Just need to vent...

Thank you. You have a lovely evening.

It's already Saturday afternoon here. But I am working, which is why I am taking breaks by popping on here. Boo for clients who make me work over the weekend. But hooray for clients who are willing to pay extra for that.

 

One of the major people involved with Alien(producer?) is still complaining about how Hollywood can't write for female action roles.

They get credit for know how to write for a human.

I misspoke earlier. The issue in Hollywood isn't really about writing for female characters. It's the belief that female characters have to portray the outdated stereotype of women, or they need to highlight the fact it is a woman in some way, which leads to an unnaturalness or distraction to the story. The majority of characters don't have their gender or sex as a major motivation for their action. Yet most of Hollywood feels that can't be the case with a female lead, and the neuter roles all go to men.

 

Yes. It would have been more believable if, in order to deal with the trauma of the attack by the alien/aliens, Ripley went shopping with her gay best friend.

 

I heard there was a love scene planned, but Weaver nixed it on the grounds that a monster on the prowl kills the mood.

 

They can certainly be distracting.

Actually, there was something on the radio the other day about that. About how all 80s films seemed to have to have a love scene, whether it was relevant or not, and how it was completely ridiculous.

Alien/s were unusual in not having them, and that is very much to their credit.

 

It is rare for me to be so bored by a film that I will turn it off when I'm on a 14-hour-plus flight. But Prometheus managed to get me to do that*.

I did watch it, in manageable bite-sized chunks, after that. Even allowing for the disjointedness of watching it in chunks, it made remarkably little sense.

------

*I think the previous record-holder for that was Beethoven (dog gets big with hilarious consequences), back in the days when you got a screen on the bulkhead at the front and those stupid stethoscope headphones, on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Taipei via Bangkok. I took the headphones off in disgust and read a book. The eight-year-old Dutch kid next to me did the same, and said, "I am also finding this quite childish."

 

Was that another legacy of Harvey Weinstein? Or of similar prior predators?

 

I did not know this.

But it fits; O'Bannon's earlier work was all men trapped in the spaceship between an alien and a computer that tries to kill them.

 

Mike, I guess you still believe there is a difference between a broker and a licensed and certified insurance sub contractor for the US gov. At least the way I read your response. I tend to look at the current state of affairs from the opposite direction with an eye out for any light emitting from a possible end of the myriad tunnels of choice.

 

You've reminded me of a passage in a book I had as a kid, The Making of Star Trek. I'm pretty sure it's here somewhere and I thought I could lay hands on it quickly, but no. But a little googling finds the passage transcribed in the comment from Roger McCoy on this post:

https://forgottentrek.com/the-original-series/sexism-in-star-trek/

It comes from pages 324–326 in the book, and is part of an internal guide for writers for the (original) series.

CAN YOU FIND THE MAJOR STAR TREK FORMAT ERROR IN THE FOLLOWING “TEASE” FROM A STORY OUTLINE?

The scene is the bridge of the U.S.S. (United States Spaceship) *Enterprise*. Captain Kirk is at his command position, his lovely but highly efficient female Yeoman at his side. Suddenly, and without provocation, our Starship is attacked by an alien space vessel. […] Kirk puts his arms about his lovely Yeoman, comforting and embracing her as they wait for what seems certain death. FADE OUT. (END TEASER)

PLEASE CHECK ONE

( ) *Inaccurate terminology.* [...]

( ) *Scientifically incorrect.* […]

( ) *Unbelievable.* The Captain would not hug a pretty Yeoman on the bridge of his vessel.

( ) *Concept weak.* […]

NO, WE’RE NOT JOKING. THE PRECEDING PAGE WAS A VERY REAL AND IMPORTANT TEST OF YOUR APPROACH TO SCIENCE FICTION. HERE’S WHY.

[...]

UNDERSTANDING THE RIGHT ANSWER TO THIS IS BASIC TO UNDERSTANDING THE STAR TREK FORMAT. THIS WAS THE CORRECT ANSWER:

(x) Unbelievable. Why the correct answer? Simply because we’ve learned during a full season of making visual science fiction that believability of characters, their actions and reactions, is our greatest need and is the most important angle factor. Let’s explore that briefly:

NOW, TRY AGAIN. SAME BASIC STORY SITUATION, BUT AGAINST ANOTHER BACKGROUND.

The time is today. We’re in Vietnam waters aboard the navy cruiser U.S.S. Detroit. Suddenly an enemy gunboat heads for us, our guns unable to stop it, and we realize it’s a suicide attack with an atomic warhead. Would Captain E.. Henderson, presently commanding the U.S.S. *Defiant*, turn and hug a comely female WAVE who happened to be on his ship’s bridge?

As simple as that. This is our standard test that has led to Star Trek believability. (It also suggests much of what has been wrong in filmed sf of the past.) *No, Captain Henderson wouldn’t! Not if he’s the kind of captain we hope is commanding any naval vessel of ours!* Nor would our Captain Kirk hug a female crewman in a moment of danger, not if he’s to remain believable. (Some might *prefer* that Henderson were somewhere making love rather than shelling Asian ports, but that’s a whole different story for a whole different network. Probably BBC.)
​

Roger McCoy abridged it some, and I've abridged it some more, but that's the bit I've always remembered from the book. (I don't remember if the Navy cruiser changed from Detroit to Defiant like that in the book, or if McCoy mistranscribed that part.)

 

They didn't discuss that. But I would reckon so. So many of those love scenes were totally unnecessary, and "casting" them sounds like a perfect environment for such predators.

 

eeeehhhhhhhh ... I'd really hate to go overboard with tarring films from that period with so broad a brush because of him.

If I look at his Wikipedia page, under the list of films crediting him as producer, I think I've only seen one (and it was really good, and the theatre department here is putting on a stage adaptation of it this season).

In the list of ones he directed, I don't think I saw any. But in the list with him as "executive producer", I've seen at least a dozen, all of which I thought were good, many very good. That dozen isn't counting all the LOTR ones, which I was less taken by (thought they replaced a lot of Tolkien's conversation and character development with a lot of monster battle scenes), but there was an all-in Tolkien fan I saw most of those with, which kind of made up for their deficiencies.

I'm not very knowledgeable about the business, but when I google producer vs executive producer, the first Featured Snippet that I get tells me an EP "does not get involved with the day-to-day of a production like a producer does." So it may be that Weinstein was lining up money and clearing away obstacles so that the many other talented people behind those films were able to make them. We can have misgivings about him, and even about that money having come through him, but I can't bring myself to be unhappy that those filmmakers were able to make those films.

If I look on the Wikipedia list of Miramax films, gee, there's nearly two dozen of those I think I saw up through 2005 when he was last involved with the company, and again, I found those nearly all on a range from good up to bowl-you-over excellent.

(Now, there were a lot more than two dozen films there, so that means there also were a lot from that period I didn't see, often because I was pretty sure I wasn't interested. So I can't speak to those. But the ones I saw, I'm glad got made.)

I guess part of it is, I often like the films that are less mainstream and commercial, and there's no getting away from Weinstein and Miramax having been really important in that part of the ecosystem.

But in my head (I might not have stats to back this up), I think more of mainstream commercial films when I think about ridiculous gratuitous sex scenes being thrown in whether the story needs them or not.

 

Of course films he was involved in were good. The success let him get into a position where he could do so much harm. But a predator doesn't need the presence of love scenes in a film to get their way. His level of power in the industry made blacklisting a real threat.

Gratuitous sex scenes may have started out earlier as an act of rebelliousness, but it becameabout the fact that sex sells.

 

I'm seeming to remember that Weinstein was accused of adding them, or making them even more gratuitous, as retaliation against actresses who pushed back too hard against his advances. At least, for the ones who didn't get blacklisted.

 

Wouldn't surprise me if he did, but it doesn't explain such scenes being added to films without his involvement.

 

sex vs porn - a Supreme Court Justice (Potter Stewart) once said that it's hard to define but 'I know it when I see it'.
the irony .... society - under its umbrella of 'art' - let's in a lot of creepy prurient forums. Yet frowns on the consequences / objectification / slavery / destruction of children's innocence.
(stepping down off the venting box)
.

 

I am so tired of filling out medical forms. Just print out last months forms and ask, “Any changes?”

Bob Wilson

 

GACK! (Bill the Cat)

I had to give up my windows system like using TSO on an IBM mainframe ... my blood pressure went up too much.

Bob Wilson