squeetus

Two Austenland clips

A couple of Austenland clips have been released. The first one you can view at mtv.com. This scene Jerusha and I wrote just for the screenplay. While the ladies don't go shooting in the book, we wanted another activity that they do at Austenland, and hunting on a country estate seemed perfect. So we expanded the horseback riding scene into this. I love the visuals of it!

The second scene was in the book, though it might be a bit different than you imagined. What do you think?

Austenland goes home

More Austenland movie news: Sundance announced the Austenland screenings, and Entertainment Weekly posted a darling First Look photo.

Both Austenland and Midnight in Austenland will be published in the UK in March and available as well in New Zealand, Australia, and all world English markets. What do you think of the UK covers?

Can we keep talking about those missing misses?

Thanks for all your interesting comments on the last post! I found I wanted to continue the conversation with a few. I hope, in the cases where I disagree, this doesn't feel like an attack. I rarely respond to comments because I'm aware that the structure of a blog puts more emphasis on the post than the comment, so my voice is louder and can seem aggressive. I respect you and value your opinion, whether we agree or not. Thank you!

Amy Wilson Marshall (from facebook comment): "A good story should stand on it's own, no matter the cast. It really takes away from the movie for me if there is an effort made to include a member of every race and gender in the most unoffensive proportions. Trying too hard to please everyone results in failure. Always. "

I think I know what you mean. I have an artist friend who in the 1970s was hired to update some educational materials. Her jobs was to "color every third face brown."

However, I'm not sure I understand your point in this context. Are the screenwriters making every single character male by default and then going back in and making every third (or fourth, or fifth) character female? The numbers are way too heavily weighted on the side of male to be natural. I haven't counted all the characters in my books who have dialog, but I suspect you'd find it pretty even between male and female, some books slightly heavier on one side, the next slightly heavier on the other. This isn't an effort for me. I know as many men and boys as I know women and girls. It's natural for me to include male characters. When there are people in your life who aren't white, who are gay, who are different than you in some way, it's natural to also create characters with these traits.

If your story takes place in an all-boy school, then of course, most of the characters will be boys. If it takes place on the all-female island of Amazonia, then naturally, mostly girls. But if it takes place in the natural world, then there should be about as many female characters as male. If there aren't, then I'm suspicious about the writers. Are they making an effort to exclude female characters? Or do they only find male characters interesting and worthy of the story?

Eg., before Calamity Jack, before the Tangled movie, someone big was very interested in making Rapunzel's Revenge into a movie. I was told that if it went through, they'd rewrite the story to make Jack the main character, because female-led movies don't do as well. This is a common belief in Hollywood. They make movies accordingly, and our kids suffer the consequences. I do believe there are consequences. I used to think that kids were color blind and gender blind. Then I had kids. My kids notice race and gender, they are SO aware, far more aware than I am. They are trying to figure out their place in the world, they are trying to figure out what it means to be a boy or girl, and they look to stories to provide answers. Movies are visual, it's impossible to forget about gender and race in a movie, as it is in a book. Movies are shaping so much of children's awareness of themselves, for good or ill.

Valia wrote: "To be fair, though, "The Adventures of Tintin" is based off of the original comic series and there weren't very many females in that at all"

Absolutely, but part of my point is they chose to make Tintin into a movie. There are plenty of other books and graphic novels they could have adapted, but they chose this one. I don't mean to say that Tintin doesn't deserve to be a movie, and if it were the only (or one of the only) ALL-BOY-NO-GIRLS-ALLOWED movie I wouldn't blink an eye. But I don't see major directors choosing ANY girl-heavy stories to make into movies.

The numbers don't lie. This can't be an accident. If you flip a quarter enough times you'll get heads. In Hollywood, you can flip that coin dozens and dozens of times, and you'll always come up with movies with mostly male charters. That tells me it's not arbitrary.

MKHutchins wrote: "I'm going to be a wet blanket and say I'm not excited to see "Brave." The previews make it look it's all about how hard it is to be girl. Bleh. Why does a movie with a female protag have to be _about_ being female? (Media staring people of color has also had this problem, where the story's focus is _about_ being of whatever ethnicity) I guess I've read/seen too many stories like this."

I had a very similar reaction, MK. When I saw the teaser trailer, I thought, Wow! A movie about a redheaded girl who fights a bear! This is new and exciting. And then I saw the full trailer and realized the storyline followed *sigh* a princess who feels constrained by her gender and wishes she could do boy things. It's interesting, I think books embraced and then wore out this storyline long ago. Maybe Hollywood is just now catching up? That means film is about 20 years behind books, so maybe by the time I have grandchildren there will be animated movies with more natural ratios. I'll definitely see Brave and I'm happy it exists and that Pixar seems to finally be interested in girls. I hope my misgivings are wrong and I'll be pleasantly surprised. After all, many people dismissed Princess Academy unread, saying, "Not another book about girls primping and hoping to marry a prince!"

As Miriam observed, Brave "seems to be about Merida shunning "elegant pursuits" and proving she's just as good as the boys." This makes me feel sad. Are we still in a situation in this country that girls have to prove they're "as good as the boys"? So the standard for good=Boys, and Girls then must measure up to that? Regarding this kind of thinking, read The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks by E. Lockhart. It has nothing to do with animated movies, but it applies to this discussion all the same. Wonderful book.

Miss Erin: "The frustrating thing (as an actress) is that this isn't just a problem with animated films. It's a problem with the majority of ALL films."

Preach. With my blog I was trying to focus on one piece of the big ol' heinous pie, but you're right, of course.

dennis: "Hi."

Hi, dennis.

Chloe: "I have to say the sheer numbers do not disturb me. I agree with a previous poster that the quality of a female lead far outweighs the quantity of female characters."

Chloe, an examination of what kind of female characters are out there is also very interesting and important. But I disagree. I believe numbers do matter. How few females there are does matter. With so few female characters, they get relegated to the same roles over and over again--mother, love interest, bad girl--where the male characters have so many more options. More roles=more types=more possibilities=more doors open for girls (and boys!). Many have cited Barbie movies as a positive exception, but these are straight-to-DVD movies. I'm glad they exist, but I find it shocking and disturbing how universally females are excluded from major movies.

I won't quote all of Amelia Loken's comment, but go look it up (around number 60?) Talking about a mother of boys who, around puberty, become more interested in movies that some think of as girl movies because they deal with male/female romantic relationships. So helpful for boys trying to figure out that whole mess!

Susan: "My brother works for Alcon (Blind Side, Dolphin Tale), and he was explaining that Tangled was changed around in large part due to international sales. Some countries don't have the Rapunzel story, so there was no name recognition like there would be with Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty."

I don't think that's true, Susan. It's common practice with exported films to change the titles, so it wouldn't matter if it was called Rapunzel in the US. And Disney execs admitted the reason for the change in interviews--THe Princess & the Frog didn't do as well as they wanted in the US and they blamed the female word "princess," so overhauled Rapunzel into Tangled to appeal more to boys. As others have pointed out, internationally, animated movies have more natural girl:boy rations and many more female leads.

Megan Lloyd: "I'm an animation major at BYU. A few months ago, I was selected as the director for our 2013 capstone film, Chasm. The protagonist is a mechanic and inventor, and a little bit older (40s,50s). We decided to make the main character female to try for something different and break our school habit of having guy protagonists. I was floored by the fierce, negative response from a couple of my male classmates--everything from "it's too technically challenging to animate the breasts" to "it's impossible to design appealing older women because men get more rugged and handsome with age and women just get ugly" and even "But women don't DO that sort of mechanical stuff!" It was mind boggling. I hope the completion of our film will prompt the other students in our year to set a standard and fight for gender equality in entertainment."

Wow. It kind of turns the stomach, doesn't it? Thank you so much for this anecdote. Some people have questioned whether children's movies with mostly male characters really have any effect on kids. For one examole, I'd say, look no further than these guys in the college animation program. They grew up on mostly-male movies. That seems to them the only option. When it's all we know, often we don't even question it.

I guess what I'm asking most of all from my blog readers is just this: please question it, if you haven't already. Some of you are now (like Megan) or someday will be in a position to change it. My son and daughters will thank you.

Stories are powerful. Stories are how we make sense of the world and ourselves. If we're limited to one type of story, a world of possibilities are limited too. I cannot believe that these boys in the college animation program (and many others, and many girls too) have this opinion about animated characters and yet are perfectly open-minded about girls and women in real life.

Emily: "To counter this, I have a hard time finding YA boy-centered books for my son. So...there you go."

Really? There are HUNDREDS of great ones! Check out guysread.com for suggestions. Come on, squeetusers, give Emily some good reccs of awesome boy-centered YA books! I'll start it off:

Holes, by Louis Sachar, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Lightning Thief series by Rick Riordan, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Maze Runner by James Dashner, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp by Rick Yancey, Beyonders series by Brandon Mull, Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, The Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, Going Bovine by Libba Bray, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, The Loser's Guide to Life and Love by A.E. Cannon...

The invisible animated girl

Returning to a familiar topic, I must rant once again about the lack of female characters in animated movies. The last time I blogged about this, some commenters questioned my analysis, so I'm going to get real technical here. Here are the  animated movies with major release in the US in 2011. I counted the male and female voice roles on imdb.com. I'm not looking at how male and female characters were portrayed, I'm just looking at the numbers.

Kung Fu Panda 2: male - 12, female - 3

Arthur Christmas: male - 9, female - 6

Tintin: male - 13, female - 1

Cars 2: male - 13, female - 2

Gnomeo & Juliet: male - 11, female - 3

Rango: male - 12, female - 3

Mars Needs Moms: male - 8, female - 7

Rio: male - 8, female - 7

Hoodwinked Too: male - 11, female - 4

Puss in Boots: male - 11, female - 4

Happy Feet Two: male - 11, female - 4

Let's break this down. In the animal kingdom, male to female ratio is almost exactly 1:1. However, in Hollywood animated movies, males outnumber females on average 13:4. Total characters from 2011 animated movies: male -130, females - 42. There are always more male characters in an animated movie than female. ALWAYS. I have not found a single animated movie made in the US in the past 20 years where that wasn't the case. And usually by a huge margin. (European-made movies generally don't have this problem. [EDIT: Or Japan, as some of you rightly pointed out!]) Props to Rio, Mars Needs Moms, and Arthur Christmas. Their main characters were male and the majority of characters were male, but at least they included a respectable number of speaking female characters. Tintin, really? You're going to give one female a voice in your entire movie? Cars 2? I generally love Pixar, but they are perennially disappointing in the numbers. Incredibles is the only one of their movies with even a decent ratio. (I don't even want to tally the numbers on my beloved Muppets.)

Animators, studios, writers - I am ashamed! I have daughters and a son. I would like them raised believing that girls are as worthy of being characters as boys. Girls matter. Girls do things. Girls have voices that deserve to be heard. That's not what your movies illustrate. I really hope that's not what you believe.

I'm not even asking for female main characters. I guess that's just too much to hope for in the 21st century. I'm not campaigning for strong or realistic female characters. We're not even ready for that yet. I'm just asking for ANY female characters. Some of this may be an accident. Most screenwriters are male, men naturally write more characters of their own gender. But some of this is on purpose. Some of this is studio execs believing that boy-heavy movies sell more tickets than girl-heavy. And for that, we parents are partly to blame. Do we take our girls to see "boy" movies but think our boys won't put up with "girl" movies so don't expose them to it? Do some people believe that if boys watch movies about girls that will make them weak and unmanly somehow? Ick. I hope not. I hope things change. But I'm not putting money on it.

Whenever I point this out to people, I'm most often met with a reaction of "I never noticed." Have you noticed? Does it bug you too? What can we do?

Why I love singing, dancing, animated felt

I can't remember the last time I was inspired to write a blog post about a movie, but the Muppets did it! We saw it this weekend with our 7yo & 4 yo, and it earned a unanimous Boy Howdy from our family.

Dean and I later were trying to identify what we love so much about the Muppets, besides just being funny and fun. They take what is popular and make it silly, but never in a mean way. They can say, "Hey, let's look at ourselves and the things we love. Isn't it all ridiculous and magnificent at the same time?" And that allows us, the viewers, to laugh at ourselves, which is a lovely gift. As I write this, it occurs to me that's exactly what I was trying to do with Austenland, and I wonder how much of that instinct came from The Muppets.

I know I'm not alone in still mourning the loss of Jim Henson 20 years later. The latest Muppets movie also saw the departure of Jim Henson's collaborator and supreme puppeteer Frank Oz (Miss Piggy, Fozzie, not to mention Yoda, etc) It occurs to me that the genius of Jim Henson and Frank Oz is that their creatures are so robust, so enduring, that they can survive without them. Frank Oz's Miss Piggy and Fozzie are so memorable, others can write their lines and give them voices, and their appeal and life aren't diminished. They truly are creators, and their creations live on.

And the music! Has Glee done an episode dedicated to the music of the Muppets yet? If not, they should. Beautiful, haunting, funny, insightful, genius music. I'm surprised top artists haven't done covers of Gonzo's song from The Muppet Movie: "I'm Going to Go Back There Some Day." Or Ernie's "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon." And of course "Rainbow Connection," one of the best songs ever written, up there with Lennon's "Imagine." The entire original Muppet Movie soundtrack, done by the supremely talented Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher, is a masterwork, that if not dismissed as kiddie music, would be recognized and awarded as it deserves. I think the new Muppets soundtrack is up there on par with the original, largely thanks to Bret McKenzie (of Flight of the Conchords and Austenland!). If he doesn't get an Oscar nomination for best song for "Life's a Happy Song," there will be an UPROAR here on squeetus. Go itunes it!

PS. No update yet on the Austenland movie. I won't forget to tell you as soon as I know anything.

The amazing shrinking women...roles

Thanks for all your thoughtful comments on the last post. Many of you commented on the need for "strong female characters." Hey, I'm all for it, but what I hope for more than anything is real female characters, which would be a nice mix of all kinds of types and personalities, alongside real male characters. But, lamentably, all I'm gunning for at this point is any female characters. Kids notice gender. They notice that most of the characters on the screen are male. They absorb this and make decisions about the world and about themselves. I know I did.

Jessica notes that most animators are men and they naturally gravitate toward characters who are male.  I can understand that with regards to the main character. I'm a girl, I've written 10 books, and 8 of them have female main characters. But my books also have a lot of male characters. This isn't an effort for me. It would feel unnatural to only write girls. Boys are a part of this world. I like boys. I find them as interesting and worth writing about as girls. I have to believe that the men making movies feel the same way about those creatures of the opposite gender. So I don't understand the lack of female supporting characters. I'm honestly confused. Whatever the reason, and I think it's pointless to speculate on motives, the lack of cartoony girls is undeniable.

Now, having female-led movies for kids is always going to be a battle. We've been told that if Rapunzel's Revenge becomes a movie, we'd have to change the name and make Jack the main character.  It costs a lot of money to make a movie, especially an animated movie that takes years, hundreds of people, and tens of millions of dollars. Investors can't afford to take a chance on that. They usually go with what's proven to sell - male-led family movies.

Heather pointed out that the Japanese don't have this hang-up. The recent Ponyo is a great example of a cast that is rich in both male and female characters. But we poor Americans don't seem to get behind this. Recent movies that had multiple female characters didn't do well, like the fabulous Coraline and Princess and the Frog. There are plenty of male-led animated movies that haven't done well too, but there are far fewer female-led ones, and when those don't make money, Hollywood accountants blame the girls. And who knows, maybe they're right? (Oh, I hope they're not.)

But they examine the evidence. Here are a few of the highest grossing animated movies of all time:
Ice Age
Toy Story
Madagascar
Shrek
Finding Nemo
Up
Kung Fu Panda
Monsters, Inc.
Cars
Ratatouille
I have nothing against these movies. I adore many of them. But look at their male:female ratios. It's kind of shocking what we just accept as normal. Can you imagine a reverse? An Ice Age-type movie where every character (except one who dies at the beginning) is female? The same goes for Up. There's one female (a hippo) on the entire island of Madagascar. Kung Fu Panda (awesome movie) has two female warriors in it. Great! (neither, by the way, gets to be funny) But look at the ratio overall of named characters - I count it 10:2. Imagine a movie with 10 girls and 2 boys! And Ratatouille...I love you, Brad Bird, and everything you do with a passionate love, but there was one named female in the entire movie. Couldn't there have been a single female rat? I think in part this goes back to the "girls aren't funny" belief. Minor characters in animated movies are usually there for comic relief, and until girls are seen as having humor potential, they don't get to make up the supporting cast.

Some commenters mentioned Barbie movies as a resource for girl characters. Amen. And notice that they are all straight to video. (Side note: Mattel once expressed interest in making Princess Academy into a Barbie movie.)

I can't change the fact that most animators and Hollywood movie execs are men and naturally write and make stories about boys and men.  But it's that supporting cast that really bothers me. It feels unnatural, forced, to have 10 males per 1 or 2 females. I don't believe it. I don't like what it says to both my son and my daughter. I wish it would change.

And what changes things is money. Even more specifically: the Opening Weekend. That's all that really matters. If women and girls flood movie theaters the opening weekend in support of movies that are led by or even have a realistic ratio of female characters, those accountants will notice and things will change.

Also, ladies, any of you pining for a career in movie making or animation? You go, girls. You go.

Girls aren't funny and other life lessons

Just reading about Disney renaming their upcoming Rapunzel movie "Tangled" so that it won't seem "girly." Sales for Princess and the Frog weren't as high as they wanted, and they blame the word princess. The LA Times says, "The makeover of "Rapunzel" is more than cosmetic. Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success." Forget the girl audience. They'll watch anything. Unless a movie appeals to boys, it'll flop.

Is this true? Or is it a self-fulfilling policy?

I wonder. I wonder how many boys really refused to go see Princess and the Frog, or loudly protested, or claimed to hate it. I wonder if it doesn't go down that way at all. I wonder if instead we're to blame, we the mothers, we the parents. Are we predetermining what our sons will watch and enjoy? Preparing for a family movie night, do we look over the movies and decide that a "princess" movie won't please the boy child, so look for something else? I know I've talked about this before here, but this is something that deeply concerns me.

Take a look at the animated movies on your shelves. Pick up the ones produced in the last ten years or so. List the main 10 characters. What are their genders? The main character is almost surely male, but putting that aside, just list the supporting characters by gender. Shockingly, often the ratio will be 1:10 in favor of male. You might find 3:10 occasionally, unless it's The Incredibles, the rare exception. In the actual human and animal world, 50% of the population is female. But not in the animated world. How do they reproduce? One girl for every ten boys? Those poor animated creatures are going to go extinct! Females are so rare, you'd think the studios were making Reservoir Dogs for kids.

Now look at those rare girl characters. Are they funny? Unless it's Dori in Finding Nemo (in an ocean dangerously near extinction based on the lack of female aquatic life), the humorous characters are probably male. So many stereotypes we reinforce: girls aren't leaders, girls aren't important enough to be main characters, girls don't matter to the story, girls aren't interesting and they most certainly aren't funny.

Of course this isn't limited to animated movies: Batman, Superman, Ironman, Spiderman...where oh where is Wonder Woman? Thank goodness for X-Men. (Bless you, Chris Claremont!)

My call to arms. Mothers dear, don't let's do this. Don't let's raise our boys to only watch "boy" movies or only read "boy" books. They, just as much as our girls, need to accept and cheer girl heroes, need to believe girls to be interesting and worthwhile. The book world has no shortage of fascinating and varied girl characters, both leading and supporting. But the movie world over the past 10-20 years has slowly been weeding them out. And I don't blame Hollywood. Hollywood follows the money. We need to put our money where our mouth is. Support movies starring girls. Dads, your influence can be powerful here. Take your boys to see movies about girls and boys. Your little girls are watching. We can tell them all we want how wonderful and important they are, but kids learn by example. They believe what they see. So let's show 'em.

Steppin' out with my baby

Dean and I got back today from a semi-last minute trip to Arizona. We hopped on a plane, flew to Phoenix, drove to our hotel, changed clothes, drove to a movie theater, and attended a private premiere of a movie that's really been suffering lately for lack of publicity. It's called Twilight.

Here I am in my Newbery dress (only worn once) with Stephenie (Meyer), her significant male, and my significant male dressed in a purple suit. Yes he is. I love him so much.

The fresh-after movie glow. I really loved it. No, not everyone will, and that's okay. But I have to say...Rob did it. He brung it. I asked Dean after, "Could you sense his animal magnetism?" Nope. He couldn't. But he did like the vampire fights.

 

Clearly still feeling tipsy from the movie, I pose with our rental car. Now you should know, I reserved the cheapest economy car from the cheapest rental place offered on travelocity. But when we got there, they apparently had a spare Mustang. It really was so sweet to drive. We're not car people, but we had to admit--it doesn't handle like the minivan.

 

And...things continue to devolve. Hey, I was in a fancy dress on a fancy car! Dean said I looked like I'd been hit by the car, but I so think I look like a calandar pinup girl. A chaste calandar. In an old folks home, perhaps. Someplace with dim lighting and no television.

Anyhoo, it was a good time. Dean said he felt like he was taking me to prom. And it was weird not to sleep next to a baby monitor. It's always wonderful to see Stephenie, who is all grace and goodness, and I think this movie is going to make a lot of people very happy...

Off the air

We did it--we are officially TV free! Well, we still have a television (one), but no cable, no antennae. Dean and I were looking at our cable bill last month and realizing that we were paying $75 a month and watching TV maybe three times. That's $25 a shot. Ridiculous. So it's gone, baby. It'll be DVDs and downloads from here on out.

We weren't following any shows anyway. There are three uber-popular shows on that I have actually tried on multiple occasions to watch and enjoy...and I am horrified. The writing is terrible, the storytelling is clumsy, the acting is wanting. Why don't movie and TV makers invest more in a good script? It's shocking.

Okay, in my idea of good writing, anyway. I feel a little discouraged that shows I think are brilliant tend to be canceled before their time. Are my standards and likes so much different than everyone else? Off the top of my head, some of my favorite shows from the last few years:

• Firefly
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Angel
• Arrested Development
• The Office
• Wonderfalls
• Battlestar Galactica
• Justice League (and Justice League Unlimited)
• Veronica Mars

The last one we just discovered, watching the DVDs. The acting is tremendous, the dialog is top notch. It lasted three seasons before getting the boot. It makes me sad that those storytellers who are doing such a brilliant job and not stooping to cheap thrills and formula aren't being rewarded. The medium of television discourages risk taking, because it must be popular on a wide scale to be successful. As downloadable shows increase, there will be a much wider variety of entertainment. I'm willing to wager that in ten years, the way we view television will be revolutionized.

More author interviews to come...

All about Brad

I've just put together that one person is responsible for three of my absolute favorite animated movies of all time:
The Incredibles
The Iron Giant
The Family Dog (this was an animated short that appeared on Amazing Stories like 20 years ago, and my family has the entire episode memorized. Seriously. Every word.)

The man's name? Brad Bird. Super genius, apparently. If you haven't seen The Iron Giant, this is one worth owning, a fun and lovely story of boy-meets-giant-robot. Great family flick. And if you know much of my husband, you'll see the particular appeal a giant robot story has for us.

Now if we could somehow scheme to add rapunzel's revenge to his list of stellar productions...