The ladies are coming

I'm excited about all the female protagonist action movies we've got going on theses days. It seems like Salt may have opened the flood gates a bit. There was Hanna, and soon there will be Clombiana, and Haywire, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Okay so maybe not floodgates, but still. That's some good, substantial badass chick love right there. I hope it continues.

I hear ALL THE TIME that nobody wants to make an action movie with a female lead, and yet here we are. I've been told I should start writing only male protagonists, that I'm dreaming if I think anyone will ever finance what I love to write.

I firmly believe that whatever anyone says "will never sell" just hasn't seen the script that could sell it yet. People DO want to see an action movie with a female protagonist, it's just that the offerings in the past have been so poor. Was Catwoman a bomb because it starred a woman? I think not. The story had issues.

I think maybe it's the super hero aspect that's not working, or that a lot of writers are creating women who are TOO invincible, too angry, not feminine except for sex appeal. But a woman is more than sex, she's a mom, a sister, an innocent to some degree. She's softer than a man. It's hard for anyone to root for a woman who's completely cold. So a good female action hero has to have some major vulnerability, more than a man does, if you want her to work.

That's why I'm excited about Colombiana the most. I ADORE Zoe Saldana, and I've been convinced for a while that she would be our next badass chick to break through, but I also see from the trailer that her character seems to have that vulnerability that female action heroes need. She's not just angry, she's HURT, and I think that's an important distinction. A man's revenge story can be about rage because he was humiliated, emasculated, and that matters to men. They can hurt too, of course, but their primary emotion in a revenge tale is rage. Look at Payback or Death Wish or a million Westerns.

I just don't think a woman's story can work that way. People won't buy it. But they will buy a woman who's unable to get over the pain, and wants to inflict the same amount of pain on someone else. And the pain has to feel real.

Plus, she can't be invincible. It's ridiculous to think a woman can take a large, well-trained man in a fight without some kind of edge. I'm pretty tough, but I know my limits.

So I've never believed a single person who told me the industry would never make another action movie starring a woman. I'm very glad to have been right.

Now, let's all go see these movies so they'll keep making them. Assuming they're good, of course. I really really want Colombiana to be good.

The Expendables crowd

Ever since I moved to the burbs, I've gone to a small movie theater where parking is plentiful, tickets are cheap, and you don't have to wait in a long line for anything. I love that theater.

Friday night I actually waited in a short line to hold our group's seats when the theater opened up for The Expendables, and I took a quick gander at the audience.

Behind me was a man in his 40s whose wife had given up. If you show up for the movies on a Friday night in a velour track suit with a scrunchie in your hair, you might as well start getting fat because that's the only place left to go. Anyway, the wife went to see Eat, Pray, Love, leaving her husband alone behind me in line. Down the stairs comes this exotic chick with a body that kills poured into a minidress and high heels. The guy behind me stared at her all the way down the stairs.

In front of me was a young Latino couple. The girl was bright eyed, excited, giving a speech about awesome movies she's seen and where The Condemned ranked among them. My girl.

Ahead in line, a family of four - a wife, husband, and two kids under 10. This movie is rated R. No time like the present to teach your kids about giant guns that shoot grenades into people's torsos.

Behind me down the stairs, your stereotypical group of guys. They were all smiles and popcorn.

At the front of the line, a 50 something couple. They were giddy.

Now I'm not trying to say that there were as many women as men, or that this film brought in the old crowd, but I think maybe the studios underestimate the appeal this film had for women.

If they had realized how many of us wanted to see this film, they would have had Jason Statham take his shirt off at least once. I don't think that's too much to ask.

See Salt. Or else.

Ever since I heard Salt had switched to a female protagonist I've been antsy for opening weekend. I keep hearing all the time "Don't write an action film with a female protagonist." Every time I tell someone about my latest project they sort of give me this tsk tsk response, like I've made a big mistake with my life and I should really learn to write about men or stick to romcoms.

So I prayed for Salt to be good. I was going to force all my friends to go see it if it sucked, just to give a minuscule push to the box office. I'm relieved that fans of action say it's good.

Because you know what they'll say if this movie fails: People just don't go see female action heroes.

It has nothing to do with whether or not it's a good movie, of course. I mean Alien, Terminator, Nikita, Run Lola Run, Resident Evil - those are all flukes, right? Nobody wants to see a woman kicking ass.

But if it does well.... oh if it does well, then we're back, baby. If this movie makes money in a season where nothing is guaranteed, the first thing studio heads will do is to look around for the next Salt.

I'm waving my hand hello.

Predators and the only girl around

Saw Predators today. I have the same opinion that's been going around - fun flick, not an Oscar winning piece of brilliance, but exactly what a solid action film should be. I would probably have enjoyed it even more were it not for the old dude in the back who kept yelling "OH NO!" every time a new complication arose.

Anyhow, I like Isabelle.

We all know how generally unsuccessful female action heroes have been, and I think the main reason is the difficulty so many writers have separating strength from compassion. Even though this film doesn't pass the Blechdel test - there's only one woman, although I kind of want to see what a female Predator looks like - I still felt that Isabelle is a perfect example of how to write a female badass.

I think there's a feeling that a woman must be either compassionate or strong, and that if she's strong she's a bitch, but if she cares about people, she's weak. In reality, a woman in a man's world generally tends to be the one who reminds everybody that we don't have to kill each other. I've often maintained that if one of the Lord of the Flies had been a Lady of the Fly, they may not have destroyed each other. Everybody needs a mommy. That doesn't mean Mommy has to choose between being a harpie or a pushover.

Isabelle has a heart. She also has a gun, and she sees no reason she can't balance both. At one point in the story Walton Goggins character, the convict, stares at her ass and tells her it's awesome. In a lot of films, that's when Michelle Rodriguez would have pinned him in some kind of thumb lock and told him to shut his fucking mouth or she'd shove her sniper rifle up his ass.

Instead, in this version, Alice Braga lets it go and moves on to more important things. She might be able to kick his ass - we never find out - but what would that prove? She's not an angry butch lesbian, she's just a warrior with a vagina.

I don't necessarily agree with how she was handled at the end of the film, but overall I felt that she was handled with realism and respect. Action writers would do well to pay attention.

Ode to Sarah Connor

I was laying on a table in the doctor's office today, preparing for a nerve-wracking procedure to diagnose a problem with my wrist and I suddenly had a mini freak out. Then I thought to myself, What Would Sarah Connor Do?

So I grabbed the doctor by the shirt and got all up in his face and said, "Don't you dare fuck this up. This is my shooting hand."

I love Sarah Connor. She is my all time favorite character - mostly from Terminator 2, but there's something to be said for her turn in the first film as well.

Just the other day we all had that awesome discussion about women as big weepy weaklings, and I think Sarah Connor is a perfect example of how to do a female victim properly. She starts the story running, scared, confused, but not stupid. And by the end of the story she's gained the courage to fight with her own two hands. She realizes she has to be strong for her son.

And then she not only got strong, she got so awesomely badass that she could probably have defeated a bear at an arm wrestling contest. These days it seems like the action hero women are all spaghetti arms and in need of sandwiches, but Linda Hamilton was all muscle. When she picked up that big ass gun I believed she could carry it around.

Talk about a character arc.

She's my fictional hero. I wish we had more characters like her.

How to piss off a woman reader

Yesterday I read a screenplay by a new writer that offended me so much I was physically angry when I finished it. Nevermind why I was reading it, I was and I had to finish it. And it made me very very angry.

There was a woman in this script who was severely beaten by several men in a warehouse. She begged and pleaded constantly, and when she got the chance to escape she needed a man's help to get out. She was the only female character in the story. In the end her only escape from her predicament was to get married to her knight in shining armor.

If you enter a contest or submit your work to a studio or a rep, do not assume your reader will be male. You might end up with a woman - you might end up with someone like me. And there is no way in hell someone like me would EVER put through a script that offensive to women.

It's more than just the Bechdel test John August talked about last week, although this particular script definitely failed that test because there was only one female character. But it's also about the personality you give your female characters. I can't tell you how many times I've read a script that describes every female character by her hair color and not much else, or simply says she's hot. Or she has no sense of backstory, or her entire reason for existing is to give the big hero someone to save. This is not okay.

Personally I take just as much time developing my male characters as I do my women. I see them each as individual people who have desires and insecurities and interact with each other in ways that reflect their past experiences. It doesn't matter what sex you are, as a writer you should be able to do this.

Imagine if you read a script where it was all women characters except for the one man in the story, who they all tie to a chair and beat while he whines and prays for them to stop. Think about what kind of reaction you'd have.

Do not assume a man will be the only audience for your script. What happens if the reader is a woman? Look at your script. What does it say about women? How would it make you feel if you were a woman reading this?

I don't need every female character to be a badass with a gun, but every woman has skills, even if her skill is to use sex to get what she wants. When you have a weepy woman who does nothing but wait to be saved by a man, especially when she's the only female character in your story, you have not done your job as a writer.

In this particular screenplay I kept waiting for the woman to take matters into her own hands. I hoped that her story arc was to realize that she wasn't helpless, that she had to fight to defend herself or use whatever skills she has to escape. Instead she just kept on waiting for someone to save her while she took her vicious beatings.

If that was your script, punch yourself in the face right now and never pull that misogynistic shit again.

Jane Goldman on Kick Ass

I would like to direct your attention to this terrific interview with Jane Goldman, co-writer of Kick Ass, one of my favorite scripts of the last year. I admit even though I adored this script and loved the Hit Girl character and introduction, I was a bit nervous about an 11-year-old girl perpetrating this much violence. Jane Goldman does an excellent job of pointing out that we frequently see young girls as victims, but suddenly when they're the hero it's a little shocking.

As I was reading that I suddenly remembered that I had a little girl in my zombie script who eventually picks up a gun and shoots zombies and not once did it ever occur to me that it was objectionable. Yet here I was, a little uncomfortable with a heroic girl in someone else's film doing the same thing.

It's an interesting topic to me and I enjoyed reading her take on the whole thing. She also makes some great points about how women are not expected to like films like this, an expectation she finds to be quite silly. I agree.