Breaking the Oscar Glass Ceiling

I have a couple of posts lined up for this week about my weekend trip to Wheeling, but I definitely have to push those aside to talk about last night's Oscar show. Being both a film geek and an awards show junkie, the Oscars are my Super Bowl. In most situations, I'd have a nice, snarkly little recap of all the weird camera angles and WTF speak moments.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Oscars this year, and Kathryn Bigalow became the first woman in the 82 years of the Academy to win Best Director and Best Picture. Only three other women had been nominated for the director category (Lina Wertmüller in '76, Jane Champion in '93, and Sophia Coppola in '03.) Less than 10% of the top 250 high-grossing films in the US are directed by women any given year, and while that means there's still a long way to go, last night was some pretty heavy progress.

I've mentioned this before here, but the statistics don't get much better in indieland. Without going into pity party territory, it can be tough when you're the only woman on your crew or your immediate peer group. People can take you less seriously, or the other extreme, you become "the" women voice in the scene. Either scenario isn't too pretty.

What pisses me off about Bigalow's Oscar win is some of the media coverage. I've heard/read three times today about how much of a shock that a women won who didn't direct a "woman's" movie. The Today show was basically falling over themselves with "OMG, a woman directed a WAR movie?!?!?" Granted, the Today Show isn't exactly a hotbed of journalistic integrity and professionalism, but still, you'd think that the program that launched several female journalists' careers would be a little less 1950s about it.

It's not exactly a ground-breaking thought that women write in all genres. And hey, maybe the reason that the bulk of the woman-directed top 250 grossing flicks are fluff is because producers and the media hammer it into everyone's heads that a lady will fail unless the project is Nora Ephronville. Now I dig some of Ephron's movies, but not every woman wants to tell that type of story. Women are into war, into horror, into porn, into every single niche style of filmmaking that exists. Ovaries don't override your ability to handle a camera and Final Cut.

I'm hoping that this win is going to open the big studios up a little more to the idea of a woman directing something other than boy-meets-girl or talking animal movies. I know the papers are going to declare this "The Year of the Woman!!!" just like when Diablo Cody got buzz for Juno. Here's hoping it's a little more substantial than that.