to get female directors to admit openly that they face these issues. It’s a Catch-22: if you complain, it’s sour grapes. If you don’t complain, nobody pays attention.”

This Catch-22 is the dilemma underrepresented filmmakers face in the film industry. It’s understandable that many aspiring female filmmakers simply try to “play the game”, considering the exhaustive evidence that speaking up about the inequality they face is a one-way ticket to ‘movie jail’. O’Hara brings up Mimi Leder and Patty Jenkins as textbook examples of this phenomenon. Mimi Leder, a heavyweight in the 90s TV industry, made the leap to blockbuster cinema with successes like The Peacemaker (1997) and Deep Impact (1998). However, she followed this up with drama Pay It Forward (2000), which received poor reviews and was a moderate box-office flop. She wouldn’t make another Hollywood film for eighteen-years, ending a long and involuntary return to TV with Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018) – which, as O’Hara notes in her book, is humorously appropriate. In Patty Jenkins’ case, there was a fourteen-year gap between her Oscar-winning character study Monster (2003) and box office smash Wonder Woman (2017), which further exhibits the lack of faith given to female filmmakers by the patriarchal institutions of Tinseltown.

These cases highlight the urgency forus to continue to explore ‘new perspectives’ of cinema. In this case, the new perspective is acknowledging the extensive history of female filmmakers that has been – and continues to be – excised from Hollywood’s history. New perspectives on film afford a more threedimensional and progressive attitude in ourselves and our outlook on film. This is a vital outlook to have, especially if you aspire to be part of the next wave of filmmakers. O’Hara places emphasis on the importance of this. “The simplest thing you can do is listen,” she advises. “Go on Twitter, go on social media, follow some deaf activists, some black activists. Follow people with different perspectives, and different life experiences; learn what people are complaining about, learn what the issues are.” The importance of remembering the trailblazers of cinema that have been lost to the patriarchal epidemic of Hollywood is irrefutable. Equally important is being aware of these issues and making sure we don’t perpetuate them. “Listen to diverse voices and educate yourself on what the issues are,” O’Hara affirms. “The Deadpool 2 writers saying they had never heard the term ‘fridging’ – don’t be that guy! Know what ‘fridging’ is, know what these terms are, know what these people are complaining about and asking for.” If you don’t know what ‘fridging’ means, you know what your first step is.

-Luke Bradley