NYT

Telling it like it is: The ugly truth about sexism (and ageism)

chick flick, journalism trends, media, Movies, studios, Writing

Manohla Dargis’s barbaric yawp about Hollywood went viral yesterday, and for good reason: The NYT critic let loose on rampant sexism in an interview with feminist-leaning Jezebel, spewing four-letter words with abandon. The interview made explicit that which her Sunday NYT essay on female directors suggested: She’s deeply pissed off about studios that repeatedly fail women in their choices of material and talent.

Among the many choice bits:

Working within the system has not worked. It has not helped women filmmakers or, even more important, you and me, women audiences, to have women in the studio system.

and a personal pet peeve — the constant surprise that women like seeing entertaining movies about women:

This, gee whiz, Sex and the City‘s a hit, Twilight, hmm, wonder what’s going on here. Maybe they should not be so surprised. In the trade press, women audiences are considered a niche. How is that even possible? We’re 51 percent of the audience.

It’s not just the trade press, either; this surprise seems to creep into consumer box office reports as well.

Dargis is equally scathing about the suggestion that she take it easy on films directed by women, calling the notion “incredibly insulting.” But mostly she hopes that Kathryn Bigelow (pictured above) wins the Oscar for directing “The Hurt Locker,” a muscular action movie.

Ageism “Up in the Air”…

Glad she asked! ‘Free’ prodder

Books, digital media, N.Y. Times, Writing

Deborah Solomon, she of the penetrating questions, took Chris Anderson to task for l’affaire Wikipedia in yesterday’s NYT, eliciting a revealing exchange.

First she asked whether he considered plagiarism an extension of his freebie thesis, which batted down thusly:

“I wish I could explain all my actions as being intellectually consistent, but this one is just plain old sloppiness. There are questions about whether one should cite Wikipedia, and I’m one of those who think you should.”

Nice slight of hand: He starts out on a self-deprecating note, then asserts a sense of honor about, of all things, crediting Wikipedia in a supposedly rigorous economic treatise. Luckily, Solomon calls him on it.

“Frankly, if you want to be a public intellectual, you shouldn’t be using Wikipedia to research a book of ideas in the first place,” she observes.

Anderson’s less than satisfactory response: “The level of scholarship and analysis on Wikipedia is improving by the day, and we ignore it at our peril.”

Again, note the self-righteous tone. Anderson clearly has the power of his convictions.

Solomon also touches on the quality issue, which bugged me so, noting that people have proven willing to pay subscription fees for HBO, but Anderson rejects that model as so 15 years ago. “The marketplace wants free,” he parries. “Consumers want free, and if you decide to set up a subscription service, then your competitor will make a free one.”

Did I miss something here? Is HBO really suffering because of the free TV or Web programming? If anything, struggles to replicate earlier programming success — a quality issue — seem to have been the issue. And I won’t even reiterate the iTunes example. Oh wait, I just did.

‘Beverly Hills Adjacent’: Where to begin?

chick lit, New York Times, Writing

bevhillsadjacentI’ll say this for Jennifer Steinhauer: She definitely writes about what she knows in “Beverly Hills Adjacent.” The L.A. Bureau Chief for the NYT drowns her first novel, co-written by actress-author Jessica Hendra, with knowing details and familiar showbiz figures. Some are so thinly-disguised, in fact, you wonder why they bothered. (Jenna Mills for Jenna Elfman? Couldn’t they do better?)

What I can’t understand is why Steinhauer decided to write such a frothy piece of chick lit. It seems strange for a journo charged with directing hard news coverage to go in such a direction. Sure, other newspaper reporters write: Mary McNamara contributed a similarly frothy tome titled “Oscar Season” a year ago, but she’s an entertainment reporter, now TV critic, for LAT, and does not oversee hard news. Male reporters have written their fair share of genre fiction over the years, but those have tended toward mystery novels with some death to add a harder edge. I can’t think of anything this fluffy from a newspaper journo of her stature. Maybe I’m just forgetting.

Steinhauer further muddied the waters by letting Jamie Lynton, wife of Sony Pictures honcho Michael, host a book party at their house. When Gawker called her out on it, the scribe brushed aside any suggestion of conflict of interest, parrying, “Do I cover the movie beat?” She pointed out that she has nothing to do with cultural coverage, and reports to the national desk. Her husband Ed Wyatt, however, is a TV reporter for the paper.

To make matters worse, the book isn’t that good. There are funny moments, and compelling enough characters to carry readers through, but overall the material’s very thin. Like many beginning novelists, the writers mistake brand names and established regional haunts for character development. Of course the exercise moms prefer Sprinkles cupcakes to June’s hand-crafted ginger cookies! And they wear stretchy yoga pants everywhere! Maybe this will seem fresh to outsiders, but it’s very obvious to anyone who’s spent time in, or around, showbiz. Would that the writers spent a little more time on creating characters rather than types and oppressive scene setting.

As McNamara noted in her LAT review, the book “is so front-loaded with details it almost collapses: It’s not just a cupcake from Sprinkles, it’s a red velvet cupcake from Sprinkles; a character didn’t just wait tables when she came to L.A., she waitressed at Kate Mantilini.” A little local accuracy adds flavor, McNamara writes, but the volume here threatens to consume the story line.

The two main characters, UCLA prof June and her character actor husband Mitch are the most fully realized. The book follows their tandem career crises — his comic battle to get cast during pilot season and her struggle to remain faithful as she vies for tenure. Naturally, there’s plenty of second guessing about their move to L.A. from New York, where Mitch pursued theater, not big bucks.

The writing improves toward the end, becoming more fluid and less epigrammatic. Perhaps Steinhauer’s next novel will take up where she left off, and not head down the same tired road again.