Starfish Envy

You're Gonna Love It

I know I've mentioned The Business of Being Born before.  

But just in case you're new or don't remember, TBOBB is a documentary by Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein about birthing in America.

If you're pregnant, it's must-watch.  If you're not pregnant, IT'S MUST-WATCH.

Watch it if you're a guy, watch it if you're a doctor, watch it if you know anyone who's ever going to give birth someday.  It's fascinating and eye-opening and educational.

But that's not what I want to tell you about tonight.

Tonight I want to tell you about More Business of Being Born!  

MBOBB is a four-part follow-up series to the original documentary.  Part One focuses on legendary midwife Ina May Gaskin, and is filmed largely at her birthing compound, The Farm-- which, having just finished reading Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, I was absolutely fascinated to see.

Part Two is all celebrities telling their birth stories.  Now, famous or not, I am all about hearing birth stories.  If I could walk up to random women at the grocery store and ask them to tell me their birth stories, I would.  Some women had natural births, others had epidurals, and at least one had a C-section.

Part Three covers the difference between midwives and doulas; hospital birth centers vs. free-standing birth centers; and the potential risks of inductions and C-sections.

Part Four is all about VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean).  I haven't watched it yet, since it's not applicable to me, but I'll certainly watch it at some point.  I have no doubt that it's enlightening and interesting.

If I weren't so busy with the exhausing business of being pregnant, I'd write something more analytical and incisive about it all.  Instead, I'll just say:  check it out.

The Business of Being Born is currently available on Netflix.  I rented More Business of Being Born on Apple TV.  

Bridesmaids Saves The Day

I got up this morning after eight hours of sleep, went to breakfast, came home, and took a two and a half hour nap.

THAT'S how tired I am.  (Pregnancy?  Progesterone?  Symptoms are the same.  I have no clue and wouldn't venture a guess.)

It's nine p.m. now.  I could've easily gone to bed at seven.  

Fortunately, I have Bridesmaids to keep me up until a reasonable hour.

I've watched it twice this weekend.  

For my money, no movie has better captured female friendship.  And it's easily the funniest movie I've seen in years.  From the opening bad-sex sounds to the Wilson-Phillips finale, there's not one second I don't love.

If you haven't seen it yet, you're in for something special.

And that's it for me and coherence.  Bedtime. 

The Hunger Games Trailer. Finally! Happy!

The first trailer for The Hunger Games.  

It's not much, but it's still enough to leave me breathless with excitement.

Just tellin' y'all now: if the movie is half as good as the books, it's gonna be better than Harry Potter.  For real. 

Get More: 2011 VMA, Music

 

Introducing A New Web Series... PERKS!

When WP and I first moved to LA, we joined a writers' group.  Over a period of about four years, the group was incredibly important to our development as writers.  Also, they were just cool people to hang out with.

One of those cool people, Bill Oliver, ended up studying to be a director and eventually moved to New York.  

WP and I were sad to see him go because in addition to being The Nicest Guy On The Planet, he's supremely talented.  

Want some evidence?

For your enjoyment, here's the pilot of a new web series, Perks.

Directed by Bill Oliver!

  

Let Go And Let Katherine Heigl

I admit, I've been annoyed by Katherine Heigl in the past.  

As a TV writer, it particularly rankled when she publicly belittled the Grey's Anatomy writers.  Because believe me when I say there are a lot of things writers and directors and crew members could say about the actors we've worked with, but we don't.  

And we won't.  (At least, not publicly.)

Because it's not cool.  It breaks The Code.

She BROKE THE CODE.

But whatever.

Because here's the thing.

I am DYING to see her new movie.

As in, cannot contain myself. Have been looking forward to it for months.  Would ditch work this morning and go see the matinee if I didn't have a dentist appointment.  Would ditch my dentist appointment if I didn't have kind of a bitch of a toothache.

The preview makes me laugh EVERY time I see it, and I've seen it at least six times now. From what I can tell, it will easily be the best romantic comedy of the year, and I am nothing if not a connoisseur of the romantic comedy.

So, Katherine Heigl, this is me letting bygones be bygones.

Life As We Know It, here I come. 

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Are you planning to see it?  If you get there before me, let me know how much you loved it.  Or didn't.  (But I think you'll love it.)

The Best Movies Ever Made (According To Me)

Whenever anyone asks what my favorite movie is, I completely draw a blank.  

My thought process goes something like this: What's a movie?  Have I ever seen one?  WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT????  

Okay, it's less a blank than a panic attack.

So a couple weeks ago, I sat down-- with the pressure off-- and made a list.

In no particular order, these are my favorite movies:

Clueless

The Big Chill

Sixteen Candles

Antonia's Line

Without Love

Bringing Up Baby

His Girl Friday

Thelma and Louise

Bridgit Jones' Diary

Babette's Feast

Hip Hip Hoorah

Tea With Mussolini

Crossing Delancey

The Princess Bride

Corrina, Corrina

The Royal Tennenbaums

About A Boy

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If I had to choose just one absolute favorite, I think it would be Antonia's Line.  What about you?

Brief And To The Point

Sorry for not posting, folks.  A new router is on the way, and should be arriving in the next couple days, which will hopefully solve at least half the problem.  In the meantime, I'm relegated to these quick from-work-in-stolen-moments posts.  Blech.  

I was going to post about The Switch today, but what with the no-time and all, I'll be brief: loved it.  Totally go see it.  

Sarah In Wonderland

Tonight I'm a little overwhelmed with things I want to write about.  

I want to write about the color red.  I want to write about my ovaries.  I want to write about how much I appreciate my friends.  I want to write about my sperm donor.  I want to write about time, and what I should do with it now that I have some.  I want to write about taking back my house.  I want to write about the wonder of naps.  I want to write about writing.  I want to write about spring.  I want to write about the difference between alone and lonely.  I want to write about the joy of cutting flowers in your own back yard.

There's just so much.  

One of the many things I loved in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland was the notion of muchness.  Alice lost hers, then found it again.

I think lately I'm feeling a little like Alice.  (Which, appropriately, I just mis-typed as Alive.)  Like my lost muchness is rushing home.

I missed it.  I'm glad it's back.

I hope it stays.

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Where is your muchness?

This Should Be Kathryn Bigelow's Next Film

I often listen to Dick Gordon's The Story as I'm driving home from work.  It's one of the only things that makes my hideous commute through L.A. traffic bearable-- and it's an excellent reason to support public radio, if you don't already.

Last night, Gordon replayed an interview with Deanie Parrish. Deanie was a WASP (Women Air Force Service Pilot) during World War II.  Last week, she and 175 of the remaining 1,100 WASPs belatedly received Congressional Gold Medals.  

Her story, and the story of all the WASPs, moved me so deeply I cried on three different freeways.  It also made me angry to my bones.

Deanie's story is the second one in this show-- it starts about half way through, after a less interesting story on how one winery was effected by the Chilean earthquake.

Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Clint Eastwood have made World War II into something of a cottage industry-- but their focus is consistently narrow, consistently male.

These women-- these pilots-- did something just as noble, just as selfless, just as worthy of note as the men and boys who fought in World War II.  Their story is riveting, and their treatment both during and after the war by the country they proudly served is despicable.  

Not that they ever complained.  They didn't.  They went on to lives as wives and mothers.  Many of them, including Deanie Parrish, never flew again.  For their service, they received virtually no acknowledgment.

Deanie Parrish says, "All we ever asked for is that our overlooked history would some day no longer be a missing chapter in the history of World War II, in the history of the Air Force, and most especially the history of America."

I agree, Deanie.  Yours is a story that-- like Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, and Band of Brothers-- deserves be told.

Anybody know Kathryn Bigelow?  Give her a call.  She could direct the bejeezuz out of this movie.  And if she won't, someone should.  

Like the Congressional Gold Medal, it's long overdue.

Kathryn Bigelow And The Man-Off Conundrum

A couple days ago, I was asked to write a piece for a pretty major website on Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar win.

I was flattered to be asked, and although I didn't have time to do it AT ALL... I did it anyway. 

Which involved recruiting one of the assistants here at Lie to Me to do off-the-books research, writing two sentences at a time between meetings and phone calls, and then a plowing through a rushed re-write at midnight when I finally got home.

Sadly, but not shockingly, when I turned it in, they didn't love it.  They wanted something more fact-based and less anecdote-y.  It was, they said correctly, too "bloggy."  

Fortunately, in a crazy, strange, twist of fate, I HAVE A BLOG!!!  So, I'm posting it here. Because I like it.  And I can.  So here goes:

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Frankly, I’m a little annoyed by Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win.

I’ll tell you why in a minute, but first I have to tell you a story.  It goes like this:

Ten years ago, my writing partner, Elizabeth Craft, and I wrote an Oz spec script.  We were just beginning our career as television writers, and we knew we needed a writing sample that would show prospective employers (men) that we weren’t too soft.  Too female. 

Soft and female, we understood intuitively, would not serve us well. 

And we were right.  That Oz spec, with its copious amounts of anal rape and random acts of violence, got us our first primetime job.  Eventually, it got us our dream job, on The Shield, where we stayed for three seasons.  (And where, on our first day of work, we made sure to use the F-word in the writers’ room, so all the male writers would know we nice, Midwestern girls could hang.) 

Strategically, writing an Oz spec was the right thing to do.  (And it wasn’t just strategy— we really loved Oz.)  That script kick-started what has, so far, been a pretty great career. 

But here’s the problem:  we also had a terrific Once & Again spec.  Probably better than the Oz.  Did that spec get the same kind of heat? 

Nope.  Not remotely. 

Sadly, when it came to getting hired, our Once & Again script was, in the words of our agent, “sprayed with man-off.”  It was useless in this town.

My annoyance at Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win is rooted in the man-off conundrum, which is basically this:  to garner attention and respect, women in Hollywood have to act like/write like/direct like men.

Is this an absolute rule?  No.  (And by no, I mean pretty much yes, unless you’re Nancy Meyers, and even that’s debatable.)

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Bigelow didn’t deserve her Oscar— she certainly did.  So did Randa Haines, who wasn’t even nominated for Children of a Lesser God in 1986, despite the movie’s nomination for Best Picture.  And so did Niki Caro, whose 2002 film Whale Rider is still one of the most stunning pieces of artistic achievement I’ve ever seen.   

A Beautiful Mind won that year.  A lovely movie, sure. 

But Whale Rider was better. 

And don’t even get me started on how Barbra Streisand wasn’t nominated for Yentl in 1983.  Seriously.  I can’t talk about it.   (But it has to be said—was there ever a movie more sprayed with man-off?)

For my money, the closest a woman’s come to winning a Best Director Oscar is Jane Campion in 1993— but her film, The Piano, was up against Schindler’s List, and no one in the universe was going to win against that juggernaut.

In the last eighty-two years, in fact, only four women have even been nominated in the Best Director category:  Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sophia Coppola, and Lina Wertmuller.  That’s four in eighty-two years.   Lemme just say that again. 

Four in eighty-two years.

Eighty-two years is a long time.  And four is a really small number.

So forgive me for not dancing on the glass ceiling.

Because as much as I want to believe that Barbra Streisand was referring to some grand, universal shift when she opened that crisp, ivory envelope and intoned, “Well… the time has come,” really she just meant that on this one night, the time has come for this one woman.  And that’s great.  Truly, madly, deeply great. 

But it doesn’t mean that sexism in Hollywood is dead. 

It’s not even resting.

Not when what it took for a female director to finally be taken Academy-Award-Winning-Seriously was a film about men engaged in the most manly of pursuits—by which, of course, I mean war.  The Hurt Locker is all testosterone, all the time, and while it’s a stunning movie, I’m not convinced it would have been nominated if it hadn’t been directed by a woman.  The novelty alone gave it a level of attention that other women directors simply don’t get.

(Quick aside: When it comes to attention, it’s not just in the movie industry that women writers and directors get the short end.  As recent articles in The New York Times and Women & Hollywood have noted, female playwrights and novelists don’t fare much better.) 

What, after all, is the source of this attention deficit?  Why is man-off spray so powerful?  Most importantly, does the fact that my agent even thought of such a concept mean that I should fire him?  (Just kidding, Matt.  Relax.)

It’s actually quite simple.  And by simple, I mean extraordinarily complex and probably impossible to solve.  But it comes down to something in this arena: as a culture we don’t value stories about women as much as we value stories about men.  We don’t value women’s voices as much as we value men’s voices.  And until we do, it won’t really matter who’s directing, or who’s writing, or whether the person taking home the award is wearing pants or a dress.

And if saying that makes me sexist… well, I live in Hollywood. 

I fit right in.

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Thanks to Melissa Silverstein at Women & Hollywood for reminding me of the wonder that is Whale Rider, and to Heather Thomason for the fast, well-honed research.