The Other Voices: On Films Directed by Women and People of Color

When Once Upon a Time in Hollywood came out, there was a lot of Tarantino blowback, which created Tarantino blowback blowback, and before too long, everyone was arguing over whether or not Tarantino is racist and/or sexist once again. Nobody has come to any generally acceptable conclusions, and nobody is going to change Tarantino, so I thought.

OK. What if we all just stop worrying about whether or not Tarantino is a racist or a sexist? What if we just kind of watch his movies or don’t, depending on what you’re into. And instead of arguing about it, what if we all just vowed that as we watch Tarantino films, and Scorsese films, and Spielberg films, and the films of a thousand other genius white cis male directors – what if we also make a conscious effort to watch films by women and people of color? That way, yes, you’re getting your white boy director fix, but you’re also exposing yourself to some voices you didn’t know about before, and helping to support material from artists who have a harder time getting funding for production and marketing.

The truth is, when a director is a woman or a person of color, they are far more likely to hire women and people of color to work on the cast and crew, and that’s good for everyone. And even though statistically, films with diverse casts do better box office numbers, we still suffer under the delusion that only white men really know how to direct. Women and people of color simply don’t get the same level of exposure.

Here’s an example of it at work. It’s a TV staffing example, but an example nonetheless. I LOVE Rick and Morty. OBSESSED with Rick and Morty. Watch Rick and Morty over and over again all day forever. Here’s me at Comic Con in my Rick and Morty coat I made, so you know my bona fides.

But if you listen to the commentary on season 1 episodes, it’s cringeworthy. It’s so BROEY. While Justin Roiland is talking about pretty graphic things he’d like to do to Summer, you also hear stories about using binoculars to watch women walk around on the lot below. You can hear the discomfort in Dan Harmon’s voice in an attempt to convince the listener that they really tried to get women onstaff, but no women happened to be interested. And maybe they did. I don’t know – I wasn’t there. But I do know that most people in the TV writing community like to pull from people they already know, and if you are a guy who graphically describes what you’d like to do to a female cartoon character, you’re unlikely to be the kind of guy with a whole lot of platonic female friends. They probably didn’t personally know a whole lot of women writers who wanted to be in a room like that. I know that if I could be sure that the room was a safe space, I’d LOVE to be on the Rick and Morty writing staff – but would I feel safe there after hearing that commentary? Absolutely not. But fast forward, and sure enough, eventually they found women to write for the show. The point is, they probably didn’t look very hard in the beginning. Sometimes people will ask one woman and say well, we tried. But they don’t actively search – they just look around at the most obvious people around them – and the truth is, because it’s so much harder to get exposure as a woman or a person of color, sometimes YOU HAVE TO SEARCH. It’s not a meritocracy. Cis white men are taken more seriously, whether they deserve it or not. They will always be the most obvious candidates. But they won’t always be the best ones.

So.

I Tweeted my proposal:

And you’d think I’d ask some white dudes to rip their own arms off. They were offended at the idea that I’d ask them to do any work. “But I am enlightened!” They said. “I judge a film by the quality, not the skin color or gender of the person who made it! How dare you suggest otherwise! This is an outrage!” (I am paraphrasing).

They were seriously so mad. I argued at first, hoping I could reach a few, but almost every conversation ended in either a block or a mute, so eventually I just started pre-emptively muting all of them.

Some of them were enraged that I hadn’t told them what to watch, so I decided to follow my own advice and started my own deep dive into films directed by women and people of color. I tweeted out a request to my followers to give me suggestions, and I got back an avalanche of recommendations, both foreign and domestic, and it’s still growing:

And that’s what I plan to do next. Once a week, I’m going to watch one film by a woman or person of color, and then I’m going to write up my thoughts about it and tell you where to find it in case you want to join me. Every week, on Monday, you can find my article and the assignment for next week here.

I encourage you to engage if you’d like. You can email me about this here to give me your thoughts on this film or suggest one:

Or comment below. I’d love it is this became a conversation, not just me blabbing on. However, anyone commenting in a negative way about the existence of this column/project overall, or saying anything sexist or racist will automatically be deleted. I’m not having that crap here (TheOtherVoicesATH@gmail.com). But meaningful thoughts? Always welcome.

Hopefully, we can all be introduced to some films we never would have seen otherwise.

We’ll start next week, on Monday, with director Julia Hart’s recent release, FAST COLOR, which you can currently find on Amazon, ITunes, Vudu, Google Play, Redbox, and Fandango.

The Death of the Western: the 50th Anniversary of The Wild Bunch

The genre of the western film was a staple of Hollywood cinema from the earliest days of film. It was a genre that would continue to attract audiences throughout the decades. The first film that showed that cinema could be a commercial success was a western called The Great Train Robbery. The era of John Wayne only served to further blast the Western further into the stratosphere, with Wayne personally starring in over 80 different Westerns alone. It was a genre that seemed like it would never die- until 1969 with the release of The Wild Bunch.

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In Space They Still Can’t Hear You Scream: The 40th Anniversary of Alien

Still seen as one of the most iconic horror films of the modern era, Alien has re-written the book on what a Sci Fi Horror film could be, and in doing so, has launched the careers of several influential people in modern cinema. From its humble beginnings to its worldwide phenomenon- even 40 years after its release, Alien still has the power to terrify audiences to this very day.

The brainchild of writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the story of how Alien came to be is one of risk and timing. Dan O’Bannon worked on a student film called Dark Star with John Carpenter and it was through this that he got into contact with Ronald Shusett. Shusett had heard about Dark Star from a friend and contacted both O’Bannon and Carpenter. After a phone call with both, he found that he had more of a rapport with O’Bannon and invited him to his house. They both decided that they would like to work together on a project, and Shusett had acquired the rights to the Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. Meanwhile, O’Bannon had been working on his own script about an alien monster that systematically attacks and kills the crew of a space ship. He had written 29 pages so far and was stuck. Shusett read the initial pages and decided that they should focus on O’Bannon’s script as it would be a cheaper film to shoot.

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Time Travel in Film: An Attempt to Explain the Science of Time Manipulation

Time travel is a trope that has existed in fiction for over a century. From the days of H.G. Welles’ novel The Time Machine, audiences have been captivated by the idea of traveling through time. And really, why not? The idea of being able to travel back or forward in time-to see the times of old or look into a future that awaits us-is a fascinating concept. It has also raised questions as to how the mechanics of time travel and changing timelines would work. I am going to attempt to explain some theories of time travel, which films use these theories and how they apply.

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Come with Me if You Want to Live: The 35 Year Legacy of The Terminator

It’s not very often that a film comes along that will launch the career of one of the most financially successful directors of the modern age of cinema. It’s even rarer that it will also make the star of the film a household name, especially with a name that was so difficult to pronounce, he had been told that he would never be a star because of it. But that is exactly what The Terminator did to James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The original idea came from a fever dream James Cameron had in March 1982. Cameron had collapsed onto his bed with a temperature of 102 degrees, and in his sleep he conjured up an image of a chrome skeleton emerging from fire, torn in half and dragging itself across the floor with a kitchen knife. Cameron sketched the image down and one of the first things he thought was how he hadn’t seen anything like that in a movie before. That image then inspired him to start writing a treatment, which was initially just called Terminator. Cameron wanted to appeal to the kids who go to the cinema to see a cool action film, but also the older academics who would think there was some sort of socio-political significance hidden behind all the action: An intelligent Sci-Fi Action film with a stylish slasher-movie edge to it.

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Remake Fever

WE AS A CULTURE ARE FASCINATED WITH REMAKES, BUT MAYBE WE SHOULDN’T BE.

It seems that a lot of cinema today is either a sequel, part of a wide cinematic franchise, or a remake/reboot/re-imagining of an existing property. The term “reboot” has become the go-to phrase for when studios want to remake an older film. In my opinion, the only thing that gets “rebooted” is a crashed computer, but that’s just me.

Remake fever is kicking into high gear again, with Disney remaking their old animated films as live action ones and remakes of male-driven films with female leads, and it has been announced that Ben Affleck won’t be returning as Batman in the next Batman film, which is sure to lead to a reboot of the character, again. But it’s not just films: TV series are going through this as well, with the recent remakes of Magnum PI, MacGyver and many others, as well as talk of a reboot of Lost, which has been off the air for fewer than ten years. It got me thinking about this fascination with remakes.

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Captain Marvel: Review

To fully review a movie like Captain Marvel you need to spoil some things.  It’s inevitable and necessary. For those of you who wish to go in as blind as I did, I’ll keep this first part spoiler free.  My version of spoiler free, which means ZERO plot and character details.

Anyone who has ever listened to my podcast or read any of my work knows I’m very critical of Marvel.  I feel that too many people grant them a pass on all their problems and grade on a curve. When movies like “Ant-Man and the Wasp” are getting 7s and 8s out of 10, I feel like I missed a round of kool-aid.  Not saying that it was a bad film at all; it was a blast. Was it Captain Marvel? Absolutely not. Captain Marvel is exactly the movie I wanted and avoids nearly all the pitfalls I was afraid of. I haven’t been this impressed with a Marvel outing since the first Avengers.

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Composers and the Movies that Don’t Deserve Them

THERE ARE SOME GREAT MOVIE SCORES OUT THERE ATTACHED TO SOME REAL DUDS.

I am a huge fan of Film, TV and Video Game scores; easily 90% of my music is made up of them. I have several composers that I will listen to no matter what they do, and I have even watched films based on the music they composed for them. What I have come to notice throughout all of this is that some films do not deserve the music composed for them.

When it comes to music in films it is usually the last thing that is done. The film is almost out of money and people are brought in to create incredible compositions to compliment the visual feast of what is on screen. That’s not always the case, however. Sometimes the music doesn’t compliment the visuals, but rather supersedes them because the visuals just aren’t that good to begin with. The music in a film can create emotional responses as well as physical. I remember sitting in the cinema watching Avengers: Infinity War and the moment where Thor arrived in Wakanda brought a huge smile to my face. A huge part of that excitement came from that bombastic orchestral score. I have listened to it numerous times but I will repeatedly listen to a track called “The Forge” which contains the moment that Thor arrived in Wakanda. When that music kicks in I feel like I can do anything. Music has a way of instilling these raw emotional responses and film music is charged with doing that whilst also complimenting the visuals.

Because of my love of film scores I take note of particular composers and seek out their work without ever having watched the film they are written for. Sometimes when I finally get around to watching the film it’s…well, to put it politely…not good. I’m left with a sense of disappointment, not because the film is bad, but because the music I listened to was far too good to be associated with the terrible film I just watched. And that, my friends, is disappointing.

A perfect example of this phenomenon was the 2012 feature remake of The Sweeney. Lorne Balfe composed the score and at the time I had only heard his Assassin’s Creed III score, which was spectacular. When I listened to the music from The Sweeney I was blown away by how good it was. The experience was intense, ratcheting up the tension before opening up and becoming a bombastic action score that to me rivaled some of the biggest names in Film Composition. It was so good that I thought the film would be worth watching. So, I did just that, for about 40 minutes. What an awful mess with terrible dialogue and acting. The only saving grace was the music but I didn’t have to watch the terrible film to listen to the incredible music. I went back to listening to the music and tried to forget about the terrible film it was associated with, and in my mind made up a much better one.

This was the first time I had thought about the quality of the music vs the quality of the film. In recent years, big budget blockbuster films have had incredible scores composed for them while the films themselves have been by the numbers summer VFX films. Hans Zimmer has a name as a big blockbuster composer and it’s interesting listening to the music he composes for big budget blockbusters compared to the stuff he composes for the more story-driven films. Films like Interstellar and more recently Blade Runner 2049 feel like they have more thought put into the music, whereas his action scores are, whilst exciting, very much by the numbers, much like the films they are written for.

Rawr.

The most recent example of a bad movie having a great film score was the 2017 reboot of The Mummy. Brian Tyler composed a unique and interesting score that mixed Middle Eastern instruments with traditional orchestra, all of which lead to a very original sound. Mixing the two cultures expertly in the music created something that was much better than the film it was supposed to accompany. What was also extraordinary about Tyler’s score was that for the most part it was a live orchestra which is becoming more of a rarity with the advances in music synthesizers and the need to cut costs wherever possible.

Terrible films aren’t going away any time soon, but at the very least their scores will be top notch. These composers who are putting in the work will go on to bigger and “hopefully” better things, almost like some kind of composer rite of passage. If they can compose amazing music for these terrible films, then imagine what they could do with something of a higher caliber. Without terrible films needing talented but unknown composers, people like Brian Tyler, Lorne Balfe and Ramin Djawadi may not have been able to build a portfolio of work that got them their well deserved A-List assignments.

Mystery Men (1999)

A LOOK BACK AT A DUMB, IRREVERENT SUPER HERO FILM THAT REMAINS MY FAVORITE.

Man, 1999 was such a vibrant year for film. You had movies like Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, 10 Things I Hate About You, Office Space, American Pie Fight Club, The Mummy, and even Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut. A veritable cinematic feast, if you will. I can’t think of another time period that such an impact on my taste, humor, and sensibilities.

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From Bomb to Modern Classic: The Shawshank Redemption 25 years later

A LOOK AT A BOX OFFICE BOMB THAT WOULD BECOME A MODERN CLASSIC.

Stephen King is mostly known as a horror writer; however, he has ventured into other genres on numerous occasions, although mostly with shorter stories. He wrote an anthology of short stories that made up the collection Different Seasons. One of the stories in this collection was called “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, which writer and director Frank Darabont would option for $5,000 and turn into one of the most celebrated motion pictures of all time.

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