The first man I met at the 67th Cannes Film Festival was a fifty-something producer who insisted upon fetching me champagne I hadn’t asked for. Night was falling and La Croisette, Cannes’ swankiest stretch of beachfront restaurants and boutiques and five-star hotels, sparkled like a celebrity’s loaned diamond necklace beneath us. I was there for the release of a film. Industry C-Listers jostled around a purple-lit stripe of pool bisecting the roof while a DJ played American bar mitzvah music in the corner. I briefly fantasized about how far I could finance one of my own films with the astronomical costs of this extremely shitty party.
The fifty-something kept talking to me. “So, he said, “actress or model?”
“I write,” I said.
I was on the last leg of a three-month film internship based in Paris. I’d never been to Cannes before. I had been looking forward to meeting other people who loved what I loved, debating the films in competition, and, less realistically, finding Jane Campion, charming the pants off of her, and convincing her to become my mentor.
Now, night one, and I was looking forward to going home.
“You write,” the producer said, throwing around his broad shoulders in his expensive suit. “What’s the name of your feature?”
I told him I’d only written shorts so far.
“Tell me, love,” he said, poking another glass of champagne into my hand, “what exactly is the point of a short film?”
This guy was the first I met, but far from the last. There are lots of different kinds of men to meet at Cannes, if only because there are so many of them. During the two weeks of the festival, clogging the pretty little Southern France streets among the tourists and well-dressed drug dealers, are lots of big and important men doing big and important business. They are the walking, talking, mouth-breathing embodiment of current industry gender stats. Here are some from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film (which are US-centric – though, for better or worse, so is the international film industry.)
In 23 high-profile US film festivals from 2013-2014, women comprised 26% of individuals working in influential roles behind the camera (directors, writers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers), while they filled 16% of those roles in the top 250 domestic grossing films of 2013. Last year, of the States’ biggest films, 6% were directed by women. Throw foreign films into the top 250, and that number jumps to an exhilarating 8%.
But statistics are boring! No one wants to talk about them. Men in film least of all.
Though that’s not always the case. I met a smiley young American director at Le Petit Majestic, a cheap-by-Cannes-standards bar behind the Grand Hotel frequently packed to the gills with overconfident nobodies. This guy was all about numbers. “Weren’t there, like, 2,000 films submitted to Cannes and only, like, a hundred of them by women? Maybe women just don’t want this enough.”
Surely that must be it. Cannes is the most prestigious international film festival in the world, and why would women have any interest in prestige? After pouring blood, sweat, tears, and terrifying amounts of money into their projects, women directors must just poke their films into drawers somewhere. Or maybe some really do want a shot, but they’re just so ditzy they forget to keep up with the deadlines. At any rate, women trying their chances at Cannes in dismal numbers (specifically, they helmed seven percent of 1,800 submissions) must have nothing to do with the industry in which they work and everything to do with their own shortcomings. Who knows or cares which one exactly – there are so many to choose from!
Cannes men aren’t entirely blind to the efforts of women, however. The stereotype goes that young, beautiful, empty-headed actresses flock to the festival and try sidling up alongside deep-pocketed male execs to get their big break.
“Sad, really,” I overheard a British producer say to another British producer over drinks at the Grand one night. They were watching a happy flock of professionally unidentifiable women walk by while laughing with incriminating lightheartedness. “Girls think they can saunter about in little skirts and they’ll become the next ScarJo. You see them in the morning leaving the big hotels, holding their heels, devastated – but of course the Room Service Method will get them nowhere. Doesn’t keep them from trying, though.”
He turned to me. “So, are you an actress?”
Oh, I wish. Mad props to anybody who can become somebody else, in front of a camera or otherwise. Acting is a power of persuasion I simply don’t possess.
Cannes is big on the power of persuasion.
“I can convince you of anything in thirty seconds,” one distributor told me. This was back at the rooftop party, which had since gotten less shitty with the introduction of macaroon towers. For the next thirty minutes, I would continually try to bail on the distributor and get to the macaroons.
He raised his eyebrows, ready for the kicker. “Would you ever kill a person?”
I could have said, “Yes, of course, under extreme circumstances.” I could have said, “Yes, you, happily, if you do not please leave me to my macaroons.” Instead I said, “No.”
This guy was not looking for inspiring discourse, but someone – preferably, a pretty girl – upon whom to prop his own intellectual superiority. I was a decorative coat rack.
“Okay,” he said, shaking his head, leaning in close, and putting his hand on the small of my back. “You’re in a room with three Islamic terrorists. There’s a screen showing a room full of little kids on the wall, and there’s a red button…”
If I wasn’t coat-racking for festival men, I might have tried the role of caring sympathizer. Men in film have it rough. If they are able to make a good living from filmmaking without actually being big Hollywood players, chances are they’re selling their delicate artistic souls to Big Business. Corporations who hire them for commercial production, they’ll tell you, are “raping” them. In order to afford their true callings – making movies with explosions, boobs, etc – they have to “prostitute” themselves to the likes of IBM and General Mills. I, for one, would not wish the traumatizing (paid) task of creating a Hamburger Helper ad upon even my worst enemy.
Let’s jump cut from the high-rolling rooftop to the bowels of the basement. Beneath the Grand Palais, and its groaning weight of the famous and rich, is the Cannes Short Film Corner: there, passionate and dangerously optimistic independent filmmakers pay obscene fees to play their films in very small rooms to audiences of practically no one. At five every day there’s a happy hour with free beer during which directors over-compliment each other. I was game for the Short Film Corner.
But even in my little oasis, away from the beach and the bullshit, among lots of variously-gendered people who were, refreshingly, not terrible, Cannes men lurked in bearded and beanied disguise. I met one who was friendly and engaging and seemed to care about my opinions on things. We started talking about trends. He contributed, with the swagger of someone who has gotten too comfortable in a conversation too quickly: “Seems like with the hold China and similar countries are starting to have on the market, there’s a decreasing demand for women directors.”
So maybe that’s it, then, why we aren’t seeing women making waves in Hollywood, or Cannes, or on the rest of the festival circuit. In a world with more than three billion women walking around on it, there’s not a demand for stories about what exactly is up with all of them, anyway.
What I learned, in sum, from my first time in Cannes (besides packing only pants next time, as inspired by one of my superiors yelling “where’s the rest of your skirt” at me from across a crowded party), is there’s lots of potential explanations for gender disparity in film. The reasons range from women directors not wanting it enough, to audiences not wanting it enough from them.
And, finally, it isn’t men’s business to muck with the order of things. I got clued into this final bit during a drunken blowout with the president of a small film festival at six in the morning, less than 24 hours before my flight home, when I had finally gotten bored enough with myself to retire the coat rack. I began to ask questions.
“I have no idea how many women’s films are in my festival,” the big important president kept repeating loudly (red-faced, spittle, the whole deal.) “Knowing would be an insult to both men and women. I’m in it for the art. That’s all I care about. You want me to accept a shittier film just because a woman made it?”
So listen up, women directors: your shit could poison the artistic integrity of the whole sacred filmic enterprise. Be warned. You don’t want to bear that burden.
Tags: cannes, feminism, men who are not great, movies, shannon keating
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The fifty-something kept talking to me. “So, he said, “actress or model?”
MALE TALKING IS AN EPIDEMIC
Reminds me of the time when I told a fifty-something man I had just met that I was in college and he asked “what’s your major? Nursing or teaching?”
My 50 something advisor said, “you’re too pretty to be a Biologist.” The problem here is with the 50 somethings, not with us.
I actually did a spit-take reading this because it was so horrible. I’m wiping off my screen now.
This is my answer to the question asked about men and Marxism in today’s link round-up: the problem isn’t the Marxism, it’s the ETERNAL YAPPING AT US about whatever hobbyhorse the dude thinks he’s an expert on. It is an epidemic of TALKING AT, and it took me a lifetime to learn how to walk away from it.
Yep, talking faux-authoritatively AT me about any topic under the sun is a surefire way to get me to hate you.
MEN: NOT EVEN ONCE
A+++++++
Not a single person on earth could have blamed you if you’d shoved that guy off the roof.
I was about to ask which guy you meant, but then realized that the answer was, of course, all of them.
I had the “would you ever kill someone” guy in mind, but you are absolutely correct in your answer.
as inspired by one of my superiors yelling “where’s the rest of your skirt” at me from across a crowded party
WHAT
NO
HOW?!?!
Yeah this is approximately as enraging as I expected it to be BOYCOTT MEN
What about the macaroons?! Did you ever get some macaroons?!?!?
The important questions never do get answered…
macaroons were eventually received! and they were MIND BLOWING.
just now realizing I should have ended the article with eating macaroons triumphantly alone in a corner. damn.
But you’re telling us about it now, and that’s what’s important! We have macaroon closure.
ALL the macaroons, yo.
Oh, I’m glad. People who get between me and snacks make me SO ANGRY.
I’ve had so many conversations with boring stranger men at cocktail-like functions where I stared longingly at a table of disappearing food while the man blathered about me about some nonsense. I don’t care what the invitation says, the point of an event that serves food is eating.
(Also, I went to Cannes last year during the festival, and this is exactly how I imagined the parties/bars there to be. My friend and I stood and watched some fancy rooftop party that had Eva Longoria and Doutzen Kroes for a while, and it looked like hell except for the free food and cocktails.)
Maybe women don’t want it enough.
Oh no, no, I disagree. I know a lot of women who very, very badly want to light approximately 9/10ths of the male population of earth on fire – with napalm, because that shit sticks to what you throw it on while it’s burning – but thus far 9/10ths of the male population continue to live on, deliriously obnoxious and empty-headed. It’s most certainly not for a lack of WANTING.
The fifty-something kept talking to me. “So, he said, “actress or model?”
I punched him in the face.
…
“….Maybe women just don’t want this enough.”
I kept my face and body turned towards him but rolled my eyes back into my head and let my jaw go slack, as if I’d just dropped dead from the utter banality of his theory. I stayed like this for some time. Eventually he walked away.
…
He turned to me. “So, are you an actress?”
“NO!” I screamed, crazy-eyed. “I’M ROOM SERVICE. WHAT CAN I GET YOU SIR. SIR? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ROOM SERVICE? YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?” at which point I performed my worst sexy shimmy and hiked my leg up on the table, to his great mortification.
There I feel better.
“I can convince you of anything in thirty seconds.”
“Let’s see you try to convince me that you’re more worthy of my attention than these macaroons,” I said over my shoulder, jabbing my heel into his ankle for good measure as I pushed past. At the food table I got a plate – a big one, not a little appetizer plate – and just loaded that thing up with macaroons. I was never more than three feet from the table for the rest of the evening.
It only took half an hour for the serving staff to understand the validity of my position, and after that they made sure to deliver a full, separate plate of macaroons to me every time they restocked the towers.
No joke, if you’re nice to them and they can tell you really appreciate the stuff, the serving staff will totally make sure you get first dibs on things. I may have once slipped someone a tenner so they’d warn me just before the fresh shrimp came out.*
*not my money, I was 11 at the time and it was so I could go tell someone else about the impending shrimp-arrival but it doesn’t matter because I felt like a BALLER even though I didn’t know then (and still don’t really know now) what that means.
Brilliance.
“Tell me, love,” he said, poking another glass of champagne into my hand, “what exactly is the point of a short film?”
“You…you LOVE me?” I asked, starry-eyed. Then I ensnared him with a SURPRISE WEDDING! I keep one in my purse at all times.
I just died. Ahahaha
BRB flames side of face
“Bearded and beanied disguise” is a wonderful phrase.
It is well known that very few men are as interesting as a macaron.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of macaroons is in no way in want of a man.
Comment awards aren’t a thing that happen here I guess but I NOMINATE THIS ONE
“Maybe women just don’t want this enough.”
Yup, that’s it. Well-observed, random man! Other things women just didn’t want enough throughout history: the right not to be cast out of the community when menstruating; protection from rape; protection from those who think rape sullies us; voting rights; the right to own property; the right to choose our own life partners.
It’s funny, when you think about it, how societally-centered white men always seem to have access to more social and cultural capital than women or minorities do. I guess those men JUST WANTED IT MORE, huh?
something something bootstraps something self-made-man something something KABOOM
(that loud noise at the end was me dropping a piano on Mr. Mumbles up there)
I have heard literally all of this in software engineering. The words change a bit, but the content is the same. Tell me again how women just aren’t as interested in engineering and how men are naturally better at math. It’s science!
NO IT’S A STABBING.
*whispers to self* no it’s a stabbing
My day is made.
Quite honestly I think there’s a lot to be said about the lack of women represented in the more important roles of making films. Unfortunately, you never truly go there.
Just because you can offer us anecdotes about big-shot assholes does not accurately address the problem nor the solution. Further, you give no evidence why women should be better represented other than the assumption that a disparity in numbers obviously means someone is getting cheated.
Really, had you actually met Jane Campion and were able to provide us with anything she said than this would have been constructive. But you did not accomplish that, or if you did you didn’t let on, and so instead painted a nasty picture of nasty people which is not advocacy, it’s sour grapes.
If you gave us examples of these man producing inferior work that would be something. Don’t just tell us the fool things they said. And for god sakes tell us why the women directed or written films are so great. Give it! It’s not right to just tell us this is unfair and bait us into taking your side because the men in suits are jerks. Expose them! Go deeper into their shit product! Bad art needs exposure just as good does so the real criticisms can come to light. That’s where you could have said much more about the lack of women in important roles in filmmaking.
Well! There we have it. Dyno just wants to tell the author how to do the feminisms more constructively. It is Dyno’s gift to all of us.
I’m so happy, Maxim, so happy.
I just wanted to say that you said anything I could say here, but you did it better. If I had a golden plate of macaroons, I would hand it over.
No, but feminism does not gain any real strength from the author citing assholes as assholes. Calling the sky blue on a sunny day does not make anyone a meteorologist.
This piece didn’t give me any sense of empowerment on behalf of women. It was actually just kind of sad, really, when you look at it at face value. Women being underrepresented is just that when it’s the only real talking point. Exposing why women should be taken seriously beyond the obvious fact that half the world are women and then we’re getting somewhere.
If numbers are the go-to argument on battling male dominance in any field, then there will be a continued glut of fuck heads populating Cannes.
I’m sorry (no, I’m not, actually), but why is it that you feel you need to have someone present to you “evidence why women should be better represented” and expose “why women should be taken seriously beyond the obvious fact that half the world are women”? Is it honestly not enough for you that women are people too and thus deserve to be taken as seriously as men and tell their stories with the same depth and complexity and level of exposure as men’s stories? If you really need evidence and arguments to be convinced to take women and their stories seriously, you have absolutely no business telling anyone how to do feminism.
Shannon never stated that her essay was setting out to solve the problem or offer constructive solutions or provide enlightenment. This is about her lived experience, period. It’s about the shitty attitudes and treatment she experienced at Cannes because she is a woman. It’s absurd – and basically proves her point, actually – for you to come in and tell her that she’s telling her story wrong.
I don’t personally need evidence, but anyone who is ignorant enough to be a sexist does. You can’t base an argument on emotions, which this piece essentially is driven by. Evidence is what makes any and all arguments substantial. t’s about presenting information in a way that can have actual purchase in a conversation about achieving greater equality in our society.
Numbers alone aren’t enough to justify a voice. A voice is achieved from being backed up. And giving evidence is what backing up a voice is.
I have commented here to illustrate this point. She didn’t tell her story wrong, but calling it feminism is wrong. It’s not feminism. It’s a string of selective anecdotes masquerading as advocacy. As a feminist, do you want to be a voice in a small room or a big room? Evidence grants access to the bigger room and those that need the message the most.
Don’t personalize my comments as though I don’t but that women are worthy. Nothing I’ve said supports that. Regard my comments as criticisms for a piece that I believe, by its nature, pigeon holes itself into the preaching-to-the-choir room.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and do a little Feminism 101 for you, since you seem to lack the contextual knowledge to fully interpret this piece.
>”Calling the sky blue on a sunny day does not make anyone a meteorologist.”
The men in this piece seem asshole-ish because they were so dismissive of women (assuming all women present at the festival were actresses and/or models, only able to advance their careers by sleeping with men with more clout, etc) and they assumed that women’s absence in the field was due to lack of talent/diligence, as opposed to structural issues that systematically prevent women’s art from being considered. I think pointing out that such comments are misogynistic is absolutely a great example of feminism in action.
>”Exposing why women should be taken seriously beyond the obvious fact that half the world are women and then we’re getting somewhere.”
We could first discuss why the author and other commenters on this piece should take YOU seriously when you seem to have a lot of difficulty composing a grammatical, correctly punctuated sentence.
Or we could just skip to the math part: about 50% of the world’s population are female and 50% are male, but 93% of films at Cannes are by men, while only 7% are by women. “Numbers” are not in and of themselves an argument, but uneven distribution is. We can ask the question, “Why are women so underrepresented in film?” or “Why are men so overrepresented in film?”
Again, this is Feminism 101. Common “wisdom” in the film industry is that movies from the “masculine” perspective (made by and for men) make more money than movies that are considered to be “feminine” (made by and “for” women – sometimes these movies are categorized as “feminine” for the SOLE reason that their creator happens to be a woman, regardless of subject matter or intended audience). The reasoning of such industry titans is that women will go to see a “masculine” movie, but men won’t go see a “feminine” movie, so they assume that the latter types of films will be less profitable.
This, in turn, begs the questions of 1) whether this is actually true, and 2) if it is true, why would it be so? Why are men so averse to seeing these movies?
Part of this “common wisdom” of course is the assumption of the unmarked gender – women are “women,” but men are “just people.” It’s deeply encoded in our language, in axioms like “Man cannot live by bread alone,” where “man” is meant to refer to all humans, not just the bepenised ones.
I wonder if you fully grasp the author’s discussion of “coat-racking” in her anecdotes. Her point is not that these men just happen to be assholes; it is that these men don’t see women as people. The men she describes do not view their conversations with her as opportunities to meet a colleague in the film industry, but as opportunities to to make themselves feel smarter and more powerful, assuming that their female interlocutor will take the role of being outwitted, then impressed by, the dude talking to her.
>”This piece didn’t give me any sense of empowerment on behalf of women.”
That was not the point of this piece. It was to give (even more) real life examples of the discriminations women face in the film industry, which makes this comment a little absurd. It’s like you walked out of a movie about the Civil War and claimed it was terrible because it didn’t have robots. If you were a professional film critic and gave it 1/5 stars for its lack of robots, you’d be out of a job right quick. You’d get a lot more out of what you read if you take the pieces on their own merits, instead of dismissing them because they’re not what you think they *should* be.
This is getting repetitive but I’ll answer this last post because you laid your argument out with thought.
My point was that this piece is not feminism. If you want to call anecdotes about men behaving badly feminism, then you are relying on a very weak form of advocacy.
Here’s why. Action lies in solutions. Action lies in progress. Action lies in confronting problems. This piece comes off as a bad day at school where a child talks about the people who picked on her. If you read a piece where a child recounted being bullied, and you said that it revealed bullying, then what? Yes, bullying exists. This is what it looks like. So what? It’s not enough simply to give examples and walk away as though you’ve exposed something. You’ve only added, as you said, more examples. That’s just more empty calories without anything substantive.
Here’s the real common wisdom: Women are discriminated against. This is common knowledge. There are the discriminators who don’t realize it, but they are not the people who are going to realize it any more by reading a piece like this because there is nothing present here to dissuade them from thinking the way they do. There is no evidence to give them reason to think women should be better represented. To me, feminism is action, and that requires an address of the oppressor in a way to turn the tide. This is merely a rah-rah shake your fist piece that panders to people who are well aware of discrimination and offers them more reason to be mad. Sorry, but if arousing anger among a base that already knows what you know is your form of action, then you’ll have a long battle uphill.
As for you getting personal which others here are doing too, It’s everyone’s right to offer an opinion about what they think something should be, especially if they feel that something they are addressing sidesteps a real opportunity. I’d have really loved to hear about the pieces women created at Cannes. Then those who don’t give women a chance might hear about what they’re missing. What’s more constructive? Exposing the value that deservers more attention or just focusing on the virus and continuing to tell us it’s making people sick? Go with the antibody. It’s the better fight.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that the piece is really well written. I never went there earlier because I was focusing on my own bent obviously, but if I didn’t think it could have offered more I never would have commented to begin with.
Thanks for the dialogue. Said my piece.
“Jeeves, you remember Miss Glossop?”
“Very vividly, sir.”
“She’s engaged to Mr. Biffen!”
“Indeed, sir?” said Jeeves. And, with not another word, he slid out. The blighter’s calm amazed and shocked me. It seemed to indicate that there must be a horrible streak of callousness in him. I mean to say, it wasn’t as if he didn’t know Honoria Glossop.
I read the paragraph again. A peculiar feeling it gave me. I don’t know if you have ever experienced the sensation of seeing the announcement of the engagement of a pal of yours to a girl whom you were only saved from marrying yourself by the skin of your teeth. It induces a sort of — well, it’s difficult to describe it exactly; but I should imagine a fellow would feel much the same if he happened to be strolling through the jungle with a boyhood chum and met a tigress or a jaguar, or what not, and managed to shin up a tree and looked down and saw the friend of his youth vanishing into the undergrowth in the animal’s slavering jaws. A sort of profound, prayerful relief, if you know what I mean, blended at the same time with a pang of pity. What I’m driving at is that, thankful as I was that I hadn’t had to marry Honoria myself, I was sorry to see a real good chap like old Biffy copping it. I sucked down a spot of tea and began brooding over the business.
“If you will pardon my saying so, sir, Mr. Biffen has surely only himself to thank if he has entered upon matrimonial obligations which do not please him.”
“You’re talking absolute rot, Jeeves. You know as well as I do that Honoria Glossop is an Act of God. You might as well blame a fellow for getting run over by a truck.”
If preaching to the choire didn’t have its merits, organized religions wouldn’t have been doing it for millenia. Sometimes it’s useful to be reminded what we’re up against. A purpose also well served by the pointless patronizing cluelessness of your comments here.
Holy shit bro, you are just the worst. Maybe you should be a little less condescending and a little more appreciative of the kind of shit women deal with, and stop posting things like “stop talking about the problem and solve it already”.
I tried to read this comment but all I heard was the teacher from Peanuts
wahwahbwuhwuhwuhwahwahbwahwah
It basically said “Your piece, entitled ‘Lessons From the Men I met in Cannes,’ should not have been about lessons from the men you met in Cannes, but instead about meeting Jane Campion even though you didn’t and also examples of bad movies men have made.”
Right. Had she met her then something more enlightening could have come about rather than just a string of irritating experiences that while they may reflect a larger problem, achieve nothing substantial.
Call this a humor piece, but not a feminism piece and we’re onto something.
Thank you for not just making funny sounds. These too offer nothing to a conversation.
NEEDS MORE WODEHOUSE.
abloobloobloobloo
All I see are goats yelling like humans.
Is this performance art??
Not one single person has jumped in and started a macaron vs. macaroon debate – the Toast really does have the best commenters on the internet! God bless us, everyone! *tears of joy*
Except the commenter above you, who apparently thought this piece should’ve been a research-based thesis instead of what it was. But thankfully, these comments are in the overwhelming minority, just like women in film!
these comments are in the overwhelming minority, just like women in film!
Marry me
But it iiiiis macaron! I know I’m ruining your life, but they’re two distinct and delicious forms of dessert and deserve all the respect inherent in having their own proper names.
This made me rage so hard I crumpled the piece of paper I was holding.
I woke up this morning hating everyone on the planet and now I hate everybody EVEN MORE.
“Tell me, love,” he said, poking another glass of champagne into my hand, “what exactly is the point of a short film?”
My go-to response to condescending questions like that is a haughtily surprised, “If you don’t know by now, I’m sure I can’t tell you.” You have to say it in sort of a Lily Bart voice.
Other option: saying it in a Mad Hatter voice while pouring the champagne over his head and then dancing off while doffing an enormous hat.
Other option: saying it in a Mad Hatter voice while pouring the champagne over his head and then dancing off while doffing an enormous hat.
"Would you ever kill a person?"
"What, again?"
“Would you ever kill a person”
“Yes, in fact last week I killed a man who asked stupid questions and that’s why I’m hiding in the south of France”