Obst: Do you ever have authority issues as a director because you're a woman?
Jenkins: Yes, but not that I've been stopped by. I've certainly felt like I was tested. Like the nicer I was, the more people got nervous that I didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't until I was like, "I'm directing this movie," that they would chill out. But I felt like, "You guys are making me a mean person."
Peirce: It's leadership. They want leadership. You have to be the alpha dog.
Obst: Have things changed, Nora, since we first started and now in terms of how crews are behaving?
Ephron: I don't know, but I feel that it's been very rare that I've had a problem with this. Before I directed my first movie, I went around to all the directors who I could force to read the script, and Rob Reiner said, "Come in with a plan. You can always change your mind, just let everyone know that you think you know what you're doing." So I don't think it's gender specific. I think people don't want to be on a set with someone they think is indecisive. Some very successful men directors are famous for being indecisive. I just think people want to know that they have given a piece of their life to someone who is going to take care of them.
Obst: I remember, Nora, on "This Is My Life" when we asked for Dr. Brown cream soda and our prop man just brought us cream soda, we thought maybe if you'd been a guy he would have brought us real Dr. Brown cream soda.
Ephron: It wasn't the prop guy. It was the second cinematographer. It was the second one after we fired the first one.
[Note to Nora: It was the prop man, the one we didn't fire -- Lynda]
Ziskin: I want to say one thing. What is extraordinary is that the movies are arguably the most powerful medium ever in history so far. And there are so many of us that you could get a quorum at this table. You don't have to have the intention of influencing your work by your gender, but you're going to. That's a really good thing. It's really good for the culture that women are a real voice more and more, even though we're not the final say, like those guys who really control all the media in the world. We're still influencing. We can take the "Spider-Man" movies as an example. Kirsten [Dunst] and I used to joke about it, but as the women in the mix we really influenced the content of lots of things in that movie because we were in there saying, "Wait a minute." [Had we not been there], it would still have been as successful, but it would have been different.
Ephron: But if you look at "Transformers," which is an interesting movie...
Ziskin: No women involved?
Ephron: No. But Steven Spielberg was involved, and so there's this great emotional theme. I don't think this is gender-specific. I mean, who made the greatest romantic comedies in the world? Men.
Obst: Billy Wilder...
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Obst: Now, "Knocked Up" is yours.
Langley: Yes.
Obst: Obviously I'm thrilled that it's yours because it means that every imaginable kind of romantic comedy is being made at Universal. Hilarious and important, in terms of its effect on romantic comedies. But anybody have any thoughts about the girls' side of the coin in "Knocked Up," since I've already written about it?
Peirce: I just love when she's having that mood swing. That is hilarious.
Nagle: I totally believed her having sex with him to begin with.
Obst: Jesus, Margaret, that wasn't what I was looking for. [Laughter]
Nagle: I did! I did! He was furry and sweet.
Khouri: I had a rough time with it.
Obst: Thank you, Callie.
Khouri: I mean, I've seen stranger things happen in this town. Fat, ugly guys get laid by beautiful women every day of the week. So based on that, I was able to go with it. But was it satisfying as a female moviegoer? It's not wish fulfillment, in a way.
Obst: Which is what the point of romantic comedy is.
Khouri: The whole time I was thinking, "She could do better." Listen, I was there the first weekend because I want to laugh. And I will give things a tremendous amount of slack if I think I'm going to laugh really hard, and I did. But I had to let out a lot of line.
Obst: It is certainly the male protagonist piece where he gets the hot girl and we get to encourage compromise on the part of the girl, right?
Ephron: Looks and brains, we're willing to give them both up. [Laughter]
Langley: The premise of the movie from Judd's perspective, and I'm not being defensive, but for me the comedic premise was: What if this guy got this girl pregnant. And, to be honest, a lot of the attempt at heart and character --
Obst: Came from you. We knew it. [Laughter]
Langley: It wasn't there in the original inception. I'm not going to take anything from Judd; he deserves all the credit. But the original intention of the movie was not to make an observational gender comedy. It was, What if this goofball guy got this really hot piece of ass pregnant.
Khouri: There's one more thing that we haven't talked about. I just did a movie with three female leads: Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes. We were able to get this movie made independently, but we weren't able to get it made with that cast at a studio. We just kept going, "OK, so which women can get a movie made at a studio? Who are the women that can get a picture green-lit at a studio if it's just women?"
Ziskin: There's one.
Khouri: Yeah, who?
Ziskin: Julia.
Konrad: Reese Witherspoon.
Obst: Kate Hudson. But also, Callie speaks to something important which I think we're discovering, too, that there's more than one way to skin a cat. If you can't take one path, we're learning to take another path. And that's a very good path for chicks like us to learn, too, that if the studio won't do it, we're learning to do it independently.
About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
Related Stories
Hollywood's battle of the sexes over Arnold
Movie industry women are working to expose the actor's sexual misbehavior, while men are protecting him. Their efforts have led at least some of his victims to come forward, but will voters care?
"Invisible in Hollywood: Jewish women"
A women's studies prof can't recall the last time she saw a richly textured Jewish female character onscreen.
Hollywood's woman problem
Entertainment Weekly compiles a list of the best characters on the silver screen -- and the only female character on the list is played by a man.
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)