W STAR BUCKS
#MeToo won't get anywhere unless women are allowed to prove they're bankable in Hollywood
ILL he or won’t he? Oscar watchers are wondering whether professional toady Ryan Seacrest will host the annual red-carpet pageantry for E! tonight after his former stylist accused him of sexual misconduct.
Seacrest claims innocence and his employers at E!, NBC and ABC are all backing him, but the Hollywood community — always concerned with optics — isn’t so sure.
But will any of this matter in a year? Even if Seacrest sits this one out (and I suggest he does for both personal and professional reasons), he’ll likely be back in 2019 and the #MeToo campaign to banish harassers from Hollywood will be forgotten. Because the movie biz seems to suffer from shortterm memory loss unless something affects their bottom line.
Take the #OscarsSoWhite initiative, sparked after not a single actor of color was nominated for an Academy Award in 2015. Designed to get more minorities noticed for their work, the campaign morphed into #OscarsStillSoWhite as the Academy continued to offer scant recognition. This year, just six nominations out of 30 went to people of color in the major categories of screenplay, director, lead actor, lead actress, supporting actor and supporting actress.
Because real progress isn’t driven by a hashtag movement. It’s driven by money.
Hollywood protects the status quo until forcefully proven otherwise. A little over a decade ago, when I was a co-host on the CBS entertainment show “The Insider,” I was told that the “urban” singers, actors and performers didn’t “rate” with the audience — which was why an Alicia Keys interview I had conducted was cut from the program. This is a pervasive theory in Los Angeles — that movies or prime-time television segments featuring a large minority cast aren’t bankable — unless mega-producer Tyler Perry is involved. Last year, this ignorant belief was blasted out of the water by di- rector Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which was made for just $4.5 million and grossed a massive $252 million worldwide. Shortly thereafter, “Girls Trip,” starring Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Regina Hall and Tiffany Haddish exploded onto the scene, raking in over $115 million in the US alone.
And now there’s this year’s superhero blockbuster “Black Panther” — directed and written by a black man and starring an (almost) all-black cast — which has taken $748 million internationally . . . in just two weeks.
It’s all this profit — not any public shaming — that is finally getting allwhite, all-male studio chiefs sitting up and paying attention.
Until #MeToo or #TimesUp can prove it’s profitable for studios not to hire harassers, bullies and misogynists and to create movies that celebrate all kinds of women, there’s a danger of this movement fading into obscurity.
In 2016, Viola Davis had it right when she advised those dismayed by the allwhite Oscars slate to “plop your money down to see ‘Race,’ to see ‘Dope,’ to see ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ to see ‘Selma’; to support directors like Ava DuVernay, Lee Daniels, Spike Lee.” And after more than $1 billion has been plunked down on “minority” films in the past year — Hollywood is taking notice at last.
The same needs to happen for women in Hollywood, and there have been some encouraging signs. Greta Gerwig is nominated for Best Director for “Lady Bird” tonight. Two weeks ago, Amazon hired Jennifer Salke to replace accused sexual harasser Roy Price as their new studio chief. Last spring, “Wonder Woman” proved a female superhero — led by a female director — can kill it at the box office when it grossed more than $822 million worldwide. And two years after Davis urged moviegoers to support DuVernay, she’s now helming “A Wrinkle in Time,” out Friday — making her the first black woman to direct a $100 million film.
Women are finally being given a chance both on screen and off, but it still feels like only a select few are being allowed to shine, as if to assuage an EEOC complaint. It’s time the studios realize
According to a 2016 report from the Motion Picture Associattion of America, women make up a dispproportionate 52 percent of all filmgoers.
Money talks, ladies. Not paying lip sservice. So let’s speak loudly of change — and show our power at the box office.