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On Errol Morris's High Life Man and the Changing Idea of Masculinity
@Davidwatts But the High Life Man was also defined in relation to and in reaction to a woman. He's doing "manly" stuff as opposed to driving children around or planting a flower garden.
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 3:25 pm
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On Errol Morris's High Life Man and the Changing Idea of Masculinity
Speaking as a lady, I find the Old Spice Man extremely attractive and the High Life Man repulsive. (Re: “Masculinity in Crisis,” when I was little, I genuinely assumed that men ran the world because women were too smart to want to do all that boring work, but that any individual woman who happened to feel like working hard at a boring job could easily brush all those intellectually inferior men out of her path.)
Posted on July 20, 2011 at 3:23 pm
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On Why Bridesmaids Deserved Its Best Picture Snub
I yearn to see more funny movies by and about women. I write pointedly feminist comedy screenplays. My first spec was a girl version of Superbad. And I agree that Bridesmaids was not very good. I wanted it to be good. I saw it on opening night. I participated in the "everyone needs to go see Bridesmaids on opening night so that studios will greenlight more female-led comedies" hype. I'm glad it did well. But I was disappointed because it was not very good. My best friend (who is also a feminist comedy-lover, with whom I saw 40-Year-Old Virgin in theaters twice, and watched every episode of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, plus all the commentary tracks) agreed that it was not very good. The actors are all very funny and talented and good at improvising and did a great job with what they were given. But the screenplay was not well written. I've read it, and it reads like what it is: a first attempt by two funny, talented sketch comedians with no understanding of screenplay structure. Kristin Wiig and Annie Mumolo have readily acknowledged this fact in numerous interviews: "We didn’t know what we were doing. We bought Syd Field’s book, and then we were like, 'OK, I think on page 30, our first act has to be over…?'" "Our only experience had been writing sketches, and sketches at the Groundlings are about six pages long. So in the very first draft, Kristen said, 'OK, let's think of it as 20 sketches, so we don't get overwhelmed.'" Had they taken the time to study and understand screenplay structure, they might have written an Oscar-worthy screenplay. Instead, they wrote a first draft in six days, Judd Apatow threw in some poop jokes, and they punched it up with improvisation. The result was a decent vehicle for jokes with a flawed narrative, poorly developed character arcs, and undercooked theme.