The Doctor is In: Notes from a Script Doctor

Adam and Steve, Tina and Eve

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Last night, I was unexpectedly surprised while watching a TV show about upcoming movies. In their review of “The Hangover,” the hosts --two straight guys-- thought the gay character in the film was inappropriately stereotyped. His sole purpose, they felt, was for the audience to laugh at him, because he’s gay.

Call it growing awareness (due to the public outcry against Prop 8) or call it critical mass (enough people have seen 3-D gay and lesbian characters, that the cliché seems less-than-benign). I call it PROGRESS. When regular guys speak out on this issue, change has already happened. The public’s shifting consciousness is all we really need to dispose of unfair laws and practices.  Hallelujah.

Those who write well-drawn gay and lesbian characters into their scripts deserve applause. As do the people with the power to green-light these projects, who opt to do so. And kudos to the critics who bravely banter on TV.

Roe, Roe, Roe Your Boat…

A few posts ago (see May 22, 2009, “Thrill me, Chill me, Fulfill me”), I wrote about a client’s script and its confusing message about abortion. The recent murder (in church, no less) of George Tiller, the doctor who performed abortions, compels me to briefly add to my previous commentary. 

The creative community of Hollywood (actors, writers, directors, production designers etc.) may very well be on the more liberal end of the political spectrum, but let us not be deceived! Hollywood is, first and foremost, a business and businesspeople, when making decisions, tend toward the conservative.

Abortion has been legal in this country, on a federal level, since 1973, but you’d never know it from watching TV or movies. The pro-choice and anti-choice forces have been at war these past 3 ½  decades, but the cultural war has been won by the latter. 

On television or in the movies, women characters who are unhappily pregnant in the present have miscarriages or opt to have the baby – they almost never choose to have an abortion.  Occasionally, on cable, they surprise us (“Six Feet Under” comes to mind), but even there, this portrayal remains the rare exception. 

This is clearly a business decision – networks and studios don’t want to risk alienating what they perceive to be too large a percentage of their viewers. Which is why I was greatly pleased when my client (in the above-mentioned post), in rewriting his supernatural thriller, was willing to present a much more expansive and complex exploration of the abortion issue for his characters. 

I believe that the studios and networks run the risk of alienating more viewers, if they don’t begin to allow their characters as much freedom of choice as the law permits. We are more likely to see well-drawn gay or lesbian characters (which is not saying much) than a woman character who chooses to have an abortion and does not suffer afterwards.

 After 8 years of Cheney and Bush and the stranglehold of the Religious Right, many millions of us are champing at the bit. We, not the extremists, are the majority. It’s time our media of choice reflected this. It makes good business sense and, by altering the cultural landscape, the lives of future doctors (and patients) may be saved.

Trailing Trailers

Last night, I was pleasantly surprised, for a second time, when I watched a brief interview with Moon Bloodgood, one of the actors in the summer tent pole, “Terminator Salvation.” Not only does Bloodgood’s character fight throughout the film, the actress herself wanted very much to portray a tough, kick-ass heroine who was equally as powerful as the male lead. Apparently, Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the wife of John Connor (the main character), also has a meaty role.

Here’s why this seemed so unexpected. For the past few months, whenever I saw a trailer for the movie, I wondered if there were any female characters of substance at all. James Cameron’s vision in the original Terminator films, had a formidable heroine (Linda Hamilton playing Sarah Connor, John’s mother), but, I feared from the trailers, that this had been abandoned, in the pursuit of male audience goers.

Once again, it was a business decision not to show us more of the female characters in the trailers. However, in courting primarily the male viewers, how many female viewers did they send packing? I certainly chose to look elsewhere for my entertainment, and I know there are others who felt similarly. Certainly, the studios are losing many of us who have watched these movies for decades and the younger generation, who, as I’ve said before, expect to see some fight in their heroines. 

The Bloodgood interview has made me reconsider. I may very well see the movie, one of these days. I hope that the makers of summer blockbusters and trailers reconsider as well. Showing tough heroines doesn’t turn the male viewers away. And it will certainly get additional women into those seats. For all they know, business is hurt, not helped, by the current approach. For all I know, the  trailer scripts were originally written this way, and someone, down the line, got cold feet. My job is to help warm them up!