Attention filmmakers!

HEY. You there. Yes you, the person reading this blog. First of all, thank you. (Seriously, if you're actually reading this weird-ass blog, thank you.) Second, if you're at all interested in making movies, ENTER THIS CONTEST. For realsies. Make a 30-second winter holiday movie and send it to Jenny Slate. Because why the hell not, that's why. Seriously, what have you got to lose?

A special note to my fellow awesome lady filmmakers: here is an opportunity to have your work looked at and judged by another awesome lady filmmaker. Do you really want to pass that up? I didn't think so.

So get cracking, everyone! Contest deadline is December 7. You've got one month to make as many 30-second holiday flicks as your little heart desires, so in the immortal words of Nike, JUST DO IT! And be on the lookout here too, because you bet I'll post mine as soon as they're done! :)

Let's talk about on-screen sex

Okay. I'm pretty sure any of my college friends who read this right now are laughing their asses off ("WHAT?!? the goofy, naive, hopeless romantic who wore a purity ring is writing about MOVIE SEX?!") but honestly, I really don't care. I mean, I've already covered death, feminism, awards-show politics and Dogme 95 - so really, how can I top that without talking about sex?

So, let's get to the heart of it: for a girl who's spent a long time swearing blind that she wants to wait until her wedding night, I have seen a lot of sexually provocative (and, in some cases, flat-out sexually explicit) movies. I've seen it all, from the fade-to-black cutesy scenes of movies like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants to the blatant hedonism of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And yet all of these movies have something in common: the sex is all glamorized and romanticized and totally...well...staged.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting directors start pulling a Lars Von Trier every time they want to shoot a love scene. But there are a few things I'd like to address, Love-Scene Directors, and I think if we all work together we might be able to change the Hollywood standards of perfect sex:

1) What's up with the whole woman-looks-perfect-post-sex thing? I look like a hot mess after I carry two full laundry bins up the stairs, and I mean, not to get graphic or anything, but isn't sex a bit more strenuous than that? I get that it's Hollywood and you can't just let the woman look like she's recently been hit by the Sharknado, but could we get beyond the need to have everybody's makeup perfect 24/7 already? Isn't it a little sexier if her lipstick is smudged and she's a little sweaty and her hair's been messed up? I'm just saying, if you look like a model off the runway right after you've just finished getting busy, I imagine you must've had some pretty boring sex. And Hollywood, a little hint, boring doesn't sell.

2) Speaking of which, can we have more sex scenes that focus on the woman having a good time? Kimberly Peirce once got a hard time from the MPAA for having a girl's climax last too long in Boys Don't Cry. To which she helpfully replied, "Okay, but why? No one's ever been hurt by an orgasm that lasts too long." Good point, Ms. Peirce. Again, I'm not asking for a complete 180 - I'm pretty sure every straight girl in the movie-watching world would revolt if all the slow-mo shots of the men getting naked were removed from the cinematic experience - I just think it'd be nice to see more sex scenes like those in Boys Don't Cry and Gone Girl. (Seriously, is there a reason why good sex scenes have to be layered into movies that are choked with violence? I really don't think John Lennon would've approved.)

3) Do all the sex scenes have to be set-dressed to the nth degree? I get that you can't show nudity and still maintain a PG-13 rating (unless you're Tim Burton showing off Danny DeVito's naked ass, but believe me, that is an entirely different thing) but to go back to point #1, if your bed looks like it was just made by Cinderella's mice when you've just finished a roll in the hay, your sex life must be about as fun as reading IKEA instructions. I remember talking about this with one of my screenwriting professors once. We were talking about how to write a realistic love story and I made some snarky comment about how in movies, the woman is always wrapped perfectly in a sheet post-sex. To which he replied, "If those movies were realistic, the sheets would be on the floor." Couldn't have said it better myself.

4) Why do all movie climaxes sound the same? I swear to God if I cut out the sex noises from one standard movie love scene and pasted them into another, no one would be able to tell the difference. Now, given that I am not a creeper who goes around listening to other people get it on,  I'm clearly not an expert on the subject, but I am 99.999999% sure that in the real world, every big O does not sound exactly the same. Let's just try for some diversity here, okay? If you need inspiration check out Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song, those actors made noises I didn't even think humans could make. Or, y'know, continue to show your actors Easy A, for How to Fake Sex 101. I know you know which scene I'm talking about.

5) Is it illegal to try the "less is more" approach? I'm not talking about the "fade to black" standard of most PG-rated rom-coms. Though I do tip my hat to them for throwing back to the Hollywood Production Code days without resorting to actual censorship...but that's another story. I mean the reason the scenes from Gone Girl and Boys Don't Cry (I'm going to go back to these two a lot because seriously, they are the best movie sex scenes I have ever seen) are so great because they're so intimate. No one is yelling "oh God! OH MY GOD!" at the top of their lungs. Clothes aren't torn off and hurled over inanimate objects. The pictures on the walls aren't rattling. But even though the furniture may not be rocking, it's clear that someone's world is. Sure, there are times when the story calls for a sex scene reminiscent of the one in Dark Shadows, but sometimes, subtle can be sexier than the alternative.

6) Is nudity actually required for every scene? Look y'all, I'm as happy to look at a shirtless Bradley Cooper as the rest of you, but let's return to that "less-is-more" principle. Especially for movies with multiple boot-knocking sequences, like Gone Girl, sometimes it's more about what we don't see. Again, I'm sure everyone knows exactly which scenes I'm talking about here. Did Rosamund Pike need to be naked in either of her big moments? Nope. We were still as interested or horrified, depending on which part we were watching, without the presence of boobies. And in some cases, it can be used as a character-layering moment. Another note about Gone Girl: Andie gets naked in her sex scenes, Amy does not. Amy is associated with class, sophistication and intensity; Andie is played as totally naive. See what Fincher did there?

Which brings me to the final point: let sex be part of the story. We live in a world where sex is used as a tool. It's an advertising ploy. It's a power-play. It's used to sell, to obtain, to negotiate, to get revenge. But it doesn't have to be that way in the movies, does it? That's what movies are about, after all: creating a picture of a world that's different from the one we live in. It's fleeting, but it's there. It can just be another part of the story. It doesn't have to be the defining part. Just another cog in a crazy, beautiful machine.

And here's my plea to you, the MPAA: stop criminalizing sex and normalizing violence. You're not fooling anyone with your "it's realism!" spiel. No, you're not. We filmmakers can't change standards unless you let us. We can try, but who'll see the movie if you stamp it with NC-17 because it depicts a woman getting off? Like Pierce said, it's not like someone's getting hurt. But you know what? I'd bet money that the reason sex scenes in movies are so shiny-pretty-glossy is because when they get realistic, you tag it as pornography and tell the filmmakers they should be ashamed. So let's chill out a bit, MPAA. Because I guarantee that when you do, we will too.

Finally: to all the filmmakers who are making cool movies with cool sex scenes...you rock. Don't ever change. (Seriously, don't.)

(...I promise that's not my desire to see shirtless Bradly Cooper talking.)

Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Pixels'

So basically, I’m a fangirl. I will go see any movie--don’t really give a damn what it’s about--as long as it has one of the following qualities: 1) it was made by a director I like, 2) it has an actor in it that I like (bonus points if there’s multiple favorite actors), 3) it was written by a screenwriter I like, or 4) it was based on a book by an author I like. (It doesn’t matter whether I’ve actually read the book. Yeah, yeah. I know.)

So, Pixels had a lot of strikes against it--it’s CGI-heavy, which I usually hate; it has Adam Sandler, who I absolutely despise; it was written by a screenwriter whose movies I generally don’t like; and the reviews were absolutely terrible, which shouldn’t influence me but it usually does. BUT. It involved Pac-Man (which I absolutely love) and, more importantly, was directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, Chris Columbus. To make matters even more complicated I knew that one of my favorite actors, Peter Dinklage--and if you don’t know who that is, I beg you to go and watch The Station Agent, it is a work of art and your life won’t be complete until you watch it--had a prominent role.

So I decided, what the hell, I’ll see Pixels. Why not? Could be great or awful. I’m just enough of a Columbus fangirl to find out. I only hoped it wouldn’t live up to those awful reviews.

And, to my immense delight, it did not live up to those awful reviews. Not even close.

Okay, I’ll admit, the script is…well, it’s about as good as I expected it to be. It’s choked with a lot of throwaway jokes and heavy with nostalgia about the “good old days” before video games became violent and “realistic.” If you’re like me, and the thought of playing Walking Dead instead of Super Mario makes you want to puke, you’ll like it; if you call everyone who says Pac-Man is better than Call of Duty is a gaming snob, then you probably won’t appreciate it. I tried not to watch it from a political angle, but with all the critics calling it misogynist, it was hard not to. And yet I couldn’t find much in the way of political message here, unless Sandler & Co thought it highly important that we all understand the danger of aliens thinking our video games are a declaration of war. Gotta wonder where all the people who are crying “It’s just like Gamergate!” are coming from, because I sure as hell didn’t get that vibe from the movie at all.

Now, I’ll admit, there are some places where the plot is a stretch. “There’s no career for a gamer.” Really? Uh, okay, could this guy not have designed new video games, opened his own arcade, or if he was really ambitious become a Disney Imagineer? Hell, couldn’t he have made a career of collecting, trading and selling vintage games or game machines, if he really couldn’t think of any other possible game-related career? That part was a stretch to me. Especially given that his BFF, whose childhood claim to fame was stealing quarters from little girls’ lemonade stands, grew up to be the President of the United States. Okay, we’ll just pretend that was in the realm of possibility.

And yet to quibble about realism when the plot of the movie revolves around an alien invasion is kind of pointless, when you think about it. The reasoning behind the entire story of Pixels is soft sci-fi at its finest. We’re not meant to question why the aliens took what was clearly a time capsule and read it as a declaration of war. We’re not meant to question the “light guns” that fight off those aliens. And we’re definitely not meant to question how Dinklage’s character could possibly have used cheat codes in a real-life situation. No, if you’re sitting there marking every continuity error, scientific impossibility and minor anachronism, you are definitely watching Pixels the wrong way. The effects are impressive, the humor is surprisingly clean, and of course Q*bert is about as cute as it’s possible to be. With all of that, it’s fairly easy to overlook the plot holes. Just don’t think about it too hard.

The finest moments of Pixels are when the movie points out its own weirdness. Now, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for self-aware movies--I’m a Mel Brooks fan, what did you expect?--so my favorite parts could be (and, judging from some of the reviews I’ve seen, definitely were) someone else’s biggest irritation. So be it. But I thought the scene where Sam goes over to install Matty’s new TV and ends up drinking wine with Violet in the closet was one of the best in the film. We expect them to kiss and fall in love at first sight because that’s how movies work, but they don’t, and it’s a moment that’s as funny and heartfelt as it is cringe-worthy. Later on, one of the good-guy aliens (you’d have to watch the film to understand) transforms into Lady Lisa, the longtime crush of one of the game nerds. “Am I the only one who’s weirded out by this?” Sam questions, while everyone else goes “Aww.” No, you’re not the only one, Adam Sandler. We’re all a little weirded out right now. But that’s okay, we’re supposed to be.

For all the movie’s flaws, the characterization is damn good. Critics are trashing the film for misogyny, but I personally thought that Violet was very well-written and well-acted. We all remember what I said about perfect female characters, and I am very happy to report that Lieutenant Colonel Violet Van Patten is the absolute opposite of perfect. Physically attractive she may be--and unbelievably smart, to boot--but she too is prone to hissy fits and juvenile snark, just like Sandler’s Sam Brenner. The “nerd team” of video game expert fighters is about as stereotyped as you could expect, from the insecure leader to the weirdo in love with his favorite game character, but somehow the script still manages to make them lovable in their own way. I read a lot about misogyny, lack of female gamers and Gamergate in the reviews, but I have to say I never felt threatened as a female viewer. Yes, I’d have loved to see more women as gamers in the film, but--minor spoiler alert--Violet has enough badass moments to make up for it; after all, she does invent the light guns that are the only defense against the aliens.

So that brings me to the outlandish reaction to Pixels. The accusations of sexism were what really got my goat, because upon watching the movie I found nothing outrageous about it. It all ties back into what I said about the Perfection Curse that we slap onto our female characters and call it “equality” for “strong female characters.” We as a society demand more female representation, and then complain when those characters don’t live up to our expectations. “We want more women in the films!” we cry, and then hastily add, “but if those women aren’t exactly the way we want them, you are sexist and we hate you!” Hence, our reactions to Black Widow, Katniss Everdeen and Violet Van Patten. We demanded them, now we throw them back when they aren’t just what we wanted.

Ladies and gentlemen, don’t take this the wrong way, but give me a freaking break.

I’m not going to say Pixels was fantastic, because it wasn’t. It’s a great “popcorn” movie--the kind you watch with your best friends on a Saturday night or pop into your DVD player when you’re ready for a nice hit of nostalgia--but I won’t defend it as Oscar-worthy or say it changed my entire perspective on Sandler. But I think the reaction to it says a lot about us as a society of movie-watchers. We are ready and waiting to rake anything that doesn’t live up to our exacting expectations through the coals, and then complain that filmmakers don’t “try hard enough.” And to someone who’s primed to go into the film industry…holy shit, that is scary.

The problem with "Strong Female Characters"

Recently I was asked by a friend, in the middle of one of my many gushing rants about Gillian Flynn and why she might actually be God, what I saw in the violent, bordering-on-revenge-porn piece of insanity that is Gone Girl. Well, I’ll tell you why I love Gone Girl. It’s because the way that women are portrayed in the media is deeply, intensely messed up.

Look, I’m not gonna be one of those girls. You know, a “Tumblr feminist” who would rather scream and call people “literally scum” for not believing that gender is a social construct or that cultural appropriation is a thing - mainly because as a non-transgender, white girl, I really have no business poking my nose into either of those topics - than actually educate people on why our media, despite recent improvements, is still kind of a mess. I’m not going to go that far. Let someone else do that.

What I am going to say, though, is that the on-screen treatment of women, especially in big blockbuster movies, really, really fries my cheese. And when you throw in the irrational way that people react to women on-screen…whew! Recipe for trouble, right there.

Let’s take a look at Age of Ultron. Okay, we know I wasn’t too impressed with that film, but one thing I didn’t have an issue with was the Banner/Widow romance. Honestly, I wasn’t even really surprised by the whole thing. You’ve got a kick-ass woman surrounded by kick-ass men - possibly the only men on the planet who are even remotely capable of understanding her on an intellectual and emotional level. Of course a romantic subplot will eventually develop. Now, when I initially heard the cast lineup, my first thought was “ohh...Scarlet Witch is gonna fall for an Avenger and switch sides, isn’t she.” So I was actually relieved that they went with Hulk and Black Widow, because Christ, as cheesy as some of that storyline was, it was a hell of a lot less so than where I was afraid the movie would go.

But sweet Jesus did the majority of the internet disagree with me.

Now, I’m not denying that Black Widow has gotten the short end of the stick in this whole scheme. She’s undeniably one of the most badass characters in the Marvel canon (her backstory alone...holy crap!), right up there with Scarlet Witch, Daisy “Agent Skye” Johnson, Moondragon and Peggy Carter. Who...uh...also don’t have their own origin movies, or action figures, or...well, you get the point. So yeah, she’s gotten shunted to the side quite a bit. But let’s not forget that the reason we love her, and the reason we care that she’s gotten backburnered fairly often, is that she’s been given moments to shine in the films. She’s kicked asses and taken names. She’s gotten the team out of some absurdly sticky situations. She’s figured out Loki, discovered Ultron’s location, tamed the Hulk, shut down the Tesseract, and saved the collective asses of the male Avengers several times. And I have no doubt that when Infinity War rolls around, she’ll have her moment wiping the floor with Thanos, just like the rest of them.

But here’s the problem. Black Widow is amazing. She’s whip-smart. She’s a kick-ass fighter. She’s witty, she’s snarky, she’s resourceful, she’s beautiful, and she’s interesting. We want to know more about her, hence our cries for an origin movie. We’re all collectively in love, platonic or otherwise (yeah, yeah, I know, but that’s not objectification, that’s a fact) with Black Widow.

That’s the problem.

She is fucking perfect.

Have you ever freaking noticed that? She’s perfect. And of course she is. She’s perfect in all the right ways, because she has to be, because she is repping every damn woman in the universe.

Think about this for half a second. There’s five guys - eight if you count Falcon, Quicksilver and War Machine - that provide a range of different personalities and backstories that people could identify with on a number of levels. I tease Ian all the time by calling him “Captain America” on account of the fact that he’s pretty much pre-serum Steve Rogers in the flesh. My best guy friends are, respectively, “Hawkeye” (because he’s constantly underestimated but wonderfully hilarious when given the chance) and “Tony Stark” (because he’s a walking pile of unfairly intelligent snark). I once dated a guy who jokingly introduced himself to me as “Bruce Banner - but, y’know, without the rage-beast thing” because he prided himself on his aptitude for science. There’s such a range of qualities there that any of the guys can afford to be imperfect, because their imperfections are a part of their overall character and can be appropriated as part of the thing you identify with. (“Oh my gosh, Hulk has a temper, just like me!” “Iron Man is really smart, but he drinks too much sometimes...and so do I!” “I might be too idealistic, but so is Captain America, and he saved the world!”)

But look at Black Widow. Because she’s virtually the only leading female character in the movie, and arguably the single most popular woman in the franchise, she cannot afford to have those imperfections. Her backstory must have just enough tragedy to be interesting, but not so much that it alienates her from her target audience. And God forbid she not be feminist enough, or she is reduced to “a shell of a superheroine who’s sad she can never be a complete woman.”

That’s my biggest issue, right there. The infertility storyline was met with cries of “but she could be a great example of a woman who doesn’t need children to be complete!” “She doesn’t need kids, why should she want them?” “Oh my God Joss Whedon, how dare Natasha call herself a monster for her infertility, that is misogyny!” And what pisses me off the most about this is that Natasha is not allowed to be a woman who wants kids. She’s not allowed to be happy with the life she has, but feel that there’s something missing. She’s not allowed to be both a badass and have maternal instinct. That’s just not allowed, despite insistences from the same people who protest her storyline that it’s horrible to ask Jennifer Garner if she has trouble balancing work and family. Natasha is not allowed to want a family in addition to a career. No, because Natasha is the sole female lead of the Avengers, she is not allowed the weaknesses of Tony Stark and company, because she must be a role model. She must be perfect, or she is a liability.

And the worst part is, she’s not the only one. Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger gets the same treatment. When I first read the books, Hermione’s imperfections endeared me to her all the more, because it let me believe that even amazing, intelligent women are allowed to make mistakes. In the books, Hermione’s obsession with logic and single-minded pursuit of justice are treated as the pitfalls they are - character qualities that are both a help and a hindrance. She insists on freeing house-elves because she can’t bear the thought of their “enslavement,” never mind that house-elves literally live to look after humans and have no desire to be free. She loses her temper. She can’t hold back the truth (“you have a saving-people thing, Harry”) even at the least-opportune moments. But for all of that she is strong and smart and brave, and she is a wonderful, balanced character.

Not so in the movies. In the movies, Hermione’s physical awkwardness is replaced by Emma Watson’s impeccable beauty. I remember seeing a photograph of Chamber of Secrets-era Emma Watson months before the movie came out: her bushy hair had been tamed to Pantene Pro-V commercial-worthy curls. I cried, because book Hermione had frizzy hair like mine and I had so loved seeing an on-screen girl with imperfect hair. And her makeover was just the tip of the iceberg. She was wise beyond her years. She left the house-elves alone. She came up with ideas that book-Hermione never would’ve thought of - flight-shy Hermione, thinking of jumping on a dragon’s back to escape a collapsing bank? Non-magically-raised Hermione, remembering to use her wand when a murderous plant attacked? Not in the books. But in the movies, she was perfect, to the point where people railed against her for - how dare she? - falling in love with a man who they believed to be beneath her. Which, come on. Of course he was. No one in the movies was good enough for movie-verse Hermione. But because she’s on-screen now, and part of an industry that tragically under-represents realistic women, she has to be Perfect Strong Girl Character, devoid of flaws and shaped into a Perfect Role Model For Young Women.

I could go on and on. Katniss Everdeen, a young, scrawny, wonderfully-flawed character in The Hunger Games, was made over into a self-sacrificing, angelic (but oh-so-tough!) beauty queen for the movies. Elle Woods, in Legally Blonde, is not only gorgeous and quick-thinking, but has an impeccable memory and buckets of self-confidence. Doctor Who’s Rose Tyler? Beautiful, resourceful, witty, athletic, smart, alluring - literally every male character she meets falls in love with her, for God’s sake. Disney’s Mulan? She’s beautiful, athletic, cunning, clever, and just the right amount of awkward to be endearing. Right from the beginning of the movie we’re shown, very clearly, that she is perfect; it’s her environment that’s the problem. Rory Gilmore? Pretty, academically inclined, popular with the boys (see: Rose Tyler), able to win over less-perfect girls like Paris. Notice a theme here? Even if their worlds are imperfect (Mulan, Katniss, Elle) the girls are shining paragons. Feminine but still tough; physically attractive but still smart. They have to be perfect - they’re role models!

So when a thing like Gone Girl comes along, and we’re finally given a complex character who is interesting as all hell - who does some really terrible things, but does them because she believes she’s doing the right thing - who is beautiful and funny and incredibly intelligent, but also happens to be a freaking psychopath - damn right that’s going to resonate with all of us imperfect girls. I think this is also why I loved the women of Tim Burton’s films so much: he understood that no one is perfect, not even token Strong Female Characters. Because at the end of the day, there is not just one archetype out there that every woman can embody. We are not all Supergirls. And that is what I desperately wish Hollywood would realize, and start giving us the heroines that we deserve: not actual heroines, but girls just like us.

Let's Talk About Girls in Film

I never planned on being a filmmaker.

When I was little, the world was my stage. My parents took me to see every musical, ballet, concert, and child-friendly play that came through town. I wanted to be Judy Garland. I wanted to be Cathy Rigby. I wanted to be in Cats. I took ballet lessons, sang in a choir, played piano, figure-skated, went through drama workshops and performing arts camps. I made home videos of myself and called it the Avery TV Show, made videos with my Playmobil characters and used different voices for the characters, wrote my own scripts on the computer (using MS paint because I didn't know MS word was a thing) and recorded my performances. I'd go through old clothes, do photo shoots, choreograph my own figure-skating routines. Everything I did was a chance to perform. Every day was a new act of a show.

Around the time I started middle school, I began to seriously study performances by professional actors and actresses. My parents introduced me to Johnny Depp, who was at the time one of their favorites, and eventually decided I was old enough, at twelve, to see my first horror movie: Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Initially I was watching for the performances. It was the first time I'd seen Christina Ricci and I immediately decided I loved her. But as the film progressed I began to notice other things. The smoky atmosphere of the town. The twisted, otherworldly trees. The color palette, all grays and whites and blacks with the occasional pop of bright blood-red. The cast as a whole and the way they interacted with each other, the greats like Michael Gambon and Richard Griffiths playing off the relative newbies like Ricci. I noticed the costumes. The effects. I wondered how they made the horseman look headless. I wondered how they'd decided on having Johnny Depp play Ichabod Crane instead of someone like Tom Cruise.

I wondered who was responsible for the whole thing, because whoever they were, I wanted to be that person.

That was the spark. That was the moment that I realized I didn't want to be the actor. I didn't want to be the person who came in after the story was already written. I wanted to write the story. I didn't want to just be in the show, I wanted to create the show.

I started reading everything I could get my hands on about Tim Burton. I searched his name on the internet. I demanded to see his other movies. My favorite was Edward Scissorhands, for reasons that I could not, at the time, fully articulate. I looked at colleges--yes, when I was twelve--and decided I had to go to Columbia College in Chicago for their film program. Throughout all of this no one told me that prominent female directors were hard to come by, that filmmaking was a male-dominated field. No one told me that I would be outnumbered by men on just about every film set I would ever work on. Even after I read Girl Director, a book I recommend for all amateur female filmmakers, I still wasn't fully aware of the feminist aspect of my chosen career, and even after I got the "girl director talk" from another girl at Interlochen, I still didn't really care.

And even now, when I'm aware of all of the little things, the obstacles I'll face, the wage gaps and internalized misogyny and slut-shaming and institutional sexism, you know what? I still don't give a damn.

Because here's the thing. What's between my legs--or, for the more politically correct of you out there, the way I choose to express my gender identity--in the end, that doesn't matter. I once wrote a rant on my high-school blog about how unfair it was that women-oriented film festivals would not take my film because, while it was written, directed, and edited by a woman, it featured a male protagonist. At the time I thought that was the most ridiculous thing. Now, well, I honestly don't care. That film wasn't the best work I've ever done anyway, and really, the reason I got into filmmaking wasn't because I wanted national acclaim. I got into it because I saw a movie that spoke to me emotionally, and I became drawn into the idea of someday touching someone else the same way.

It's very unfeminist, the way I got into filmmaking. I should have fallen in love with the work of Kathryn Bigelow, Amy Heckerling, Nora Ephron, Sophia Coppola--all women whose work I love now, but who I didn't know much about when I first entered the world of filmmaking. I should have found my identity in a movie about women, made by a woman. Should have, but didn't.

For what it's worth, it was the girls in Tim Burton's movies that I loved above all. Catwoman's courage in Batman Returns, Kim and Peg's tenderness in Edward Scissorhands, Lydia's unfailing individuality in Beetle Juice, Sally's quiet rebellion in Nightmare Before Christmas, Katrina's unwavering loyalty in Sleepy Hollow,  I saw something of myself in each of these women, something that I didn't see in movies aimed at girls my age. But it wasn't just the characters. It was the beauty of the films themselves. The innocent pastel houses contrasted with Edward's dark, lonely mansion. The monochromatic colors punctuated with the bright red blood of the Horseman's victims. The dark landscape of Gotham City. The contrast between bright, candy-colored Christmastown and the corpse-inhabited gothic landscape of Halloweentown. It was this intoxicating combination that drew me in, and it wasn't until years later that someone pointed out, "You know, your idol for filmmaking really should be a female director, haven't you ever heard of Sophia Coppola?" that I realized people actually believed things like that.

Years ago I was on the set of a student film, directed by a female classmate who was generally liked and considered popular among the rest of the student filmmakers. Said young lady had chosen mostly male classmates to crew for her film. I happened to have worked with that particular group of students before and, while they are all fine young men and exceptionally talented filmmakers, they all had the tendency to get "in the zone" while working and ignore the opinions and input of others. Moreover, three of these guys were close friends who frequently worked together inside and outside of class and had an intimate rapport with one another that few could break into with any degree of ease. So it came as no surprise to me that they essentially drew together and shut out the rest of the crew--a common mistake that friends can make when working together.

Having worked with these guys before, I knew that protesting and saying, "hey, listen, LISTEN!" wouldn't do much good. But this girl, the director of the film? She didn't know that. She complained, loudly, about being left out. She grew increasingly frustrated. I felt her pain, but kept my mouth shut. She didn't want my advice; I was there as a stand-in, not as a mentor. But that didn't stop her from turning around at one point and hissing in my ear, "I forgot how hard it is to be a girl in this department."

Wait, what?

Let me back up here and explain that the very same year this young lady complained to me, the highest award the filmmaking department had to offer was snagged by a girl whom everyone agreed was an exceptionally gifted cinematographer. I feel like I should also add here that while I had many problems in high school, my gender was not one of them. I felt left out by my peers, but the fact that I was a girl had nothing to do with that. At Interlochen, girl filmmakers were not shunted to the side, or confined to gender-stereotyped roles like makeup artists or costume designers. We were directors, editors, and screenwriters. Up until that moment, when that girl whispered in my ear that it was so hard to be a female filmmaker, I hadn't even realized there was any kind of issue linked between gender and my "role" in our department.

I bought into this idea of femininity as a detriment for a few months in college. I too complained that being a girl was just too hard. I blamed my inability to get into a film festival on the fact that I was a girl who made a movie about a boy, and complained endlessly about the unfairness of it all. I told my friends I was going to be a trailblazer. I wrote an awful screenplay, dripping with misandry, about how awful it was to be a female artist in a male-driven world, only thinly veiling that the story was about myself by changing the lead character from a filmmaker to a photographer. It was stupid. It was petty.

It was a mistake I vowed to never make again.

I'm aware that feminism is important. I'm aware that there is a wage gap, I'm aware that there are so many female directors who deserve acclaim and so few who get it. But I'm also aware of the fact that my all-time favorite director--yes, he happens to be a man--has also not gotten a well-deserved Oscar, and the day he gets it I'll be just as happy as I was when Kathryn Bigelow broke ground by becoming the first woman to win Best Director. I'm aware that Hollywood treats women in particular like dirt. I'm aware that it will take a lot to change that. I'm sick of hearing the same-old, same-old about the women in the celebrity inner circle. "Kristen Stewart is a talentless slut with a bad attitude." "Taylor Swift is boy-crazy and stuck-up." "Lady Gaga has a screw loose." "Miley should be ashamed of herself for getting naked." "Katy Perry needs to grow up." I'm sick of that. I'm sick of hearing how stupid we are, how naive we are, how we need men to take care of us.

But I'm also sick of politicizing something I love. And maybe for some women it has to be that way--maybe the way they cope with media insanity is by writing movies like Thelma and Louise, or buying into the ideal of "strong female characters" who don't need no men--but for me, this is the truth: the more I make being a girl into a big deal, the bigger deal it becomes. The more I let being a girl in a male-dominated field get to me, the more power I give others to use it against me. I'm not going to hand anyone an excuse to hurt me. They already have enough of those; I don't need to give them any more.

In a few months I'll graduate with a degree in Cinema Studies. Someday I plan to get my master's in screenwriting. Ultimately, I want to write for TV, and someday I hope to create my own TV show. I want to cross between film and TV, and to anyone who says I can't, well, I guess it's up to me to prove you wrong. I don't know what I'll do immediately after I graduate. I really don't. I know where I want to be and I know I'll do what I have to do to get there.

But I will never ever feel sorry for myself because of who I am, or let someone tell me "You can't do that because you're a girl."

And to anyone who actually believes that? The time machine is over there, buddy. Go back to the 1900s.

(But, hey. Just so you know? There were female filmmakers back then too.)