When The Hollywood Reporter released a brutally honest breakdown of this year’s Oscars from a male producer, detailing why he cast the votes he did, it brought up a very good point: maybe men shouldn’t be in charge of making decisions about movie awards if very easy story timelines confuse them.
A major problem with Hollywood (and even more so with award shows) comes from the makeup of the voting membership that chooses what they think is the best work out there. So, for this unnamed man (Did he know how ridiculous he sounded? Is that why he’s anonymous?) to, essentially, brush off Little Women to praise movies that are made from Hollywood “royalty” or idolize Hollywood, it makes me question whether or not the landscape of Hollywood ever really has the ability to change.
The problem is that this producer discounted Little Women because he was somehow unable to distinguish between Paris, New York, and the childhood home of the March sisters, which isn’t hard because, you know, Paris looks a lot different than New York, and New York looks a lot different than … an orchard.
What also isn’t hard is to see why he found it difficult: He obviously didn’t care to give the film his full attention, especially because he liked other movies with even more confusing timelines. Do you know what movie he really liked out of this season, though? The Irishman. Should we tell him that’s also nonlinear and actually can be confusing at times? Probably because that movie is 8 years long?
It’s just upsetting because literally … you can figure out the timeline of Little Women just by putting in the minimal effort, but if you don’t care about female stories from the get-go, why would you? What’s truly baffling is that he claims that he’s “not the only one” confused by the timeline. Who else? Other men? Because let me be extremely clear: I could show this movie to my nine-year-old niece, and she’d get it. Because Little Women does not make it hard to follow along. You just have to care enough to do so.
His comments on the timeline truly just leave you asking what movies this man produces …
With Little Women, the timeline was ridiculous — I was really confused sometimes, and I know I’m not the only one. Thank God she [star Saoirse Ronan] cut her hair, because that at least gave me a bit of a reference point.
Seriously? You couldn’t follow this storyline? Like truly, I’m sorry, but you had to just not have paid any kind of attention to what you were watching if it was this hard for you, a man who makes movies for a living. How did you possibly sit through Inception or even The Social Network? What about Pulp Fiction? Could you understand those male-centric stories easily enough?
Will Hollywood ever have that shift that we’re all waiting for? Honestly? Not with people like this in charge.
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