Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. In honor of the Academy Awards. This weekend,
Speaker 1: we have an extra special episode for you about the
Speaker 1: movie Bombshell. Bombshell is based on the sexual harassment scandal
Speaker 1: at Fox News that brought down CEO Roger Ailes. The
Speaker 1: movie is up for several awards, Best Actress for Charlie's Thren,
Speaker 1: Best Supporting Actress from Margot Robbie, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Speaker 1: I got to speak to the screenwriter, Charles Randolph, about
Speaker 1: how the movie came into existence and about his views
Speaker 1: on the awards process in general and the complicated politics
Speaker 1: that surround them. Charles, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: This is a thrill for me. Gladly, Gladly, I want
Speaker 1: to star. Are talking about the process that led you
Speaker 1: to write the screenplay for Bombshell? Okay, and take us back.
Speaker 1: You had just maybe it was right when you had
Speaker 1: just won your Academy Award for Big Short, or maybe
Speaker 1: it was before that. What was the timing in relationship?
Speaker 1: It was not long after, you know, so you're you're
Speaker 1: at the top of your career, You've just won an
Speaker 1: Academy award, and you're thinking, what project do I do next?
Speaker 1: How did you gravitate to the Fox News harassment story? Wow?
Speaker 1: What a good question. You know it's a great story, right.
Speaker 1: The fact that a story of feminist determination came from
Speaker 1: these conservative women was really interesting and complicated. And what
Speaker 1: you're always looking for is you're looking for strong characters
Speaker 1: with strong internal conflicts. We think of a movie being
Speaker 1: made about your life as an award that Hollywood gives you,
Speaker 1: but that's not the case. We are always looking for
Speaker 1: stories where people have a rich and unusual and you
Speaker 1: need both in conflict that will drive the story forward.
Speaker 1: And Megan and Gretchen both had that. Megan Kelly, Gretchen
Speaker 1: Carls said, everybody know there knows their names and first
Speaker 1: names are appropriate, but we should say it at least
Speaker 1: once exactly. So that's that's what was the appeal, like,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating story with strong characters, was strong conflicts. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean I am a bit of a contrarian. So
Speaker 1: the idea that this moment preme too moment with such
Speaker 1: illustrative power in our society came from inside Fox News
Speaker 1: was sort of fascinating, although me too hadn't happened yet
Speaker 1: when you sat down to write this. Now it had.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that more in a second, but I
Speaker 1: just want to go back to this question of the conflicts, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, to see the film is to believe you,
Speaker 1: because you wrote them as characters with extraordinary conflicence. It's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons it's such a skillful script. But
Speaker 1: what conflicts did you see as it were before you started?
Speaker 1: I mean, when I hear that story, I don't think
Speaker 1: to myself, oh my goodness, what cont this is? Maybe
Speaker 1: why I'm not a scamwriter. What made you think there
Speaker 1: were conflicts there? Did you know in advance there had
Speaker 1: to have been conflict? Megan Kelly was quiet for ten days?
Speaker 1: Why right, this thing happens. It's in everyone's interests to
Speaker 1: go out and say, Roger's fine, these things, these things
Speaker 1: never happened all that. But she was silent, right, So
Speaker 1: what happened in that time? And that's where you start.
Speaker 1: You start with this thing of hmm, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: She was quiet, so so you really are starting from that,
Speaker 1: You're starting from m there's a tell there. Let me
Speaker 1: ask a follow out a question about to tell. One
Speaker 1: of the remarkable things that you do is you tell
Speaker 1: stories that are true stories, right, but you're still in
Speaker 1: some way fictionalizing them for the screen. And that's an
Speaker 1: incredibly delicate dance in its own way. It's much harder
Speaker 1: than doing a pure truth documentary or pure made up fiction.
Speaker 1: It's it's just a higher degree of difficulty, as it
Speaker 1: were on the dive. Right. So you imagined that those
Speaker 1: ten days embodied a conflict, right, and you made a
Speaker 1: movie where those ten days do embody a conflict. Would
Speaker 1: it matter to you if, in fact the ten days
Speaker 1: were you know, she called her lawyers and they were like,
Speaker 1: let's see how this plays out. You know, we have
Speaker 1: a goal of getting more money at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, and if it didn't reflect some internal conflict,
Speaker 1: would that matter or would it? Would it would? You know,
Speaker 1: she's watched the film and she's come out and said
Speaker 1: that my portrayal of that internal conflict is too harsh
Speaker 1: in some ways against her, because she was always a
Speaker 1: strong advocate of women, and we have one character accuse
Speaker 1: her in her silence of having you know, perpetuated the
Speaker 1: culture of harassment, and then she reacts quite defensively in
Speaker 1: the film, you know, in that sort of classic Megan
Speaker 1: Kelly way of saying, Hey, that's how it is, snowflake
Speaker 1: kind of thing. But so at the end of the day, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want the conflict to reflect a real internal dynamic
Speaker 1: that's going on in that human being, and in this
Speaker 1: case it did. She even says, you know, I have
Speaker 1: to say, I don't know if you saw the video
Speaker 1: of her watching the film, and she she says, you
Speaker 1: don't have to say. I do feel like I could
Speaker 1: have done more so while my expression of it didn't
Speaker 1: please her, the underlying fact of it I think was appropriate,
Speaker 1: and she admits that. And so, yeah, so I'm always
Speaker 1: hoping that those things that you arrive at, those internal
Speaker 1: emotional conflicts that you arrive at, that they're true and
Speaker 1: that they will resonate, because if they are, this is
Speaker 1: a place where the truth will lead you to something
Speaker 1: that you can't really make up as effectively or efficiently.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I always hope that, yes, that
Speaker 1: those portrayals and Strue Gretchen as well, reflect an underlying reality.
Speaker 1: Is that because you think it's as you said, more
Speaker 1: efficient from an artistic perspective, or is it an ethical concern?
Speaker 1: I mean I have in my mind the famous, maybe
Speaker 1: fictional exchange between Gertrude Stein and Picasso, when you know,
Speaker 1: she looks at her his portrait of her, and she
Speaker 1: sends him a note saying it doesn't look like me, right,
Speaker 1: and he sends her back a note saying it will. So.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that's the case here. Your depiction
Speaker 1: of this story is the one that everyone will remember, right,
Speaker 1: not just Megan Kelly, but her children and her grandchildren
Speaker 1: and the whole world. She herself will probably come to
Speaker 1: remember it, and in this way, because that's the power
Speaker 1: of the film like this, of a successful, widely viewed film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I take that responsibility very seriously. I do. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it is it is largely an ethical concern to get
Speaker 1: it right. You know, there are things you have to cheat.
Speaker 1: Timeframes get truncated, for sure, Dialogue is infitted, without doubts,
Speaker 1: the emotional flavor of individual scenes changes. But I want,
Speaker 1: I want the struggles that these human beings go through
Speaker 1: in this world to be as true as possible. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you about again the background to that sort
Speaker 1: of remarkable video where you see Megan Kelly responding to
Speaker 1: the film right, in which she is a character. Right,
Speaker 1: very obviously she did not know what was coming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she had no say in your script none. Technically, how
Speaker 1: does that happen? Is it that her story was sufficiently
Speaker 1: in the public domain that neither you nor the producers
Speaker 1: had to go to her to get any permission or
Speaker 1: any right to use her story? Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not the dominant part of the narrative, right, and the
Speaker 1: narrative is broader than just her story. Sure, So part
Speaker 1: of it's that. Part of it is she is a
Speaker 1: public figure who's you know, influenced our culture in big ways,
Speaker 1: and our laws are structured to you know, shield anyone
Speaker 1: who wants to comment on her presence, you know, in
Speaker 1: a way. So a lot of this is you know,
Speaker 1: obviously fair use. So technically it's it's not a problem
Speaker 1: as long as you're being as truthful as possible. Also,
Speaker 1: we're we're using beats and moments that she's discussed a
Speaker 1: lot she wrote a book about that also have appeared
Speaker 1: in other media narratives It's not you know, and and
Speaker 1: appeared prior to her book as well. So, and and
Speaker 1: you know, obviously I'm talking to more than her, I'm
Speaker 1: interring you know, twenty people at Fox. So some of
Speaker 1: these perspectives on scenes with her or from people who
Speaker 1: you know, are in the room with her, as opposed
Speaker 1: to coming from her directly. So she's just pretty lucky that,
Speaker 1: you know, she gets a depiction that is she may
Speaker 1: not have thought it was sufficiently sympathetic, but it is
Speaker 1: in certain respect sympathetic to her, I mean part of it. No,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a bigger issue here, which is that
Speaker 1: film is inherently humanizing. You know, the critique that a
Speaker 1: film about someone will normalize them, will platform them, isn't
Speaker 1: is true? It does. It inherently does that the worst
Speaker 1: person depicted on film will somehow be comprehensible. And if
Speaker 1: to understand all, isn't maybe to forgive all at least
Speaker 1: to humanize. Yeah, exactly, So, even someone like Roger gets humanized.
Speaker 1: And this is also I remember having in the shadow
Speaker 1: of a hyperpowers and culture where so many of our
Speaker 1: narratives are dreaming driven by media that with which have
Speaker 1: been twitterized to the degree we have a strong emotional,
Speaker 1: you know, reaction to these human beings already we think
Speaker 1: we know, and so contrasting that is not difficult. Let's
Speaker 1: be clear, right, because there's been such vitification of parties
Speaker 1: on both sides of the aisle, any kind of normal
Speaker 1: human discourse that's short of odious often feels very humanizing,
Speaker 1: you know. Strangely enough, that's assuming that it's short short
Speaker 1: of odious. Right to go about your ethical point, that
Speaker 1: also must be partly your choice, Yeah, to humanize because
Speaker 1: that makes it greater art. Yeah, I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: that in this particular moment, especially that the art complicates
Speaker 1: so part of it is in the shadow of partisanship.
Speaker 1: Any kind of portrayal of a real human being feels
Speaker 1: grounded and humanizing in a way. And it seems particularly
Speaker 1: significant because that human is Roger Ales, who is held
Speaker 1: responsible by so many people, rightly or wrongly, for our
Speaker 1: culture of vilification. Yeah, exactly, that's the irony. I mean,
Speaker 1: that really is. I mean, that's like irony with you know,
Speaker 1: with the bright red let capital letters. Absolutely right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we are we are hopefully extending to mister Ale
Speaker 1: something he didn't extend to the rest of the world, right,
Speaker 1: And and that's okay. Because you know, I'm fully aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that I'm being empowered and by a
Speaker 1: massive amount of money and a massive distribution network that
Speaker 1: will distribute my vision of these human beings around the planet,
Speaker 1: and so certainly that comes with an obligation to hopefully
Speaker 1: be as as judicious and human as possible. One thing
Speaker 1: about humanizing sexual harasser, though, which I think is actually
Speaker 1: underlooked in the public discourse around this, is, of course
Speaker 1: we're all eager to condemn everyone who engages in sexual
Speaker 1: harass rise evil, right, But if you think that it's
Speaker 1: only the most extreme evil people who engage in the
Speaker 1: sexual harassment, then it's really hard to explain why there's
Speaker 1: so much of it out there in the world. And
Speaker 1: most of it is realizing that lots of people who
Speaker 1: don't think they're such terrible people, and who might in
Speaker 1: other domains that their lives not be so terrible, could
Speaker 1: still do this. Absolutely so, the guy twirling his mustache,
Speaker 1: you know, is not the one who's going to create
Speaker 1: the most emotional damage in a woman's life. It's the
Speaker 1: person she considers a friend who on the business trip
Speaker 1: suddenly you know, says, hey, let's go to the hotel
Speaker 1: bar and then goes out from there, or the or
Speaker 1: the man she considers a mentor you know, those are
Speaker 1: the situations where you get the most in trouble. So
Speaker 1: so with Roger, part of it was creating a portrait
Speaker 1: of him that allowed us to sympathize with him to
Speaker 1: the degree that those scenes could have real power. You know,
Speaker 1: we reach the point of the conversation where you know,
Speaker 1: two white guys are now talking about sexual harassment. We
Speaker 1: can hear the little voice you know in our in
Speaker 1: our ears saying what's wrong with this picture? And it
Speaker 1: won't be sufficient to answer to say, well, white guys
Speaker 1: do most of the sexual harassments, or why shouldn't we
Speaker 1: be the ones to speak about it? In this contemporary
Speaker 1: era where we're all very focused and concerned appropriately on agency,
Speaker 1: it seems like a violation of agency for the two
Speaker 1: of us to sit here and talk about sexual harassment
Speaker 1: from the standpoint as it were, of the harasser, right
Speaker 1: when there are human beings women being harassed and you
Speaker 1: want to have the agency to speak about this topic.
Speaker 1: So I just want to ask you for your thoughts
Speaker 1: of starting with the critique that simply says, you know,
Speaker 1: why why you yeah. Well, I wrote the script before
Speaker 1: the Me Too movement began in its most populous form,
Speaker 1: so prior to the Harvey Weinstein I've actually finished about
Speaker 1: three well two months before the Harvey case broke. That
Speaker 1: was fast worry. Yeah, yeah, So I wrote it over that,
Speaker 1: you know, just after the election, over that spring, So
Speaker 1: in a way, there was no one telling that story
Speaker 1: at the time. Had Harvey's situation occurred, I probably would
Speaker 1: not have written it, probably would not have sold it.
Speaker 1: I'd have probably thought, oh, this issue is getting enough
Speaker 1: traction that I don't have to So part of this
Speaker 1: is just, you know, this feeling that no one was
Speaker 1: saying telling the story and it needed to be told.
Speaker 1: And that's, by the way, something that the public just
Speaker 1: isn't that aware of. They see a film coming out
Speaker 1: now a couple of years after Me Too, and they think, oh,
Speaker 1: this was a me too movie, not realizing it just
Speaker 1: takes a long time to put together a film like
Speaker 1: that take forever. I mean, contracts alone take eight months,
Speaker 1: you know, plus legal vetting on a film like this,
Speaker 1: it just takes forever. So part of your answer is
Speaker 1: when you started doing it, there wasn't in Me Too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But but but but that's you know, that's a cop
Speaker 1: out of us. I think there's a you know, let's
Speaker 1: let's address the real problem is should men be telling
Speaker 1: these stories? And I go back and forth myself. Right, Partly, yes, there,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm also writing men in these situations and
Speaker 1: getting that right, getting that accurately matters for helping us
Speaker 1: understand this. And certainly the other thing is my greatest
Speaker 1: desire is to put men in those rooms, like the
Speaker 1: situation in the film between Margot Robbie's character Kayla and
Speaker 1: Roger Ailes, because if I can put men in those rooms,
Speaker 1: they can see how these situations are a extremely complicated
Speaker 1: and can be utterly life changing. I have found in
Speaker 1: my own life a tendency when these narratives pop up
Speaker 1: to be a little dismissive in an almost instinctual way.
Speaker 1: It's almost as though, you know, the minute I hear
Speaker 1: one of these stories, I have this Darwinian thing to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know she went into that office, Well, like
Speaker 1: I'm immediately have that thing that comes up, that voice
Speaker 1: in my head, that masculine protective, that sort of gender defensiveness.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to I wanted to interrogate that
Speaker 1: part of myself. You know, as I say, I wanted
Speaker 1: to drag my own prejudices through, you know, a gauntlet
Speaker 1: of real lives and sort of sort of examine on them.
Speaker 1: And so I guess I hope that in showing those
Speaker 1: situations two men around the world, I am doing the
Speaker 1: greater good, and that I am willing to accept the
Speaker 1: critique that there probably is someone who could have told
Speaker 1: this story better, who is a woman, but you know,
Speaker 1: she had not yet emerged, and so I did what
Speaker 1: I could. So it's interesting. They're they're sort of two strands.
Speaker 1: One is the educative part, yeah, and strands too, I thought,
Speaker 1: was the internal part, the part where every artist is
Speaker 1: to some extent grappling with his or her own internal
Speaker 1: voices and internal demons. And I think what you say is,
Speaker 1: I think it's true surely of the great majority of men,
Speaker 1: and very possibly of just about all men, that they will, instinctively,
Speaker 1: even if their consciousness has been raised, identify with other
Speaker 1: men or want to deny the depth and extremity of
Speaker 1: you know, what reality tells us. I mean, my version
Speaker 1: of that would be just time after time during the
Speaker 1: me two process, saying that guy, that guy, now that guy,
Speaker 1: you know, and just thinking to myself at a certain
Speaker 1: point I realized, you know, you know, no, you just
Speaker 1: don't know what man a capable, right, you know, you
Speaker 1: just you know, maybe you have your own superrego has
Speaker 1: developed in a certain kind of way, a certain kind
Speaker 1: of guilt consciousness. But maybe not everybody is, you know.
Speaker 1: But the point is just a recognition that I share
Speaker 1: that that same kind of gender protective instinct. I think
Speaker 1: we have it right. I think though, that the left
Speaker 1: critique from a strong feminist would go after both of
Speaker 1: these things by saying, well, education is great, but couldn't
Speaker 1: you have picked another story to do it all right?
Speaker 1: Or you know, why does this have to men educating
Speaker 1: men using the story of women as their instruments. And
Speaker 1: then on the personal thing, they would say, well, that's it.
Speaker 1: They accept that, they would accept that art always involves
Speaker 1: some self exploration, right, but they want to see the
Speaker 1: film that would emerge if that self exploration was from
Speaker 1: the women's perspective rather than the men's. And then they
Speaker 1: would point to the industry and say, well, maybe no
Speaker 1: one had emerged, but maybe that's because women were denied
Speaker 1: the opportunity you know, for their voices to emerge, and
Speaker 1: they would be right right on both counts in my book, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I would like to think that our film is
Speaker 1: moving the ball down the field, right, and that someone
Speaker 1: else can come along and say, Okay, here's this film.
Speaker 1: It was made for thirty he's going to make you know,
Speaker 1: fifty sixty million worldwide. So there is you know, there's
Speaker 1: a door open there that we can prove these stories.
Speaker 1: There's an audience for these stories, and so that so
Speaker 1: that we are you know, we are delicately laying the
Speaker 1: foundation for you know, the quintessential me too movie to
Speaker 1: come along, you know, three four or five, six years
Speaker 1: from now, totally done by women. Right, And when someone
Speaker 1: writes the Harvey Weinstein biopic, it will be a woman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I and I think I think the two people
Speaker 1: that are hired for that picture. I think they're two
Speaker 1: projects are both women too. You know that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I was speaking abstractly, but but in real life, I
Speaker 1: guess that's already happening. Yeah. Plan B's got one, and
Speaker 1: I think there's another one out there too, right. And
Speaker 1: there's also a film, an indie film coming out about
Speaker 1: assistant in Harvey's life. So so there are other things coming,
Speaker 1: for sure, you know, And it's but it's part of
Speaker 1: a you know, it's part of this broader conversation about
Speaker 1: how we are going to reach some version of parody
Speaker 1: behind the camera, and how can we do that as ruthlessly,
Speaker 1: efficiently and quickly as possible. You see that playing out,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Oscar you know conversation right now.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm more than willing to take whatever
Speaker 1: criticism comes by virtue of of of just wanting to
Speaker 1: do whatever we can to help the situation. Were there
Speaker 1: other critiques beyond the gender identity one that struck you
Speaker 1: as meaningful ones, Well, what you what we get a
Speaker 1: lot of is frustration that the film does not take
Speaker 1: Megan to task more for her complicity in the broader culture.
Speaker 1: I say, fox right, And that's a little difficult because
Speaker 1: what I wanted to avoid was making it sound as
Speaker 1: though right wing ideology creates necessarily a context for harassment,
Speaker 1: because we know that's not true. This is happening in
Speaker 1: every office around the country, right. I think really, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, a lot of people wanted
Speaker 1: the race issue to be addressed, and I struggle with this.
Speaker 1: You know, I had early drafts where, you know, I
Speaker 1: tried to address it. There's a you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a famous bookkeeping office where things got pretty dark over
Speaker 1: at Fox, and there were a couple of lawsuits of
Speaker 1: race based harassment. I tried to have Roger walk into
Speaker 1: one of them one at one point. You know, all this,
Speaker 1: and it's just it never worked. It felt like we
Speaker 1: were undermining the issue of her rassment itself. Until I
Speaker 1: came up with this thing. I was convinced was genius.
Speaker 1: And here's how I was going to solve this problem.
Speaker 1: Four or five six times in the film, an African
Speaker 1: American individual with wandering frame and they would see the camera,
Speaker 1: they would have sort of privileged gaze of the sort
Speaker 1: of context of production, so to speak, and they go,
Speaker 1: oh sorry and back out right. And so the idea
Speaker 1: with it, anytime an African American person was introduced into
Speaker 1: the frame, they would be, oh, oh sorry, just leave
Speaker 1: the frame right to suggest that this is subtly and
Speaker 1: comedically a not very subtly comedically a environment absolutely hostile
Speaker 1: to that perspective. Now, in saying that you already know
Speaker 1: what I discovered it in the editing room with Jay,
Speaker 1: which is this was a very bad idea. Made it
Speaker 1: look like they were saying that the movie was a
Speaker 1: white people's movie rather than that Fox News was a
Speaker 1: white people's environment. It was hard to read the intent,
Speaker 1: but the fact you're asking the audience to read the
Speaker 1: intent at the moment already suggest problems, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was one of those things that was either
Speaker 1: confusing or just it just felt like it was the
Speaker 1: disease it purported to cure, you know, yes, and so
Speaker 1: so at the end of the day, both the structural
Speaker 1: things I tried to do it to address race at
Speaker 1: Fox and the playful things I tried to do just
Speaker 1: didn't work, right, So that's you know, you do what
Speaker 1: you can. Thankfully, it's a you know, it's a medium,
Speaker 1: that's it's slow, but but we have the ability to
Speaker 1: correct our mistakes. And we just took that out and
Speaker 1: and you know, now you can, as critics do, complain
Speaker 1: about their address addressing the race issue. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Oscar context, right, and I think that's a great
Speaker 1: topic to talk about here. Um, is there a revenge
Speaker 1: or reaction or blowback moment coming from the men in
Speaker 1: the Oscar nomination process. I think you're seeing that now, right.
Speaker 1: I think this this season is very mail driven, with
Speaker 1: a lot of films address seeing sort of male identity
Speaker 1: and revisiting male identity. And part of that, I think
Speaker 1: is the fact that a certain core group of filmmakers
Speaker 1: who obviously make movies about strongly male issues are making
Speaker 1: their films. But yeah, I think I think we're in
Speaker 1: a little bit of a broader cultural blowback against me too,
Speaker 1: and I think the film season this year reflects that
Speaker 1: in some ways. Yeah, I want to talk about it
Speaker 1: some concrete cases, like why didn't Gredit Groway get nominated
Speaker 1: for Best Director for Little Women? I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: that Little Women was a terrific movie, But more importantly,
Speaker 1: I perceived, maybe wrongly, that what made it distinctive and
Speaker 1: different from all the other Little Women's that are out
Speaker 1: there was the kind of direct hand of the director,
Speaker 1: you know, the sense that the director had a vision,
Speaker 1: was going a certain way. The presentation was distinctive, the
Speaker 1: outcomes were distinctive, and I was genuinely surprised in my
Speaker 1: ignorance that it didn't yield to a Best Director nomination.
Speaker 1: Explain to me what I'm what I'm missing because I
Speaker 1: think I am missing. Yeah, several things. Well, those of
Speaker 1: the of us in the industry were not as surprised
Speaker 1: because it had not won any of the precursor awards
Speaker 1: that you normally get. I think the broader most interesting
Speaker 1: thing for me to say about this stuff is, we
Speaker 1: are in the Academy attempting to become reach gender parody
Speaker 1: and to some degree inclusion on of of ethnicity, but
Speaker 1: that is coming with greater internationalization. Explain that. So that
Speaker 1: sounds really interesting, So that, for example, in the director's branch,
Speaker 1: the people we are inviting, the women we are inviting
Speaker 1: in to join the Academy exactly tend to be international.
Speaker 1: I think with a film like Greta's what ended up
Speaker 1: happening is that international cohort probably did not respond to
Speaker 1: the film as powerfully as you did, because it is
Speaker 1: very Mary's a very American story, sure, you know, and
Speaker 1: it has classic American apps well, and it has a
Speaker 1: kind of Christmas morning cheeriness to a lot of the
Speaker 1: scenes that I think, for literally, yes, for for some
Speaker 1: you know, for some directors outside of this country, seems
Speaker 1: just very American, you know. So there's that, and that's
Speaker 1: the situation in which I think that internationalization maybe worked
Speaker 1: against a film, but I think in terms of the
Speaker 1: performances it helped. So SAG, for example, did not nominate
Speaker 1: any of the screenacers screenacers GID for their awards, to
Speaker 1: not nominate any of the women from UH for Ensengwe.
Speaker 1: I don't think for any of the individual awards either. However,
Speaker 1: the acting branch of the Academy did, so that group
Speaker 1: felt those performances were worthy of recognition in a way
Speaker 1: that the more exclusively American group, which you know, that's
Speaker 1: what SAG does is they have a committee of people
Speaker 1: that sort of I think it's by lottery that that nominates,
Speaker 1: so so you know there are going to be good
Speaker 1: and bad things that come with that. On the whole,
Speaker 1: of course, it's great that we're becoming an international academy.
Speaker 1: What aspect of your experience both in writing your film,
Speaker 1: writing Bombshell, and also in pitching it to the world
Speaker 1: and talking about it, do you wish someone had asked
Speaker 1: you to speak about that? No one has asked you
Speaker 1: about if any Maybe every question has been asked and
Speaker 1: you've said everything you want to say, But is there
Speaker 1: something that hasn't been asked or that you would like
Speaker 1: to say about it. I mean, I think the thing
Speaker 1: that's gone under theorized is how we are going to
Speaker 1: deal with the fact that men, particularly older men, but
Speaker 1: men in the academy and in the filmmaking business, have
Speaker 1: risen on the power of believing in their taste, believing
Speaker 1: that their gut instinct matters. And you see this in
Speaker 1: Stephen King's recent tweet about the fact that he doesn't
Speaker 1: use diversity when making artistic evaluations and judgments about excellence, right,
Speaker 1: and he got beat up for them. And he is,
Speaker 1: in a sense the ultimate model of a person who's
Speaker 1: whatever his instincts are, somebody's buying them. Right. I saw
Speaker 1: recently a list of American authors and how many books
Speaker 1: are purchased, might have been worldwide authors, and he was
Speaker 1: just towering over people who sell millions of copies, towered
Speaker 1: over all of them. Anyway, So go on. So he's
Speaker 1: got he's got that well honed instinct which he privileges
Speaker 1: as part of his core, part of his identity. Right now,
Speaker 1: we want to come along and say, unfortunately, that instinct
Speaker 1: it's not misogynistic. I think that's I think it's wrong.
Speaker 1: We use that phrase. It's more, you know, androcentric, I
Speaker 1: suppose is the word I'm looking for, a sort of
Speaker 1: male centered. But we have to get people like that
Speaker 1: to engage with the idea that diversity doesn't mean necessarily
Speaker 1: throwing out you know that gut, but rather just doing
Speaker 1: a series of checks. And we've got to find a
Speaker 1: way to just somehow to introduce to diversity in the
Speaker 1: discussion around diversity without this sort of naming and shaming
Speaker 1: and really get people to think through Okay, here's a
Speaker 1: film like Little Women, Yes, that beautiful scene where so
Speaker 1: someone talks about you know, I am so sick of
Speaker 1: being women being defined for who they love yet I
Speaker 1: want love. It's like a beautiful, beautiful moment, right. That's
Speaker 1: not going to resonate with a lot of guys, but
Speaker 1: we have to get them in a position where they
Speaker 1: can see its power, right, And I just feel like
Speaker 1: we do not have a good way to do that yet.
Speaker 1: One of the things I think we could do which
Speaker 1: would help is we could expand the best director category
Speaker 1: from five films to ten films, and the way that
Speaker 1: rank voting works that would inherently be more inclusive. And
Speaker 1: since that's already been done in the past for other categories,
Speaker 1: but it was done for a Best Picture. It seems
Speaker 1: like a no brainer. Yeah. What's so interesting about the
Speaker 1: example of the awards is that the awards are symbolic,
Speaker 1: and if they were only symbolica, we wouldn't spend so
Speaker 1: much time worrying about them. But as I under tend it,
Speaker 1: in your industry, winning those awards translates into people sitting
Speaker 1: in the seat in the movie theater, which therefore translates
Speaker 1: into money. So winning the awards is actually a crucial
Speaker 1: component of how power gets deployed, and in that sense,
Speaker 1: it's super different from the way awards work into many
Speaker 1: other domains of life. You're absolutely right. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And to answer your question is I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like the one conversation I'm not hearing as I've
Speaker 1: done the press for this film is a more honest
Speaker 1: conversation about gender politics and how gender politics influence our
Speaker 1: choices and how we can sort of arrive at solutions.
Speaker 1: I feel like what I'm getting a lot of is
Speaker 1: people wanting to evoke the problem, wanting to say this,
Speaker 1: but no one really wanting to kind of go through
Speaker 1: and not no one but not enough people wanting to
Speaker 1: go through and and have a candid conversation about what's
Speaker 1: possible and what's not possible. Well, thank you for having
Speaker 1: that candid conversation with me. I'm really grateful to you
Speaker 1: for bringing this perspective. Thank you so much, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Deep Background is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia gene Coott,
Speaker 1: with studio recording by Joseph Friedman and mastering by Jason
Speaker 1: Gambrell and Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbn. Our
Speaker 1: theme music is composed by Luis Garat special thanks to
Speaker 1: the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background