Here’s where I live up to my reputation as a misogynist film blogger. This week, for the first time, I read a script where I kept having one thought repeatedly: “This is the first script I’ve read that seems to want to capture the cat-lady demographic.” It’s not so much that they want to hit this demo — it’s that they want to exclude everyone else from possibly enjoying this movie.
First, let’s take a step back and ponder what I consider the “cat lady” personality type. I know it’s harsh and stereotypical, and as a dude, I’m opening myself up to obvious accusations of sexism, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading television forums, and it’s impossible to not notice this small but vocal group of people — the kind of people who hate some people for being fat hos and hate another because she needs a sandwich, the kind of people who rage against bad parenting while glorifying rapists as misunderstood and quietly pondering brother-on-brother incest.
I don’t care if these people are lonely save for their 25 cats, or if they’re married with five kids and no pets. They’re all cat ladies, based more on personality type than actual cat ownership. To put it bluntly, their defining trait is not so much possession of a certain domesticated feline. In fact, I know women who own cats but don’t fall into the “cat lady” category. It’s more about the type of person who has some kind of damage causing them to not simply enjoy a work of entertainment, or to not level any valid criticism. They watch, and they judge characters in shockingly simplified terms: if they’re good-looking men, they can do no wrong no matter how many women they rape and/or beat; if they’re good-looking women, they can do no right even if they devote their lives to all manner of saintly deeds; if they’re dowdy female sidekicks, they’re abused and mistreated by their beautiful friends; if they’re dumpy, unattractive male sidekicks, they’re obnoxious and need to get off my TV screen.
This personality type seems to work best with TV shows, because unlike other forms of entertainment, the characters (and/or the actors who play them) can be judged on a weekly basis. Each new set of actions creates more and more discussion. You don’t get that with movies; even in a franchise, you have to wait a year or two for a sequel. It doesn’t suit the “call-and-response” of people speculating Izzie can’t get more obnoxious, then patting themselves on the back when that fat whore parallel parks on a hill without angling her tires and setting the parking brake. As a result, it seemed odd to me that they’d target this demographic for a feature film, but then, it’s not a feature film designed for cat ladies to hate. They ought to embrace it like that doughy sidekick from Gilmore Girls.
Here’s a general synopsis of the plot, which I don’t mind giving away because it’s a beat-for-beat remake of a Korean movie that, I assume, sucks just as hard: recently divorced Woman A has been compelled to do two things all her life: cook and fuck. As a consequence, she’s suffered from a slight weight problem, which puts a crimp into her second compulsion, and she grows increasingly obsessed with dieting. She’s also shrill and needy, yet cartoonishly judgmental. Her new next door neighbor, Woman B, is an ex-child star with an active eating phobia masquerading as an eating disorder. It keeps her stick-thin and sexually appealing to men, but she is also terrified of sex. After meeting Woman B and discovering the phobias, Woman A simply cannot understand it and decides to devote her life to forcing Woman B to eat something. Woman A fails repeatedly, and her increasing frustration manifests itself as bitter judgment of Woman B as frigid.
Because Woman A constantly forces herself on Woman B, eventually they form an uneasy bond. Woman B opens up about her history of repeated sexual abuse, sleazy producers forcing themselves on her as early as 12. Perhaps most traumatically, one of them continuously shoved food into her mouth while raping her, in order to keep her quiet. Instead of giving us an equally compelling childhood trauma to explain Woman A’s behavior, the writer treats us to a baffling flashback illustrating how her divorce happened. When her workaholic husband decided he no longer wanted to spend his limited free time doing nothing but eating, Woman A concluded that he was cheating and, in a confusing act of revenge, cooked their pet — a parrot — in a dish for the husband. When he discovered what she had done, the husband filed for divorce immediately. In the present, revealing these nuggets of backstory causes Woman A and Woman B to settle into an alarming, far-fetched lesbian tryst. Soon after, Woman A discovers Woman B has started sleeping with her ex-husband, so Woman A slits her throat. Then, she has a dream of the ghost of Woman B visiting her, grateful for what Woman A has done. Woman A sleeps soundly.
I should also mention that this script is told in a nonlinear fashion, starting with a police detective investigating the disappearance of Woman B. It has nothing to do with the story, really. It doesn’t build any suspense (we know Woman A is the culprit because, from the moment we meet her, SHE’S FUCKING NUTS) and makes a simple — if retarded — story seem much more convoluted than it is.
Despite its many, many problems, I have to give the writer props for one important thing: he knows his audience. This is a script that doesn’t take the time to justify the protagonist’s actions in order to make her sympathetic or, at least, empathetic. Who needs to waste time on that when you know cat ladies will instantly align with a doughy, sexually frustrated woman trying to win over an evil harlot whose life has been destroyed by her desirability?
Seriously, though, the writer really commits to appealing to the cat lady demographic, and that’s a fairly important lesson for writing. (I’d question the decision to appeal to this base, because while they may rule Internet TV forums, I don’t think they necessarily speak to the broad spectrum of viewers. If they did, shows’ ratings would go up instead of down when showrunners make the mistake of kowtowing to Internet fandom.) Recently, one of my friends sent me a new script he’d written and said, “I don’t know who would want to see this, but I know I would.”
To me, that’s just a bent antenna. In order to succeed as a screenwriter — not to write good screenplays, necessarily — you have to develop the instinct to say, “Here’s who will see this movie.” Taking it a step further, you have to have the smarts to say, “Here’s who will see this movie, and here’s a producer who wants to appeal to that exact demographic,” and then work some ass-talking-out-of-style magic. If all you can muster is, “Well… I like it, at least,” you’re already screwed.
You’re a writer, though. You want to write good before commercial, right? Why can’t you do both? I know it seems like an impossible dream with Hollywood’s current output, but it can be done. Broaden your prospective audience from “me and/or people like me,” but not all the way out to “lowest common denominator,” the thing that makes so many movies into shitstorms. Say you’re into sci-fi. This might be a bad example because it’s plagued with the “fanboy” mentality that tends to cause filmmakers to slip into pandering instead of telling a solid story; it’s also plagued with the perception that it’s box-office poison unless it’s loaded with ridiculous action sequences. Nevertheless, say you’re into sci-fi. You love it, you know the genre extremely well, and you have a story idea that manages to conform to the genre while offering sci-fi fans an experience they’ve never seen before. In other words, it’ll make both you and a broad base of sci-fi fans happy. As opposed to telling a story inspired by your Bergman-bleak struggle to move past your wife’s death and setting it on a space station to appeal to genre fans. It might make you happy, and people who love cathartic dramas might see it, but all those nerds who have never touched a woman, much less loved and lost? They’ll stay away in droves.
Like most screenwriting problems, it’s solved with a happy medium. If you can find a way to tell stories that fulfill you as a person and a writer in a way that appeals to (at least) one large sect of moviegoers, you’re on the right track. If you want to write stories that fulfill you and few to no others, try writing a novel. (That’s not an attempt to be condescending. If you have talent and drive, you can carve out a decent living writing novels about things movie audiences would reject. It’s the last bastion of verbal artistry, so you might as well take advantage of it before shit like Twitter kills both the printed word and society.)
Posted by Stan on June 14, 2009 12:05 PM