The REEL Addict 

The good folks over at my favorite movie site recently wrote a well intended article proposing that the massive box office weekend of TWILIGHT – directed by Catherine Hardwicke – marks a historical turning point of sorts for women filmmakers. The piece suggests TWILIGHT’s performance is a wake-up call to the film industry that women filmmakers (horribly under- represented in Hollywood) can make movies that bring in big money and audiences. Doors will swing wide, and “hopefully Hardwicke’s fantastic opening will help open some eyes.”

Really?

As an ardent supporter of feminism (who ironically has major problems with the “Twilight” novel series for that very reason), I’d desperately love to ascribe the film’s success to Hardwicke, or the fact that a woman director helmed the project. Let’s face the facts though. This film had such a massive built in audience that it could have been directed by Carrot Top and still would have done well.

Look at the SEX AND THE CITY movie. Like TWILIGHT, Carrie Bradshaw & Co. had a massive built in female fan base that came in droves to see it, which is why it met with similar success (it made an impressive $57 million its opening weekend). Certain directors have their prestige, and are arguably able to influence the success of a film, but properties like TWILIGHT and SEX AND THE CITY are about the fool proof property and not about the person behind the camera. If SEX AND THE CITY had been directed by a woman instead of Michael Patrick King, it’s highly doubtful it would have done worse, let alone better.

This insistence that TWILIGHT’s box office is significant (and attributable) to Hardwicke and women filmmakers is … well, a little patronizing. Undoubtedly the state of women filmmakers in Hollywood is dire, but this feels like a desperate lunge for whatever scraps of significance and victory can be found. How many people who went to see the movie even knew the name of the director before hand, let alone knew she was a woman? We can do better than claiming gender responsibility for the success of a film that really has nothing to do with the gender of its filmmaker.

Now, if a woman directed film not based on a proven property had done this well, I would be falling all over myself to praise it as historical and significant. All the more so if the film wasn’t a somewhat women-centric genre. I sometimes think the fact that a female favorite like TWILIGHT was given to a woman director skirts that fine line between sexist and appropriate. Someone like POINT BREAK director Kathryn Bigelow (one of my favorite directors) to me represents the ideal in this situation: a woman who makes original high–profile movies that are well-made, entertaining, and good. Even better, she’s so good, that I don’t even think of her as a good woman director. She’s just a good director. Period.

Now, before feminists tear me a new one, there is no arguing that number wise, TWILIGHT and Hardwicke’s involvement with it as a woman is historic. TWILIGHT’s $70.5 million dollar take is most certainly the largest opening for a female filmmaker in history, and that is something I absolutely don’t want to take away from Hardwicke, other established and aspiring female moviemakers, or even the film’s audience. I just don’t think it holds any significance beyond that milestone because TWILIGHT’s success benefits Hardwicke more than other women.

You could argue that maybe (just maybe) studio executives will see women filmmakers now as legitimate bets for handling high-profile projects. It’s possible, but I really doubt that post-TWILIGHT opening weekend any Hollywood power players were scrambling to get women filmmakers attached to their lingering projects in development (then again, Hollywood is a slave to trends, so who knows?). All the more so since it’s a superficial industry where money talks (especially when high-concept potential money earners are involved), and it’s not really the people that matter, but their financial reputation. When studio people are looking for directors for their projects and someone says “What about Catherine Hardwicke,” the response won’t be “The one who directed TWILIGHT?” but “The one who directed that movie that made $70 million opening weekend?” It’s why even though Kathryn Bigelow is recognized as a great action/movie director, ever since K-19 grossly underperformed, she seems to be struggling in the industry.

So is TWILIGHT historic for women filmmakers? Sure, box office wise. Will it help open some eyes, as Cinematical proclaims? Well, the very fact that the article never even elaborates on what exactly it will open people’s eyes to, perhaps says enough.