Seed & Spark – Bitch Flicks

How a ‘Little Evil Bookshop’ Helped Me Find My Role in Hollywood

It isn’t that I am or was passive in my acting career, it is that acting is a long game and it can be difficult to see where the road might lead. That is something I have accepted; sometimes it’s terrifying and other times it excites me. But for this achiever, perfectionist, and feminist, there is something unbelievably validating about the immediacy of payoff in this new venture called producing. They call it “producing” for a reason! At the end, you have made something, paved your own road.

Guest post written by Lena Raff.

An actress is pretty much the only thing I ever wanted to be, save for a few months in elementary school when bottlenose dolphin trainer and anthropologist were on the table. When I was young, performing gave me a rush, but I couldn’t have accurately verbalized why I loved it. It took me until now to comprehend and come to terms with why I am on this path. Being an artist means that you get to live in your heart and your body. Acting means constantly listening, feeling, and experiencing. It means getting to roll words around in your mouth and connecting with the other actors and your audience; you get to make people feel. It is all just so human.

The issue is that a person cannot simply go out and act unless they create content for themselves. Writers can write at home or in a cafe; try “acting” in either place and you are going to look very silly indeed. I can’t act in a vacuum. By definition, I need other people, and until now, I’ve needed there to be an existing project for which someone hires me. However, it’s difficult to get an acting job in TV and film. That old adage “You need an agent to get credits and you need credits to get an agent” is still widely true. So you have to have an agent who gets your photo in front of casting. Then, casting has to actually see your photo — one of thousands submitted online for any given role — like your look for the part, your abilities and credits, call you in for an audition, like and trust you enough to send you to the producers/director/studio/network who have to also like and trust you, and then you might get an offer. Given this, and the nature of the way projects are shot, the television and film actor will spend much of their time not acting, particularly early on. Even a highly successful and lucrative career can often mean only a few days on set every month, or every several months.

Much of the time, this life is joyous. I have met many wonderful people and artists who have become my soulmates. Classes keep me involved, focused, and skilled. I thrive on the challenge of a difficult scene, relish putting in the work for an audition, soak in every moment of going to work on set. Acting is a constant adventure and I am always learning. In my worst moments, though, this all feels futile. The odds are so steep, the gateways to entry are numerous but elusive. One can feel like one is floating through a nebulous landscape waiting for milestones to grab onto when they happen to appear. And although it has vastly improved in the past few years, Hollywood can seem like a boys club. Many projects still don’t pass the Bechdel test and the words “bikini ready” periodically make their way across my computer screen. But I am an autonomous being. This is what I, enthusiastically, signed up for.

Then I signed up for something else. This year, I began producing a feature film called Little Evil Bookshop with two other young women — Ashley Ellis (director/producer) and Jessica Schott (producer) — and it has been exciting and illuminating. I love the feeling of creative responsibility for something larger than myself, of concrete steps that need to be taken each day. This venture has made me feel capable and worthwhile. It isn’t that I am or was passive in my acting career, it is that acting is a long game and it can be difficult to see where the road might lead. That is something I have accepted; sometimes it’s terrifying and other times it excites me. But for this achiever, perfectionist, and feminist, there is something unbelievably validating about the immediacy of payoff in this new venture called producing. They call it “producing” for a reason! At the end, you have made something, paved your own road. It’s empowering and self-actualizing in an entirely different way from what I have experienced in my artistic life thus far. I have been inspired to examine the landscape in which I am creating as both and actress and producer. Being on feminist projects has always been important to me, but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to shape the narrative and be extremely selective about what I put my effort and skill into.

Recently, while working on this project that centers around a middle-aged woman protagonist, I realized that even though the message of the film — a dark ensemble comedy about the staff of a small occult bookstore attempting to impress a revered author and spiritual leader — isn’t feminist in the political or ideological sense, it is feminist by nature of the fact that it is telling a woman’s story. This is the story that three young women want to tell, have put our time, energy, brain-space and hearts into sharing with the world. We are crowdfunding via Seed & Spark and networking. We have committed to diverse and inclusive hiring and casting to deepen and enrich this film about identity. We are standing up, asking for our abilities and voices to be valued.

Through this lens, I started looking around and seeing many incredible women, and many actresses in particular, prolific, daring, and unapologetic in their art. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and Pamela Adlon’s Better Things are two shining examples. With two very impressive respective acting careers between them, Waller-Bridge and Adlon have recently debuted two deeply personal, groundbreaking, and critically acclaimed series of which they are the creators, showrunners, and stars. Issa Rae co-created, co-writes, and stars in the acclaimed series Insecure based on her hilarious web series Awkward Black Girl. Shonda Rhimes created a television empire with creating and producing her women-centric dramas Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. Jill Soloway (who identifies as non-binary) changed television and the culture at large with Transparent and its representation of the LGBTQIA community and whose new show I Love Dick depicts women’s sexuality in perhaps unprecedented ways. Now the highest paid woman director in history, Patty Jenkins revolutionized big budget, superhero films with Wonder Woman, “the highest-grossing live-action film to be directed by a woman” and “the highest-grossing film in the DC Extended Universe.” Brie Larson will be Captain Marvel, co-directed by Anna Boden. Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct Silver and Black, “the first Black woman to direct a superhero film.” Ava DuVernay is the first Black woman filmmaker to direct a film with a $100 million budget with her upcoming adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. She also created Queen Sugar, a beautiful and powerful dramatic series telling the story of a Black family, and hired all women directors for both of its two seasons (she was the showrunner for season one while Monica Macer is season 2’s showrunner). Reed Morano recently became the first woman in 22 years to win an Emmy for Best Directing in a Drama Series and the show she won for — the undeniably, ruthlessly feminist The Handmaid’s Tale — swept the night, except for the awards offered up to the women-centric ensemble miniseries, Big Little Lies. Lena Waithe took home an Emmy award for Best Writing in a Comedy — the first Black (queer!) woman to do so — for a Master of None episode about coming out to her family.

I am so looking forward to the time when these achievements do not strike us as the exception to the rule, but rather, are the lay of the land. For now, I chose to take my place among these artists. I am raising my hand, and learning to stand up, not just for what I believe in, but in full ownership of my talent, effort, and ability.

I am not saying that acting isn’t feminist or empowering. I am not saying that producing is a more worthwhile or fulfilling pursuit. I’m not saying I won’t wear a bikini on-screen, or ask someone else to do so. What I am saying is that both of these endeavors, especially coupled together, have allowed me to take a look at my life and career with a consciousness that I didn’t have before. It is heartening to see such poignant stories told by women about women find critical acclaim as well as commercial success. I know I have a place in this exciting world, in whichever role I chose.

Little Evil Bookshop is currently crowdfunding via Seed & Spark until October 13, 2017.

Lena Raff is an actress and producer in her 20s living in Los Angeles. Originally from the suburbs of Boston, she earned a BA in Theatre Studies from Emerson College. Lena can raise one
eyebrow, but only when she’s on camera and isn’t trying to do so.

Links: littleevilbookshop.com | http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5299012/
Instagram: @Lenaraff | @littleevilbookshopfilm

Seed & Spark: Replacing Shame with Truth and Community

After all, the goal of ‘Don’t Talk About the Baby’ is social change, accomplished by empowering couples to start telling their stories in their communities. … My vision for this film is to examine every thread of shame that permeates pregnancy loss and infertility and reconnect it to support, openness and understanding.

This is a guest post written by Ann Zamudio. Her film Don’t Talk About the Baby is currently crowdfunding via Seed & Spark.

[Trigger warning: discussion of infertility, miscarriage, and infant loss.]

When making a documentary about miscarriage, stillbirth and infertility, it can be easy to get lost in the stories. After all, the goal of Don’t Talk About the Baby is social change, accomplished by empowering couples to start telling their stories in their communities.

The stories are raw and powerful and they’re leading a movement of change which cries out that loss and infertility are nothing to be ashamed of. They’re compelling voices, and they’re easy to get caught up in. As the director, my job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. It sounds counter-intuitive, since we’re asking people to tell their stories, but when it comes to the actual film, I always keep a balance at the forefront of my mind: the balance between the heartbreaking stories, and the fascinating expert interviews that explain the emotions behind them.

Pregnancy loss and infertility are plagued by silence and stigma. It’s my passionate belief that the only way out of the shadows is to thoroughly explore how and why we got there in the first place. It’s harder for a woman to feel like a failure when she knows, scientifically and without a doubt, that she didn’t cause her miscarriage. It’s less likely for a mother to mourn in silence when she knows the words to use to ask for understanding. It’s less likely that a community will forget a family’s loss, when a film tells them the power of remembering and saying that baby’s name.

My vision for this film is to examine every thread of shame that permeates pregnancy loss and infertility and reconnect it to support, openness and understanding.

The experts are key to this documentary, and I chose them by investigating my own experiences after my early miscarriage. What did I do? The woman most likely to watch this film is a woman fresh from a loss, and it’s important to me that the themes we explore are relevant to the journey she’s starting.

I felt silenced when I tried to talk about it. I felt pressured to move on. I felt disconnected from my husband. I went online and sought support from strangers. I found power in sharing my story with them.

So we found an expert scholar who spoke about the value in letting a woman tell her story. She talked about losing trust in your own body, and learning to navigate in a world that places a woman’s worth in motherhood. We found a professor who studied how women share their stories online, and how that’s changed over the last ten years. The revolution we’re in the midst of, with parents dedicated to sharing their stories, is largely due to the rise of social media. I wanted someone to explain the support networks we build online, and how that translates to our real lives. We also have therapists talking about how men and women grieve differently, and giving advice on bridging the gap that grows after a loss. They give the audience tools for starting conversations, overcoming emotional roadblocks, and learning to deal with the shitty hand they’ve been dealt.

Then we follow the real world experiences of couples during and after miscarriage, infertility and stillbirth. We hear their cries and see their tears. They let us into their lives in the most humbling way. And so we strike a balance. When filming these interviews, I always keep in mind the overall goals of this documentary — empowerment, support, and communication. Every interview is geared towards answering one question: How do we learn to heal?

Free from shame, from stigma and oppressive silence. That’s the goal of this documentary, and what I remember at each step in making this film.

The process of making this film has been eye opening and rewarding. Please consider joining our efforts to shatter the stigma, and pledging your support to our Seed & Spark campaign to finish the film.

Ann Zamudio is a mother, filmmaker and writer based in the Washington, DC area. She’s currently directing Don’t Talk About the Baby, a documentary aiming to shatter the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss and infertility. Her writing has appeared in Scary Mommy, PALS, and The Huffington Post. Follow the documentary on Facebook and Twitter.

Seed & Spark: To Web Series Or…

This is a guest post written by Molly Anne Coogan. Her webseries Things I Hate is currently crowdfunding via Seed & Spark.

I often get asked why I wanted to make a web series. Why not make a short film or put all those pages of a season together and make a feature? For starters, the show didn’t come into my head as a feature or as a short film. When I started writing, they came out as episodes and what I saw in my head was a show instead of a movie or a short; I wasn’t interested in squishing something into a box and I wanted to make what was in my brain.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wrote this show when I was overcoming some big health issues and I was ready to get my hands dirty and make something — I wanted some immediate gratification. There’s no middleman with a web series, no distribution deal to negotiate, no hurdle to getting it out into the world. You create an account, design a page, and upload. Clearly the process is not as simple as that, but you’re catching what I’m throwing, yeah?

There’s a certain kind of freedom in the web series form; there are fewer constraints and not as many rules as there appear to be in television or film. I was incredibly inspired by so many shows I saw all over the web that bucked the norm in terms of how they told stories and who they portrayed on camera. I loved how F to the 7th challenged conceptions about sexuality and what it means to be a woman; how Broad City basically owned the shit out of everything and unabashedly showed women doing what they wanted without apologizing while having a blast doing it; and how High Maintenance allowed each episode to be its own contained world and didn’t feel the need for a continuous plotline. All these shows have incredibly unique voices, vibes, and tones and each is stellar in their own way. Their uniqueness got my creative juices flowing.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42W_UWQPXok”]

The other benefit to a web series is the simple power of the Internet. You’re able to grow your audience, quickly connect, and find your people, whereas it’s much harder to do with other forms that have bigger machines involved. I had experience with the rapid-fire reach of the Internet when my sketch video “Nickelblock” from my comedy duo Moll & Rell went viral. We woke up one morning to the video having hundreds of thousands of views and being all over the front pages of The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Bustle, E!, and more. It was being talked about on the radio; I had friends from abroad telling me they saw it on publications overseas. It was wild and zany and so much fun, but also a totally different thing from a web series. It was a short, comedic tidbit as opposed to a show that you really have to sit and watch. “Nickelblock” was like a handful of candy whereas Things I Hate is more like a rich chocolate torte that you’ve got to take your time enjoying. Now I just want dessert…

I do feel is important to point out is that the line of what is “TV” and what is a “web series” is blurring with each passing day. I don’t own a television, but I “watch TV” because I own a computer. You can stream everything. In essence you could say that all television shows are web series because they’re streamed online. Perhaps they’re not made for the web at the start, but that’s where they’re ending up.

We have only two weeks left in our Things I Hate Seed & Spark campaign. If you’re a fan of ambitious, hilarious web series made by filmmakers easily distracted by sweets, join our team, and spread the word.

Molly Anne Coogan is a maker of all things. As an actor she’s worked with Ars Nova, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The O’Neill Theatre Center, The Civilians, TheatreWorks California, CBS, TBS, and more. She is one half of the comedy duo Moll & Rell known for their viral video “Nickelblock,” which Molly directed and co-wrote with her comedy partner Arielle Siegel. As a writer her work has been produced or developed by The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, SPACE on Ryder Farm and The 52nd Street Project. Her web series, Things I Hate, which she created, wrote, produced, and stars in premiered February 2016 on The A.V. Cluband features actors from The Knick, Girls, and Orange Is the New Black. She loves photo booths and the word “burgled.” She refuses to pass a lemonade stand without buying a glass. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Jonathan Anderson.

Seed & Spark: Being a Lady Boss: Producer Molly Coogan Hires Ladies and Celebrates a Lady Named Coco

This is a guest post written by Molly Anne Coogan. Her webseries Things I Hate is currently crowdfunding via Seed & Spark.

Once I got over the fear of putting my show, Things I Hate, out into the world, I then had to… put it out into the world and actually make it. Early on in the process, I committed to being the producer. This was important to me for several reasons: I wanted a hand in who was being brought onto the project, as well as the final stamp on what I was putting out into the world. This does not mean that I was not open to collaborating, or that I only wanted to do it my way, or that I wanted all the power. What it means is that since these were my words and my point of view, it was important to me at the end of the day to feel that I had seen the show through from start to finish in order to honor the creative vision I had set out to realize. Of utmost importance to me was finding a team who understood the tone and humor; in order for it to be successful, I knew everyone had to be in the same figurative family. Also, I really like producing! I like sourcing and finding people, bringing folks on board, organizing things, and working like a fiend. It checks a lot of my boxes.

I get asked a lot as a lady boss if I try extra hard to hire women. I truly believe in hiring the person who is best for the job, which means you have to look at a pool that reflects all the best potential hires. However, most hiring pools do not reflect that at all. Sometimes the people who have the longest, shiniest resume aren’t going to be the best fit for your project. And while it can be enticing to hire someone who has worked on TV shows you love, if they don’t understand what you’re trying to make it won’t work out in the end. I didn’t want to exclusively hire women for the sake of hiring women; I wanted to be mindful that we were looking at all of our options instead of just what people were giving us (which was names for a lot of dudes). My co-producer Liam Brady, a super dude in his own right, was right there with me.

For example, one of the jobs that felt very important for us to nail was the Director of Photography. I met with several incredibly qualified people, but when I met with Edna Biesold I knew I found the person who understood it all. This show is told and seen from inside the mind of a woman. The questions she asked, the ideas she had, and her point of view all jived. She also made me consider and see things from angles I hadn’t thought of before. As a result, I ended up being blown away by the two episodes we made together (which can be seen here via The A.V. Club.)

I’d be lying if I didn’t say I am proud that the roles of Director of Photography, 1st AC, 1st AD, Production Design, Costume Design, Hair and Make-up, and Production Assistant were all filled by women. But I did not hire them because they were women; I hired them because they were the best people for the job.

One of the other aspects of producing is you have to be tenacious. There is another woman I haven’t mentioned yet who came on board and elevated the level of the production for Things I Hate. We really wanted the locations to be authentic and knew we wanted to shoot in a real salon for the episode called “Lady Grooming.” We were shooting in a brownstone in Bedstuy, NY for another episode, entitled “Weed,” so we wanted to keep things in that neighborhood to ease gear schlepping, especially since we were shooting both episodes in 3 days, a ridiculously fast shoot. But I hadn’t found that salon yet.

It was hot as balls one day, especially for the end of September, and I was determined to find that salon to shoot in. I biked for 4 hours straight around the neighborhood going into every single salon, asking if we could shoot there. I can’t tell you how many places I went into. I was so hot that sunscreen dripped down my pale little body. I had sweat literally everywhere, my clothes were drenched, and I looked like a drowned rat. Perhaps that is why every single salon turned me down. By the time I got on my bike to go home, I was certain my shoot was screwed.

Moments later, I was waiting at a stoplight, and for some reason (perhaps to create some sort of cooling wind), I turned my head and saw this little tiny salon on the corner. I full on whipped my bike across traffic and walked in with my helmet still on my head. Four women who were getting their hair braided turned to look at me like I was an alien. The owner, Coco, was there, cool as a cucumber, and as soon as I asked her if I could shoot in her salon she said,”Count me in!” Coco, you saved my series. Everyone else, go to Honeycomb Hair Studio, and give Coco all your business! Right after you follow and fund Things I Hate on Seed&Spark.

Molly Anne Coogan is a maker of all things. As an actor she’s worked with Ars Nova, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The O’Neill Theatre Center, The Civilians, TheatreWorks California, CBS, TBS, and more. She is one half of the comedy duo Moll & Rell known for their viral video “Nickelblock,” which Molly directed and co-wrote with her comedy partner Arielle Siegel. As a writer her work has been produced or developed by The Williamstown Theatre Festival, Ars Nova, SPACE on Ryder Farm and The 52nd Street Project. Her web series, Things I Hate, which she created, wrote, produced, and stars in premiered February 2016 on The A.V. Club and features actors from The Knick, Girls, and Orange Is the New Black. She loves photo booths and the word “burgled.” She refuses to pass a lemonade stand without buying a glass. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Jonathan Anderson.

Seed & Spark: Alone, Then Among Many: On Filmmaking and ‘The Ladies Almanack’

The process of adapting ‘The Ladies Almanack’ for film has been exciting, but in the beginning, it was an incredibly lonely task; a lonely one for a long time. … Alone I had to discover what this film wanted to be, and the only way to do that was to listen carefully to the voices in the books of women, living and dead.

This guest post is by Daviel Shy.

The process of adapting The Ladies Almanack for film has been exciting, but in the beginning, it was an incredibly lonely task; a lonely one for a long time. I spent a year and a half of researching and writing before I approached anyone to be in the film, but that time gave the project the backbone it would need in order to grow. Alone I had to discover what this film wanted to be, and the only way to do that was to listen carefully to the voices in the books of women, living and dead.

I started with copious notes and copious daydreaming. At the time, I was the manager for a performance company who was on tour in the UK. Somehow, that tour is secretly written into the script between the lines; the train rides through England and Scotland; the quiet nights in hotel rooms. This is where I found the freedom and quiet to begin to see the film’s scenes crystallize in my head.

One brave task I took on early to ensure the future of the film: I checked with Djuna Barnes’ literary executors early on to be sure I could legally make this film. The answer, luckily, was yes.

Cauleen Smith, an artist I’ve admired for years, could see what a big idea this was from the very beginning. She advised me to learn French for the project, which helped immensely. She was the only person I would occasionally share ideas with before writing them. For example, when I described to her my vision for the film’s final scene, she said, “Film that first, as soon as you can. Do it now; don’t let it get stale.” I followed her advice, and indeed, this scene was shot almost a year before the rest of the film, during my preliminary scouting trip to Paris.

One of the resources I found most useful was Julie Taylor’s chapter on the novel Ladies Almanack in her book, Djuna Barnes and Affective Modernism. Taylor writes: “Having it all is precisely what Barnes’ Ladies Almanack, with its non-compromising, gloriously greedy and accumulative notion of happiness promises the reader.” Her astute analysis gave me permission to bend the rules of storytelling, and the constrictions of no-budget filmmaking to be “gloriously greedy,” myself and attempt to “have it all.”

So I set about not to represent the women whose lives and work inspire me, but to invite these very people into the project themselves. Within another year I’d be sitting face to face with Hélène Cixous, Eileen Myles, or Guinevere Turner. Once I was able to reach someone personally, almost everyone joined the cast immediately, without pay or persuasion. They simply liked the idea. After reading about the project, Cixous said to me on the phone, “I can see what you are trying to do, and it has got to be done perfectly.” Most of the casting happened organically.

There is one exception to my casting luck: for a number of years I have been pen pals with the incredible artist and performer, Vaginal Davis. I cherished her letters stuffed with postcards from art shows, naked women cut from vintage porn catalogues, clippings of interesting art news in German, and other encouraging odds and ends that I’ve pasted onto my studio walls. Initially, I had envisioned her as Gertrude Stein, but she refused the suggestion three times in our letters, finally saying, “No way, baby! I am focusing on art, and do not want to perform in films anymore.” I couldn’t argue with that, but it worked out for the best, because artist Alison Bechdel recommended Terry Castle for the role. Terry owned the role beautifully, and enhanced our production in a different way: her wife Blakey cameos as the perfect Alice B. Tolkas.

Months before casting the role of Radclyffe Hall, I traveled on an Amtrak train to Kansas City, passing Illinois horses and barns. I thought of Deborah Bright’s essay, “Horse Crazy,” which I read and reread in graduate school. Then it clicked! I looked out the window, then wrote:

Reverse dream girls. May 2nd, 2014,
I am riding through Midwestern fields with Deborah Bright. She’s agreed to play Radclyffe Hall in my film, so we take to horseback, heading West. My Aunt lives in New Harmony, Utah, where the red mountains meet the green ones. We could be there by Wednesday.

There has been a certain magic protecting, driving, and following the making of this movie. I don’t necessarily understand it, and I certainly do not control it. I see my role instead as learning to listen to it and ride it, wherever it may lead.

Daviel Shy’s film The Ladies Almanack is now crowdfunding via Seed & Spark.

Daviel Shy has written and directed nine short films. Her writing has been published by Taylor & Francis (UK) and University of Chicago Press. Her forthcoming chapbook, Grammar Rulse, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in July. The Ladies Almanack is her first feature film. www.davielshy.com

Seed & Spark: Unearthing Buried Voices with ‘The Ladies Almanack’

Systematized omission of women, gender non-comforming persons, queers, and people of color from history is still rampant in the arts, literature, and other fields of cultural production. I make ‘The Ladies Almanack’ in response to this erasure and in service of the hunger I feel for these buried voices.

This guest post written by Daviel Shy.

I was drawn to my research for The Ladies Almanack because of the rich interplay between the singular artist and her creative community. For the past four and a half years, I have run a semi-private event in my living room each month called L.M.N.O.P., or, Lesbian Movie Night Ongoing Project. The community that gathers for this event varies month to month, but the centrality of women’s voices and lesbians on-screen provides a context in which to gather. There is still something very powerful about coming together in a real room.

When I found the story of Natalie Clifford Barney hidden in the words of Djuna Barnes, I recognized that what Barney created in her Parisian home at 20 rue Jacob contributed to my commitment to L.M.N.O.P. While each artist featured in the film is a complex and prolific creator in her own right, Barney’s salon supplied a gathering place for their entanglement. My film, an adaptation of Barnes’ roman à clef, is a glimpse into that entanglement.

The excitement of the movie isn’t just based on Barney’s lesbianism: she was also a self-proclaimed pagan and anti-monogamist. She was a radical who lived her message. She made friends the center of her life and supported the work of other women both financially and through her connections. This is a virtue we can learn from today.

When Djuna Barnes approached the most prominent people in publishing about her unconventional book, Ladies Almanack, she was rejected. Never mind that the influential Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beech, and Gertrude Stein happened to be lesbians themselves: they were all deeply entrenched in supporting and furthering the works of the men around them. Not Barney. She began L’Académie des Femmes, to honor women authors and always put women first.

Systematized omission of women, gender non-comforming persons, queers, and people of color from history is still rampant in the arts, literature, and other fields of cultural production. I make The Ladies Almanack in response to this erasure and in service of the hunger I feel for these buried voices.

I’m part of a big family and my siblings keep me connected to the rest of the world. Without them I’d likely disappear into dusty archives, cult-cinema obscurity and D.I.Y. underground arts. My sisters, who are not artists (and not lesbians), are how I gauge what savvy and thoughtful mainstream women in society are into. Thus, a few years ago when my sister Yael tells me about this show called Orange Is the New Black, and then my sister Trysa raves to me about Transparent, I am excited and thankful. I wonder at how great it is that the mainstream is discovering that lesbian stories are not just for lesbians. These shows are opening doors for my work. Our culture is waking up to the fact that we need all of our voices.

The multiplicity of truth is evident when we listen to more than one monocultural voice. Women appear in each others’ fiction where they become mythologized and multiple; competing versions of events exist simultaneously. In my film work, I try to honor that complicated reality.

My work relies on a tireless belief in our collective ability to reclaim and rename our history and, in doing so, our future. The recruitment at the center of my practice is not participation, but initiation. I aim to turn the outsider in. Coming together, we acknowledge the singularity of this present, this temporary configuration that is equally as powerful as the pasts I research and reconstruct. And I believe that if we turn our attention to one another, we can realize our full potential as world-makers. My journey with The Ladies Almanack, and our current crowdfunding campaign on Seed & Spark, is a step in that direction.

Seed & Spark: “Not Even Once”

I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

Bre Mueck and Matthew Luret at the park in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

This is a guest post by Ryan M. Moore.

My first memory of being exposed to a feminist film (and one of my first memories, period) is of my mom setting up a projector in our basement (8mm? 16mm? I am old), loading it with a reel she had borrowed from the library (yes, you could do that!) and showing my brother and me an animated film called Reverse-a-quake! It was set on an island which was hit by a big earthquake, which caused all of the men to have to switch to doing what had previously been women’s work, and vice-versa. That there was anything political about this storyline sailed right over my 6-year-old head, but knowing what I know now, it must have sunk in a little.

I call myself a feminist without reservation, but I didn’t set out to make a feminist statement, or any kind of political statement, when I wrote and directed my feature film debut All Earthly Constraints. The lead character, Emily (played by the amazing Bre Mueck) is a struggling screenwriter (“Write what you know!”) who works in a gelato shop. Emily’s screenplay is about a struggling screenwriter named Emma (“Write what you know!”) who works in a coffee shop, and is also secretly a superheroine named Emmageddon. Emma is Emily’s “Mary Sue” (a character that is a thinly veiled, idealized version of her author), and Emmageddon is Emma’s. It’s Mary Sues all the way down.

In one scene, Emily has just left her writer’s group in tears after having her script “Emmageddon” savaged (“Self-indulgent! Masturbatory!”) by the sadistic self-proclaimed group leader, John. Soft-spoken Dylan goes after Emily, and they end up talking and drinking at a local park. In the course of their first-ever real conversation, this happens:

DYLAN: I guess I just think about… sometimes, you know, a real job, a family, stability. No “someday when I make it.” Is that so wrong? I mean, haven’t you ever thought you might be worthwhile, or good enough, or whatever, just how you are—just being you?

EMILY: Not even once.

DYLAN: (after a long pause) Me neither.

Shooting this scene was incredibly strange. To hear and see the most honest thing I’ve ever written about the creative process brought to life by two amazing actors, seemed, at the time, like an affirmation of all the choices I’ve ever made. I fell largely on Emily’s side as I thought, “Yeah, I’m doing the right thing with my life.”

Three months later, mired in the post-production process, I can see Dylan’s side too. Maybe it should be enough to just work your job and live your life and be happy with you are. Maybe I would’ve been happier that way. Maybe it’s just my ego that tells me I can’t possibly ever settle for “normal.” It’s been an incredibly difficult process trying to finish this film—making a movie is hard. Trying to do anything well is hard. Life is hard.

Bre Mueck as Emmageddon in a scene from All Earthly Constraints

But what I learned in the process of shooting that scene (and of tangling up my reality and emotional state with that of my character’s to a frankly disorienting extent that I hope would make Charlie Kaufman proud), was this: Emily is not a “strong female character.” Emily isn’t “strong,” at least not exclusively. She starts the scene in tears, and continues by admitting her deepest self-doubts to Dylan, not because she has any real connection with him (yet), but because he’s there and willing to listen and pay for the booze.

And Emmageddon isn’t always “strong” either, even though she’s a self-proclaimed superhero. Who would be interested in seeing a story about someone who was nothing but “strong,” all the time, in every situation? It would be like watching a film about a slab of granite. I don’t know yet if we made a good movie, but I’m pretty sure we made an honest movie—and you can’t do that while you, or your characters, are busy pretending to be “strong.” Being vulnerable, and weak, and pushing ahead anyway is what’s interesting about anyone, fictional or real.

I have a lot of problems with the current crop of superhero movies. While the artistry and craft that goes into their creation is almost literally unimaginable, all too often they exist exclusively in the realm of black and white, “good guys” and “bad guys,” strong, wise-cracking male heroes and female sidekicks who exist mostly as window-dressing, or as sexual conquests for the men. One of my goals in creating All Earthly Constraints was to create a female superhero who was also human: Yes, she kicks, punches, and slaps people who deserve to be kicked, punched and slapped, and she’s good at it. But she has no special powers and she can be hurt, physically and emotionally. Under the costume, she’s still a person. I’m not quite delusional enough to believe that All Earthly Constraints will ever be playing in your local multiplex next to the latest Summer tentpole, but I hope it starts a few conversations, or adds a little bit to some that are already happening.

You can learn more about All Earthly Constraints, and follow or support our crowdfunding campaign at Seed & Spark.

Ryan M. Moore is a writer and director living in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. All Earthly Constraints is his first feature film.

Seed & Spark: The “Flawed” Female Protagonist Is, Quite Simply, My Favorite

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

This is a guest post by Christina Morelli.

In many ways, I am a traditional “girl.” I love getting dressed up. I’m a sucker for every romantic comedy ever made (particularly the solid run of Nora Ephron flicks in the late 80s/early 90s). I read chick lit, and I tend to sob right through it. I live for a good night in with a bottle of wine and my baking supplies. I’m a hybrid of Julia Roberts in “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” Debra Messing in “The Wedding Date,” and Renee Zellweger in “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” with a hint of Kate Winslet in “The Holiday.” My all-time favorite movie is, “When Harry Met Sally.”

Throw a pumpkin spice latte in my hand, turn the camera to selfie mode, and slap on the hashtag- #basicbitch.

And yet, that’s where it ends. For the most part, I’m lacking in several of the adult female stereotype categories. I have an averse reaction to the color pink, unless I’m supporting breast cancer. I don’t like glitter or anything on my body to be adorned with something large and/or sparkly. I’d prefer to elope, if I ever actually get married, and I have puppy fever far more often than I have baby fever. At the moment, “nesting” refers to the being too lazy to fold laundry so I simply sleep on top of it, like a baby bird. Large groups of women give me anxiety. Staying in one apartment, city, job or even room for too long gives me anxiety. And now that I live alone, I’m not going to lie- shaving, primping, and even sometimes, showering, are on an “as needed” basis. (Maybe that’s somewhat connected to the missing bride gene.)

Bridget Jones’ is my spirit animal.

I’ve never completely felt like I fit in anywhere. Far too introverted for most of the women I know, far too emotional for most of the men. So when I ventured into scriptwriting a few years back, I naturally felt compelled to write leading ladies with the same notable flaws that I too experienced. “Write what you know!” they said. Well I know commitment issues, creativity ADD, heartbreak and friendship. I know shifting career paths and fear of the unknown. I know travel. Solo travel, to be exact. I know what it’s like to have trouble letting go. And I know the challenge of approaching something with no experience, including writing, and figuring out a way to make it work.

When I completed the first draft of the script for my full length play, Chasing Shadows, I was eager to get feedback. Chasing Shadows told the story of four fairies who decided to leave Never Land in pursuit of New York City. They traded their wings and magic for the chance to become “real women,” and were granted the exact lives they had wished for back when they were fairies. Tink, the last of the group to give up her freedom, was offered the opportunity to give the real world a one-month trial run. But upon arriving in New York, she found herself torn between her past and her present.

The idea came from the notion that it was socially acceptable for men to embody the “Peter Pan Syndrome” for their entire lives, but women who did not “grow up” and follow the same paths as their family and friends were viewed in a negative light. The Tinker Bell Effect. It was funny, it was dark, it was sarcastic, and it was about fairies- bound to be a hit!

Not so much. The first feedback I received from the few people I shared it with was that my protagonist was not likable. She was too angry, too bitter. No one was rooting for her.

The fairies of Chasing Shadows will be recreating their roles for the web series DUST: A Fairy Tale.

I threw out that draft and started all over again. It took me close to a year to figure out Tink’s new story. I’m sure part of the reason was because I was trying to write what everyone else wanted to hear, and not the characters in my head. I struggled with the fact I was writing a “girly” script, in an age where people seem to crave blood, action, diversity and darkness. Even after several drafts and a few staged performances, people still questioned her journey. She seemed a little lost. She didn’t have an “arc.” It didn’t wrap up in a pretty little bow. I’m sure on some level, she simply made everyone uncomfortable. With all of those opinions in mind, I fought with the decision to keep pursuing the script.

About a month after the second staged reading of Chasing Shadows was performed, I came across an article in the Huffington Post called “Rise of the Woman Child,” by Lauren Duca. The article opened with discussing the predominant criticism Preggoland star Sonja Bennett received regarding her lead character- which was that she wasn’t likeable. The skies parted, the angels sang, a giant beam of light circled my head and I raised my arms victoriously… I wasn’t alone.

A must-read for today’s crop of new female writers.

It goes on to site other contemporary female protagonists, such as Annie (Kristen Wiig) in Bridesmaids and Jenny (Anna Kendrick) in Happy Christmas, who embodied similar qualities that made viewers lack empathy. Unlike their male counterpart roles, such as the characters in Old School, The Hangover, or any Adam Sandler movie, it seems that women who have a different definition of happily ever after, audiences find difficult to relate to.

After reading that piece, I knew I had to continue sharing Tink’s adventures. I made the decision to adapt the play into something online and episodic, allowing me flexibility to develop the characters one tale at a time… and so DUST: A Fairy Tale was born. The thought of taking on yet another huge endeavor (and another career path) with little experience and just a small team behind me was terrifying, but I was inspired by the growing voice of women in the industry. I desired the opportunity for mine to be heard. We launched our Seed & Spark campaign two and half weeks ago, and every day I have to remind myself I don’t write to be liked or to fit in, I write because I have a story to tell.

Not everyone who loves romantic comedies, lives them. Not every happy ending looks like happily ever after. If you feel like you don’t know which box to check, find four lines and create your own.

Because perhaps, the most grown up thing anyone can do, is simply to accept another person for exactly who they are. Flaws and all.

Writer. Director. Producer. Creative consultant by day, fairy by night. From her first ballet shoes to her first computer, Christina Morelli has been immersed in the arts for as long as she could walk and write. Her passion for creating paired with a strong entrepreneurial spirit carved the way for a number of lucrative business opportunities, from owning her own dance studio to producing staged readings of her original full length play in New York City and London. In addition to fueling her own artistic desires, Christina has worked as a writer and consultant for a number of sectors in the entertainment world, including music, production, dance and theater. She is currently thrilled to be bringing her favorite fairies from stage to screen in the upcoming web series, DUST: A Fairy Tale. When she’s not creating a new world of words, characters and scenarios, Christina loves photography, travel, wine and surprising people with her latest adventure. www.christinamorelli.com

Seed & Spark: ‘Stonewall’ Movie Fail

The movie adaptation of the Stonewall Riot entitled ‘Stonewall,’ directed by Roland Emmerich, is harboring unprecedented criticism from the entire LGBTQI community. Countless blogs, online publications, and social media pages have each blasted the movie with comments on whitewashing and altering of the historical facts.

Huffington Post Gay Voices released an article with the headline title “#NotMyStonewall: Why I’m Not Giving the Movie “Stonewall” a Chance.” The bbc.com entertainment section focused on the petition against the movie that reached more than 20,000 signatures.

I personally feel embarrassed for the director. No matter how hard he and his team try to damage-control this situation, I don’t think they will have any way out.

This is a guest post by Jethro.

The movie adaptation of the Stonewall Riot entitled Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich, is harboring unprecedented criticism from the entire LGBTQI community. Countless blogs, online publications, and social media pages have each blasted the movie with comments on whitewashing and altering of the historical facts.

Huffington Post Gay Voices released an article with the headline title “#NotMyStonewall: Why I’m Not Giving the Movie “Stonewall” a Chance.” The bbc.com entertainment section focused on the petition against the movie that reached more than 20,000 signatures.

I personally feel embarrassed for the director. No matter how hard he and his team try to damage-control this situation, I don’t think they will have any way out. The director released this statement on his Facebook page:

“When I first learned about the Stonewall Riots through my work with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, I was struck that the circumstances that lead to LGBT youth homelessness today are pretty much the same as they were 45 years ago. The courageous actions of everyone who fought against injustice in 1969 inspired me to tell a compelling, fictionalized drama of those days centering on homeless LGBT youth, specifically a young midwestern gay man who is kicked out of his home for his sexuality and comes to New York, befriending the people who are actively involved in the events leading up to the riots and the riots themselves. I understand that following the release of our trailer there have been initial concerns about how this character’s involvement is portrayed, but when this film – which is truly a labor of love for me – finally comes to theaters, audiences will see that it deeply honors the real-life activists who were there — including Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Ray Castro — and all the brave people who sparked the civil rights movement which continues to this day. We are all the same in our struggle for acceptance.”

Marsha P. Johnson

No matter how he reassures his audience against his misappropriation of a widely known struggle for civil rights, it’s almost impossible to fictionalize an important and pivotal piece of LGBT history. This is utterly unforgivable in my opinion.

Where did this director grow up? Does he live on the same planet as us? Did the civil rights movement just pass him by, and he hardly even noticed?

As a filmmaker, I would seek to educate myself about historical movements that are intersectional or closely interrelated to what I am conveying in a movie, especially one that’s so pivotal in LGBT history.

This is not ignorance but unconscious racism on the part of the director and screenwriter, which plagues most big-budget Hollywood films. The first person that threw a brick at the Stonewall Riot is Marsha P. Johnson, an African-American, transgender woman. Why on earth would you replace her with a White, cisgender gay man?

This is not only dumbfounding but outrageous. Is it because White, cisgender gay men have more commercial value than African-American, transgender women?

Why is this still an issue we fight at our level of cultural awareness and gender identity critical-mindedness? It’s possible that this could be a reflection of a deeper problem that exists within our cultural consciousness. Interestingly, this parallels events that are taking place today, with most of the media transfixed on Caitlyn Jenner and Black Lives Matter.

I find it ironic that on one hand we have a transgender woman who single-handedly takes the world by storm, and on the other, black people continue to be brutally discriminated against, harassed, even killed by criminal authorities.

In the eyes of Hollywood, some historical events cannot be adapted into a multi-million dollar blockbuster movie. Perhaps, the Stonewall riot is one of them. It’s impossible to replace iconic personalities in history when the point is to cater to a wider audience. I consider this a crime.

Denying younger generations the truth of history only allows it to repeat. Sadly, this isn’t a new trend in the film industry. Hollywood is known to appropriate and alter history for the sake of profit. I believe this has to stop.

When dealing with history, filmmakers have a responsibility to be accurate about the facts and events. A movie adaptation such as the Stonewall is nothing short of a failure, and it’s downright disrespectful to a movement that is still continuing at present.

Recently, I came across a short film that promises a more accurate portrayal of the Stonewall Riots, entitled Happy Birthday Marsha, written and directed by Reina Gossett and Sasha Wortzel. It’s a film about the transgender artist and activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson and her life in the hours before Stonewall.

Like any other historical event, the story of Stonewall did not start at the Riot itself. The LGBT movement had been brewing years before. In the 1960s, when it was illegal to be gay, there had been an insurgence and uprising against institutionalized discrimination both in the East and the West.

In San Francisco, a man named Jose Sarria became the first openly gay individual to run for public office in an attempt to counteract the hatred that was the norm. He later founded an organization called the Imperial Council of San Francisco, the oldest surviving LGBT charity organization in America, which later gave birth to the International Court System composing of 64 affiliates in the US, Canada, Hawaii, and Mexico.

My documentary film 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story chronicles the 50-year history of the organization that became the pioneering nonprofit organization fundraising millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS organizations and causes throughout the decades. The film is set for postproduction and is raising funds to finish.

Please check out our Seed and Spark campaign at www.seedandspark.com/50yearsoffab.

Jethro is a filmmaker/video producer based in San Francisco, California. He is currently working for Adecco at Google producing marketing and training videos for Google Maps Street View and Business View. He is the director of the award winning documentary film My Revolutionary Mother and two upcoming documentaries 50 Years of Fabulous: The Imperial Council Story and My Name Is Protest.

Seed & Spark: Funny, Feminine, and F*cking Fantastic: Funny Women Who Make Me Want to Woman the Bejeezus Out of My Writing

But lately there’s been a surge of female writers who inspire me. Not only for their individual writing styles, but also for their ability to be so unapologetically female. Which, as my writing partners and I launch into production of our web series ‘Supporting Roles,’ means everything.

This is a guest post by Shannon Hollsten.

For the longest time I’ve said, “I don’t want to be recognized as a good female writer. I want to be recognized as a good writer who happens to be female.” It was a huge distinction for me. Because up until recently, “female” has been a qualifier that somehow had – and to some degree still has – a negative connotation. Like, somehow whatever fantastic writing/acting/directing/cooking/etc. we’d created was still lesser than anything any dude attempted.

But lately there’s been a surge of female writers who inspire me. Not only for their individual writing styles, but also for their ability to be so unapologetically female. Which, as my writing partners and I launch into production of our web series Supporting Roles, means everything. Seeing the success and variety of funny female writers in Hollywood just means that the “X” in my chromosomal makeup is one less thing I have to worry about as I put pen to paper.

(Or rather, keyboard to Microsoft Word. Same thing.)

Tina Fey

As if she wouldn’t make the top of this list. If she had come into the forefront before I was an adult, I’d absolutely want to be her when I grew up. (Truth: I still do.) She was the first female head writer on Saturday Night Live and then decided to dominate TV because she could. I’m not sure how she does it, but everything she writes is quotable and is like an inside joke that you think you probably might be in on.

And she made Kenneth immortal. Brilliant.

Mindy Kaling

Honestly, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kelly Kapoor on The Office. For whatever reason, the character just didn’t resonate with me. So when I found out Mindy Kaling was getting her own series, I was just like, “but….why?” About two minutes into the first episode of The Mindy Project, I got it. And I immediately and happily jumped on the Mindy bandwagon. Her comedy has a lot of subtlety baked into the big moments, and more often than not it’s the details that amuse me the most.

Katie Dippold

The genius behind The Heat, some of your favorite Parks and Recs episodes and now the already hyped female reboot of Ghostbusters. Her comedy is sharp and has its own recognizable charm to it, which isn’t a bad way to get your career going. She jumped from critically acclaimed TV to blockbuster movies in, like, 30 seconds (on the fame clock). WHO DOES THAT? Oh, that’s right. Katie does.

In the time it took me to write this caption, she probably completed Pitch Perfect 3 like it ain’t no thing. — In the time it took me to write this caption, she probably completed *Pitch Perfect 3* like it ain’t no thing.

Kay Cannon

Anyone with 30 Rock on their resume instantly gets an honorable mention. 30 Rock + New Girl + Pitch Perfect 1 and 2? Now you’ve made it right smack-dab on the list. The Pitch Perfect movies combine everyone’s guilty pleasure, A cappella, with strong characters, great dialogue, and humor. More than anything I want all my dialogue to be something that Fat Amy would say. And to be partially in harmonizing song.

Jillian Bell and Charlotte Newhouse

These two ladies are getting a spot on the list because I recently discovered – and discovered I love – their web series (or, TV mini-series as it’s listed on IMDb) Idiotsitter. It combines with outrageous characters with an absurd premise but in a way that’s oddly relatable and very funny. Watch it. You won’t be sorry. Or uninspired.

Yes, Amy, I did just write all those nice things about you! Can we be besties now? — Yes, Amy, I *did* just write all those nice things about you! Can we be besties now?

Amy Schumer

Finally (for this list at least), Amy F-ing Schumer – the “F” in this case standing for “Feminist.” Between her Emmy nominations and the successful opening of her comedy Trainwreck, she is now a fully active and hilarious member of the Hollywood’s A-list. Her comedy is perfectly on point for today’s culture. She’s self-deprecating but self-aware, not afraid to be feminist but not trying too hard to be one. She has brought her A-game to every part of her career this year. I really can’t wait to see what she does next. (No pressure, Amy.)

I know I am missing a few dozen amazing female writers. But, like inviting guests to a wedding, the list has to cut off somewhere or it’s just gonna get ridiculously out of hand. And these women are the ones who very specifically make me want to stand up and declare, “I am a female writer!”

I mean, I won’t. That’d be weird for my coworkers who have no context for that kind of outburst. But in my head I’m Norma Rae-ing this moment so hard right now. So hard.

Shannon Hollsten is an Austin-based amateur karaoke singer who is waiting oh-so-eagerly for the day they miniaturize elephants so we can keep them as pets.

Seed & Spark: On ‘Ex Machina,’ Artificial Intelligence of Color, and How to Become a (White) Woman

I decided to be a filmmaker because I believe that women of color should proclaim ownership over the creation and dissemination of our images and stories. When Ava DuVernay asked her Twitter followers to name films that featured black, brown, Native, or Asian women leads, only a handful of films on that list featured an Asian American actress with an Asian American woman director at the helm. (And the drop-off between first and second efforts is alarming; Alice Wu, the writer/director of 2004’s ‘Saving Face,’ has never made another feature.)

This is a guest post by Zhuojie Chen.

In the opening minutes of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, Nathan, the eccentric founder of the fictional company BlueBook, commissions Caleb, one of his programmer employees, to conduct the Turing test on Ava, an artificial intelligence subject. If Caleb cannot distinguish whether he is interacting with a computer or a human, then Ava passes the test. The bulk of the film focuses on the interplay between these three characters and attempts to bring up issues of gender and sexuality – specifically, performative (white) femininity. In this entry, however, I’d like to focus on Garland’s complete misfire with the character of Kyoko.

During Caleb’s first day in the research facility, he meets Ava (whose name is a variation of the Biblical Eve), the test subject with a (white) face crafted from his porn search history. She possesses internal circuitry that visibly lights up before him and speaks haltingly. In interviews, actress Alicia Vikander has noted that Garland instructed her to play Ava like a robot who wants to be a girl.

On Caleb’s second day, Kyoko (an Asian woman with a hairstyle that surely drew inspiration from Fu Manchu’s moustache) enters his room, silently places a tray on the table, and leaves. Later that evening, Kyoko spills wine as Nathan and Caleb eat dinner. Caleb attempts to placate Nathan’s angry outburst by telling Kyoko that he’ll take care of the spill, but Nathan’s reply – “Dude, you’re wasting your time talking to her; she doesn’t understand English” – left me with an acute awareness of the unfolding spectacle. In white America’s imagination, Asian American women take up dichotomous spaces: Dragon Ladies or China Dolls. As a recovering academic, I’m tempted to cite scholarly article after scholarly article to validate my point of view; but as a life-long Asian American consumer of pop culture, I see a system that consistently replicates itself.

Kyoko is a white man’s plot device; a foil to Ava; a trope that evokes the imagery of comfort women without delving into any of the trauma. She falls well within normative standards of beauty (thin, light-skinned), but Garland constructs her so that she is still a foreigner. Her silence functions in two ways: first, she doesn’t take up the space that Ava is allowed through her inquisitiveness; but her voicelessness also marks her as dangerous, as disloyal. And what of Nathan’s banal dismissal of her? “Hey, Kyoko. Go, go.” Like a post-racial hipster reimagining of “ching chong ding dong,” it too tries to juxtapose supposed Otherness with homegrown simplicity and fails at either cleverness or subversion.

We ought to contextualize Kyoko’s character within the larger framework of the way in which Garland navigates racial issues. Caleb eventually learns that Nathan has been building test subjects for quite some time. There’s Lily; by version 2.4.0, she’s a fully formed naked white woman who we see walking down a hallway. There’s Jasmine, a naked black woman who, by version 4.3.0, still doesn’t have a face. She never moves on her own; she never acquires agency. (In version 4.2.2, we’re treated to a shot of wigs.) And there’s Jade, a naked Asian woman racialized on her name alone. Jade, from versions 5.0.1 to version 5.2.3, asks Nathan, in accented English, “Why won’t you let me out?” Version 5.3 assaults her captor; version 5.4 tries to break free, slamming on glass walls, only to break off her own arms in the process.

After Caleb uncovers this footage, Kyoko reveals that she, too, is A.I. by peeling back layers of “skin.” I entertained the thought that Garland was, in this image, attempting to convey that Kyoko’s problematic depiction of Asian American womanhood had been filtered through Nathan’s eyes, as he had envisioned her. Unfortunately, Garland envisioned this film. The power of cinema is not simply representational; the power of cinema lies in its constant act of creation, of reification.

At the film’s conclusion, Ava and Kyoko join forces to kill Nathan. Ava loses half of an arm in the process; Kyoko loses her life (like a horror film, the lady robot of color doesn’t make it to the end). After the struggle, Ava steals into Nathan’s room and finds the defunct A.I. models. She unhooks her damaged arm and replaces it with Jade’s. Slowly, she peels off Jade’s skin and assembles those pieces on her own body, takes a white dress from another A.I., and leaves the facility with Caleb still locked inside. One of the last images we see is Caleb pounding on the door, a dead Kyoko mere feet away.

In one of Caleb’s first sessions with Ava, he says to her, “Mary’s a scientist, and her specialist subject is color….But she lives in a black and white room. She was born there and raised there and she can only observe the outside world on a black and white monitor. Then one day someone opens the door, and Mary walks out. And she sees a blue sky. And at that moment…she learns what it feels like to see color. The thought experiment was to show students the difference between a computer and a human mind. The computer is Mary in the black and white room; the human is when she walks out.”

How unfortunate, then, that in order to see color, in order to be truly human, Ava must actively participate in the erasure of women of color. From Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937), who won her first of two Oscars by playing a Chinese servant, to Emma Stone in Aloha (2015), who thought she could convincingly portray the quarter-Hawaiian, quarter-Chinese character Allison Ng, white women in Hollywood have long benefitted from systemic racism that centers white artists at every turn. The consequence of privilege is that it allows those who have it to be oblivious to its ill effects; privilege, by nature, craves inaction or continued ignorant actions; it necessitates an investment in the status quo.

Luise Rainer in The Good Earth and Emma Stone in Aloha. They’re both Asian; didn’t you know? — Luise Rainer in *The Good Earth* and Emma Stone in *Aloha*.
They’re both Asian; didn’t you know?

In 2014, I went to the Sundance Screenwriters Intensive with a feature script called M. Virgin, which is a comedy that deals with Asian American fetishism. This summer, I will take three scenes from the feature and turn them into a proof-of-concept short film. I hope you’ll support the project with a contribution, a follow, or both. Only systemic change is worth our collective investment.

Zhuojie Chen is a writer and filmmaker from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She lives and works in New York City, spent her childhood obsessed with Power Rangers, and will ardently defend Michelle Kwan’s performance at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Once upon a time she went by Suzy; then she decided she liked her given name more.

Seed & Spark: Why I Have a Giant Lady Crush on Elizabeth Banks

This is a guest post by Jeanette Bonner, who is currently crowdfunding through Seed & Spark for her latest project.

I will admit it: I’m a beauty-magazine buyer. I want to be one of those people that shun them the way I shun impulse-buying those “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” magazines at the grocery store. But there are certain times when it’s really ALL my brain wants to process, even though I know I should be learning about tragedy in China/ Supreme Court misdoings and failures/ who Amal Clooney is saving this month.

Occasionally, some of them have content worth reading. Many of them, like Allure and Marie Claire, have recently gone pro-fem and are really letting the world know who’s the most ass-kicking female of the moment.

May’s issue of Allure featured another gorgeous blonde starlet with fan-blown hair waves of envy, in a gorgeous dress none of us will ever own, looking wrinkle-less and flawless as usual. That lady was Elizabeth Banks.

I will begin by saying that Elizabeth Banks is totally on my radar. If you are a producer and an actress who does comedy (as I am), you will sit up and take notice when other ladies – especially comediennes – break the boy-code barrier and succeed at straddling that fine line between marketable (aka “attractive to audiences”) and powerful (aka running your own series and being a lady-boss). You can probably think of three straight off the bat. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are the Queens, Mindy Kaling comes next. Then I would suggest Jenny Slate (who went from SNL reject to Create-Your-Own-Content baller), and then I bet your next thought is for the two Best B*tches of the Moment: Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. But I bet your thoughts don’t naturally then go to Elizabeth Banks, even though they should.

Sometimes as a producer, you have to physically lend some extra support.

Elizabeth Banks first caught my attention in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, as the overtly promiscuous hot party-girl type. She has an orgasm in a bubble-bath in front of Steve Carrell, and I thought – “Man. That girl is fearless. It takes a lot to not only put aside your pride and have an orgasm in front of Steve Carrell, but do it in a funny way that doesn’t automatically make you want to slut-shame her and write her off. She’s a badass.” She was, of course, in a lot of things before that, Wet Hot American Summer being one of them, but after The 40-Year-Old Virgin, just like the way it seems everyone owns a green car the moment you think of buying a green car, she suddenly seemed to me to be everywhere.

I don’t need to list her credits to you to prove she’s awesome, and that’s not my point either. We all know she’s talented and Hollywood loves her and yeah she’s pretty and funny and held her own against Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock. Here’s why I have a lady-crush on her – this quote, from the aforementioned Allure interview:

“If I had to pick a theme of the things that I do,” Banks says, “it would be: Girls win.”

Pitch Perfect, a hard-core “girls win” -kinda movie, was Banks’ first hit of the production company she started with her husband. When the original director wasn’t available for Pitch Perfect 2, the studio asked Banks to direct it herself:

“Once you get offered a studio job, as a woman, it’s really hard to say no because they don’t let women do this very often,” she says. “So I knew I needed to embrace it and I couldn’t mess it up. Because if you mess it up, they don’t let you do it again, and you become representative of female directors as a whole. Like, ‘See, girls can’t do it!’’ [Allure, June 2015]

BOOM. They asked, and she stepped up to the plate. Without reservation. No one asked politely. No one had to convince her. She did not seek out permission. They offered her something with a TON of responsibility and she accepted, despite probably already being overwhelmed with producing the damn thing AS WELL AS acting in it (it’s not an easy feat to wear all three hats, as I learned with my web series, Ghost Light, for which I’m the writer, producer, and also actor).

I have often found in my life – and certainly this is true when it comes to producing my own web series – that I seek permission before I do anything. It takes me a long time to wrap my mind around a new idea. I consider myself spontaneous and risk-taking yes, but if someone offers me something outside of my comfort zone, anything that I haven’t previously decided that I can do, I don’t take action immediately. I wobble, waiting for someone to convince me. Skiing? “I’m not sure I can, I’ve never been and I hear a lot of adults have accidents their first time.” Malaysian food? “I’ll go if you tell me what to order.” How about doing something crazy, like moving to North Carolina to start a business? “What! I don’t know the first thing about starting a business. Or North Carolina!” You see what I mean.

We all do this. Psychologists say this is our ego keeping us safe, because risk equals danger, and danger equals death. I know that if some huge studio head asked me to direct a $30 million dollar movie with a cast and crew of nearly 300, I’d balk. I’d make excuses. I’d say, “I don’t know how, I don’t have enough experience, I don’t have time.” Instead, Elizabeth Banks said, “Of course I’ll do it. Because if I don’t, just by saying no, as a woman – I fail.”

Her next project as a producer is an HBO movie based on the life of tennis star Billie Jean King. In her Allure interview Banks said, “Billie Jean King’s activism is mind-boggling. She has a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s so inspirational.” And just like that, she’s off and running again, no doubts in her mind that anyone could tackle this film better. Because why would they? She’s a kickass, empowered, inspired, strong woman who makes her own path in this crazy industry and in her life.

As are we all, right? AS ARE WE ALL.

Jeanette Bonner is an award-winning actor, writer, and producer in NYC. She has been writing informally since the age of 5, and is now combining her love for writing with her passion for theater. In addition to Ghost Light she has written and produced the one-woman show Love. Guts. High School. It premiered at the 2012 Midtown International Theatre Festival, where it won nominations for Best Actress and Best Solo Show, and then went on to the Chicago Fringe Festival, where it was named a top ten “Critic’s Pick” by Time Out Chicago. Last year it received top reviews at the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she performed it 23 times (whew!). As an actor in New York, she has performed with Magic Futurebox, Manhattan Theatre Source, and Vital Theatre Company, and workshopped plays with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Abingdon Theatre, and Primary Stages. She has been a company member of improv troupe National Comedy Theater for seven years, and in her downtime she shows tourists around town as a licensed NYC tour guide.