In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, while promoting her latest movie, Hotel Artemis, Jodie Foster states that:

“We need to bang the head of America to let them know that it needs female directors.”

Presumably she is talking about Hollywood in particular, not the United States in general, because I doubt that many people choose to view a movie based on the sex of the person directing it, but she does raise an interesting point. “Does America, or Hollywood, “need” female directors?”

This is not an argument for or against having female directors, it is an argument against the statement that Hollywood “needs” female directors.

Unpacking The Statement

The assumption behind Foster’s statement appears to be that women bring something unique to directing that will make a movie especially artistic or profitable. Foster herself points to 2017’s Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, as an example of a good movie with a female director. However that does not, ipso facto, prove that the success of Wonder Woman is due to having a woman as director.

However it may provide evidence that all DC movies would have been better without Zack Snyder.

DC fans, starved for decent movies, rally around Wonder Woman as the only ray of light in the DC cinematic universe but the movie itself is average compared to the movies produced in the Marvel Studios, all of which were directed by men.

Female directors Wonder Woman

In my opinion, Wonder Woman is better than Captain America: The First Avenger, but inferior to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

It is a fun action movie, with a great cast led by the delightful Gal Gadot, but it isn’t significantly different to any other superhero movie made in the last decade. It is certainly not the game-changer that Foster appears to think it is.

Foster also cites the example of Europe, where female directors are more regularly seen, but that likewise is not an argument that Hollywood “needs” female directors.

To introduce a bit of national chauvinism, what was the last European movie that anyone outside Europe paid to see? Hollywood is a multi-billion dollar international industry. Europe’s film industry is tiny in comparison.

“It’s The Economy, Stupid.”

The Hollywood film industry is a business, and as such it exists for one simple reason.

To make money.

If there was significant market desire for “female” directors then Hollywood would see economic value in employing more female directors, however there isn’t. When it comes to those things that motivate us to hand over our hard earned shekels to watch a movie, the gender of the director isn’t even on the list.

Number one is brand recognition. That is what brought people in to watch the Star Wars sequels. It is part of what keeps people coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is also why we see so many remakes and reboots of past television series and movies. Hollywood relies a lot on the nostalgia factor. The fact that the vast majority of those remakes are bad movies doesn’t change the fact that people do pay to watch them.

Likewise when advertising a movie the studio may well list known and successful movies that their cast and crew were associated with, in order to gain some gloss from that association.

Number two would be the headlining star. The chance to see Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford reprise their roles in Star Wars also helped sell seats. Tom Cruise likewise can still sell tickets, as can Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s why the headliners are invariably paid much more than their co-stars.

Number three would be a known director, Steven Spielberg as an example. If the director has a reputation for producing good movies, like the Russo Brothers or the aforementioned Patty Jenkins, customers will be willing to take a chance on an otherwise unknown product.

Almost nobody goes to a movie’s IMDB page and decides to watch or not based on the gender of the director. As A Wrinkle In Time demonstrated, having a female director does not make a bad movie good, just as Robocop (2014) was not made into a better movie by having a male director.

Conclusion

As I have already stated, this is not an argument about whether or not women should be directors. If that’s what they want to do, by all means let them do it. The argument is over whether Hollywood “needs” female directors, and the answer is that it does not.

What Hollywood needs are good directors, good writers, good producers, good special effects artists. Undoubtedly some of those will be women, and they should be given the opportunity to prove themselves, but it does not need directors, writers, producers, and artists whose primary qualification is their gender.

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