Girl on Film: #MeToo

If the problem of the film and television industry was a one-page synopsis, you could swap any industry – tobacco, petroleum, pharmaceutical, agriculture – and the plot and characters would be the same. That is, an industry exists to ensure perpetual profit for its shareholders, by garbaging its natural environment, gouging and addicting its customers, and mistreating its workers. For the average film industry craftsperson, eking out a feast-or-famine wage, there are worthwhile scripts, hardworking crew, passionate actors, thoughtful directors and responsible producers to be found.

But more likely than not, you will find yourself on some low-budget dumpster fire, with a schlocky script targeted to evangelicals in the bible belt, with a has-been bully-boy director who did one season of Smallville sixteen years ago and now takes his receding-hairline bitterness out on everyone around him.

One of the most rotten-hot-potato issues facing the film and television industry concerns whitewashing – casting white actors in non-white roles. To be fair, the process of adapting any intellectual property (novel, short story, comic, play, viral video of a goat trying to play a clarinet) into a feature-length screenplay is inherently fraught and imperfect. To be fair again, the process of moving a film or television show through development, preproduction, production, postproduction and distribution, involves hundreds of individuals collaborating over many months on thousands of tiny decisions, any one of which could spell box office or ratings bomb. But when white male studio execs option scripts penned by white males, and cast white males for starring roles, and target market their films to white male audiences, is it any wonder the internet horde pounds its thumbs at such plainly racist, sexist, nepotistic and formulaic creative decisions?

Of course, the online sphere also explodes with outrage every time a feted producer is outed as a chronic masturbator onto unsuspecting flower pots, a hipster radio host gets exposed as a compulsive sadist with a teddy bear for a wingman, or a revered comedian gets revealed as the most pernicious mixologist in the history of bartending. Though some will always knee-jerk question the credibility and motives of victims, especially when the accused perv/pedo is famous and wealthy, I have no doubt that none of those doubting Thomases has ever set foot on a stage, in a studio, or on location. Because we in the entertainment industry know that a professional reputation is as brittle as a thrice-revised rhinoplasty, and that speaking out can get you held up, frozen out, and cast aside.

Now, as we watch the industry make a show of slapping the wrists of the grinning skeletons in their closets, this raises the question of what any crew member, or audience member, can do to make any difference. Not much, in truth. Your raised blood pressure, clenched teeth, and furious tweets, are just spit on the aforementioned dumpster fire. Where you do have a locus of control is your wallet. If you work in the industry, live below your means and save your dimes, so if you find yourself victimized and then blacklisted, you can find a new career before the bank repos the car you sleep in after night shoots. Keep a mental list of directors, producers, crew and talent that you would never work with again, share that list with trusted colleagues, and heed others’ warnings of toxic stinking filthy assholes to avoid. If you are a department head in a position to hire, consider carefully who you would want to spend sixty or more hours a week of your life alongside.

And if you are a fan of film, television, music, comedy, support those projects and people that align with your values. And be sure to pay for that content, so more treasure and less trash gets produced.