Patriarchal Archrival
Patricia should be the new Karen. In his book titled The Devil's Guide to Hollywood (2006), screenwriter Joe Eszterhas wrote: “With the exception of Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson, there are few stars able to play supermacho parts today. Many of Hollywood’s top male movie stars are either bisexual or gay.”
This sets the tone for my article about another book - Projections 10 (1999) by director Mike Figgis. In an interview with Mel Gibson, Mike said: “If we go back, to say, the 40s, 50s, early 60s, although the balance would have been still in the favor of men in terms of just number of roles and so on, there were far more powerful actresses who were taken incredibly (in terms of box office) as seriously as men.”
Gibson then said: “Like Joan Crawford, but she used to display a male point of view. It was very interesting. She was very masculine on screen.”
Hollywood is a place where stars are seen as sex objects for either public or personal demand. There’s a way of fitting in without fitting in as Mel said: “This is what I mean by actually starting to swim up or downstream with the rest of the salmon eventually if you stay here long enough, you'll find yourself doing that. There’s a way of doing it without doing it. That takes time and it takes relaxation - not being uncomfortable, realizing for what it is, understanding what it is. Once you understand it, well then you’re not afraid of it anymore, so you can just walk around it and through it.”
When Mike Figgis asked Ally Sheedy if she thinks that Hollywood is basically a system of prostitution, she said: “Yes, I do. I think you have to prostitute yourself, and if you don't want to, I think you suffer for it. I didn't do it.”
In his interview with Ming-Na Wen, Mike reminded her that she said Hollywood involves literal or metaphorical forms of prostitution. Pertaining to the latter, Wen said: “To me, prostituting yourself means lowering or denying your sense of self-esteem, and just selling yourself - saying 'I want the fame, I want the money, I want the power. So I'm willing to prostitute myself for it.' Some people are really good at that, and they have big homes and drive fancy cars to show it.”
Producer, writer and studio executive Michael De Luca was also interviewed by Mike Figgis. When Figgis asked De Luca how much of an issue that sexiness is for people in Hollywood, the latter said: “It's prevalent. It's a company town, and it's really about making a sexy product that you hope is going to seduce a bunch of people into paying to go see it. In a way, it's like very upscale prostitution.”
Figgis asked Elisabeth Shue what is the easiest and quickest way for an actress to succeed in Los Angeles. Elisabeth laughed and said: “Get on your knees.”
Later on, she said: “I was upset by the rape scene in The Accused. What I found upsetting but also powerful was the way it was shot. It ran long enough so that I think audience members did get turned on. I know I did. I was freaked out by the fact that I had been turned on by something that was so horrific. And in that moment, I understood the horror - the reality of how those moments happen.”
Two of the three producers are men. The female producer was Sherry Lansing. The star, Jodie Foster, told Mike: “There were a lot of parts that I knew I wasn't pretty enough for, or I wasn't their version of 'sexy' enough for. The Accused is a good example. I really wanted that part. I was drawn to it for a number of reasons - mostly unconscious, of course. I thought it was a role that I could sink my teeth into - a woman who was completely unlike me, but like people I had known in my life...so I think the producers had a foregone conclusion about me, that I wasn't sexy enough. And that means 'Who do you want to rape? Do you want to rape somebody that looks like this? Or somebody that looks like that?' There's really something kind of creepy about that. Of course, rape is about power, it's not necessarily about how somebody looks.”
The casting process was horrible: “I remember there was a screen test and I really wanted to be involved, but the producers said that I couldn't take part in it, because they felt that I wasn't attractive enough. I think they said something like 'Well, isn't she really overweight?' And an agent said to me 'Just show up in this guy's office, show him you're attractive and you're not overweight, and then we can go get you the screen test.' So I did it.”
Mike Figgis told Aimee Graham that she reads a lot of scripts where often the women are called upon to be the objects of violence. Aimee elaborated: “There are so many crimes committed against women - rape, abuse, violence. It does get to me. In a lot of cases, films just advocate it saying over and over again that it's fine.”
Aimee also told Mike: “I don't know how many actresses have gone through their career without getting naked. It's embarrassing. I don't ordinarily get naked in front of strangers who I don't know and trust. But then there you are. So it's weird. I did a Spanish film production, and they have a whole different attitude about sex in movies. It's supposed to be a closed set when you're doing nudity but all of a sudden the entire art department walks in while I'm sitting there. Then the still photographer took a picture of me, and I got up and left. You're not supposed to do it that way.”
Back to Mel Gibson, the following blind item is about Joel Silver: “There's a successful producer I know, I will not mention names, but his take on this matter is very brief. He says 'Women on film? Either naked or dead. Both is better.' The man has got a spiritual malady for a start. The scary thing is I think a lot of people think that, to some degree.”
Mike asked Rosanna Arquette if she in her younger years had to deal with the idea of Hollywood as an extended casting couch. Rosanna said: “I never had that experience, fortunately. I really lucked out. I think it exists, with a few people, but I never had that.”
Mike brings up Jay Leno’s chat show to Salma Hayek: “Every actress that's on there seems duty bound to wear a very short skirt, and to flirt with him as if he's funny, fascinating and a very sexy guy. And he always manages to say something quite smutty to them, about nudity or whatever.”
Salma was going to appear on the show on the same day as Mike’s interview. She talked about her experience: “The first time I went there, I had done Desperado - quite a sexy film. They call you to do a pre-interview, and the show's producers said ‘You know, because you're so sexy, we would really like it if you wore a really short skirt, showed some cleavage, whatever.’ I was shocked. But then I said 'Oh, okay.' I wanted to get on the show. But I showed up in a man's suit. I didn't have any money at the time and Hugo Boss was the only designer who would sponsor me, because I had a friend who worked there.”
As for what happened on the show: “Jay Leno made a comment like 'We saw you in the movie and you were so sexy, now you're dressed like a man.' And I said 'Yeah, but underneath this suit I'm wearing the most fantastic lingerie.' And then he was very, very happy.”
Elizabeth Lowe - the most obscure actress ever. In 1999, she was 27 when she told Mike: “The first part I ever got in a movie, I got it through an acting teacher, and I knew that I was going to be topless in it. I was playing a model, and I was supposed to be covered in a plaster cast. The teacher said 'We're only going to see your chest after it's covered in the cast, and that's it.' I was twenty. So I'm lying down completely naked on this table, and I do the first take, which was rehearsal. I thought they didn't start filming until the stuff was on me. So the movie comes out, and I see that I'm completely naked in it. They filmed the whole thing. I was nervous and it was the first part I ever got - I got my SAG card out of it. It was an HBO movie. I saw it in the video store yesterday. My dialogue’s cut, I say maybe two lines.”
Talent manager and producer Julie Yorn agreed with Mike Figgis about lead actresses being seen as sex objects: “That's what Hollywood always has been since the forties studio system and the starlets.”
As for actresses in general: “It's much harder for women, especially if they're selective in any way, to work as often as men. And the pay standards are completely unequal. There's a huge disparity in the way women and men are paid at the other ends of the business too.”
The issue of sexual harassment: “I think some women are more aware of when they're being objectified, and others just aren't aware even while it's happening. I'm completely immune to it at this point because I accept it as a reality. I grew up with a different self-aware perspective in Manhattan. Both my parents were intellectuals, academics - both feminists, and with a highly informed perspective about what exists out there. So it's never been that shocking or horrifying to me, and it's helped that I'm in a position where I represent women and I can help them deal with it.”
Even Brooke Shields told Mike Figgis: “I've seen young actresses change and lose a sense of innocence. For me, I think so much really had to with the opportunity of going to university. I think the exploitation exists. I don't know if it's rife. I just never saw it. When I started, I was just like everybody's little pet. Even on the sets, they just wanted to protect me. The grips of Blue Lagoon were just avid about wanting to make sure I was okay.”
Mike told director Paul Thomas Anderson: “I have a theory. Because the way that p*rn treats the sexual act influences TV and mainstream cinema, it's almost as if actors imitate p*rn movies when they do sex scenes - which is then what young women and men watch, and they think 'Oh, that's how sex is.' So real people end up impersonating p*rn.”
Mike told fellow British director Tony Kaye: “A director is no different from an actor or an actress who is prepared to sleep with someone, be humiliated, treated like sh!t for a long time - because you know the deal is that if you keep your mouth shut, eventually you might get lucky, you might get that job. So there is this pact. In any other industry, people would be arrested right, left and centre for all kinds of abuse. You were working in a company that was exposed in a fairly high-profile article.”