We were all women of a certain age, and everyone took a cut in salary to do it so the studio could make what it needed. We all took a smaller back end than usual and a much smaller front end. And we ended up doing incredibly well. The movie was hugely successful. It made a lot of money. We were on the cover of Time magazine. But two years later, when the studio came back with a sequel, they wanted to offer us exactly the same deal. We went back to ground zero. Had three men come in there, they would have upped their salaries without even thinking about it. But the fear of women’s movies is embedded in the culture.”
— Goldie Hawn, who hasn’t starred in a film since 2002, speaking with Harvard Business Review on how the entertainment industry has changed since her hey day
Pistolo
Honestly, though I’m all about empowered women, I thought this movie sucked. It wasn’t really feminist, it was about angry shrews getting revenge on exes through illegal means. Those kinds of movies pull this woman-scorned bull that’s more destructive to feminism than it is representative.
Cam
@Pistolo:
That isn’t the issue though, the issue is, the movie made a fortune, and they tried to not pay them.
Even more recently, the SONY hacked e-mails revealed that Charlize Theron was being paid something like 10 million less than her male co-stars for a movie where she had the bigger name and a larger part.
Same with gay movies, Brokeback Mountain made more money worldwide than Scream, Scream got multiple sequels and multiple copycats, name a gay fiction movie that was made by a major studio and pushed since Brokeback?
Ladbrook
None of this should be a surprise. Hollywood producers and studio heads have a long history of discrimination against women, African Americans, and the LGBT community with respect to pay and work opportunities… which they attempt to hide with lots of gooey enlightened rhetoric about equality and by periodically producing films that highlight all the “hate” found in flyover country.
Those hacked Sony emails only served as an illustration of what everyone already knew.
MarionPaige
It is so hard to feel any sympathy for people in the entertainment industry because, for the most part, THEY ARE USING OTHER PEOPLE’s MONEY. When you have a Speilberg and a George Lucas complaining TODAY that they now have to use some of their own money to get certain movies made you realize “how deeply embedded using other people’s money is in the entertainment industry”. It is still considered a joke that Rosie O’Donnell used her own money to finance the show Taboo.
Hawn is complaining about being again offered a deal that made her money and in which she shared some of the risk. What she clearly wanted, and what she is really complaining about, is that she wanted other people to put up all the money the second time around and for other people to take all the risks.
MarionPaige
Woody Allen, for the most part, is the symbol of what you have to do and be in order to get away with making little movies that don’t bring in a whole lot of money. Clearly, the majority of Hollywood has decided that The Big Franchise Movie can be so profitable when it is a hit that it is worth the risks to continue rolling the dice for that mega franchise. And, given the global market for entertainment, AND THE FACT THAT MOST STUDIO MOVIES ARE SOLD BEFORE THEY ARE MADE, it is really hard for any studio produced money to actually lose money.
Cam
@MarionPaige: said “Hawn is complaining about being again offered a deal that made her money and in which she shared some of the risk. What she clearly wanted, and what she is really complaining about, is that she wanted other people to put up all the money the second time around and for other people to take all the risks.”
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This is a ridiculous comment. It wasn’t Hawn’s movie, it was somebody else’s and they were just paid actresses. The issue is, they were paid less, the movie made a fortune, and then the studio tried to, in comparison to similar deals for actors, Rip them off.
I get that you and your other screenames automatically take the side against anything either gay or female, but it can’t work for you in this circumstance. Give it up.
ingyaom
This story is so gay (not).
What would the sequel have been called, anyway, “First Wives Club’s Second Movie”?
Xzamilio
Attagirl, Goldie… stand by your principles. Give your son Oliver my number.
vive
It’s just as well. I can’t think of any sequel in history that didn’t suck and retroactively ruin what would have been a good thing if they had just stopped.
robirob
It’s unfortunate that all we do is complain and so far no real alternative to Hollywood has manifested itsel which gives women and the LGBT community the respect they deserve.
Imagine all the stuff that could be accomplished if we all became part of the solution instead of being part of the problem by consuming Hollywood’s latest releases and complain about them ad nauseam.
jason smeds
I don’t like women’s movies because they are so narcissistic. It’s all about “how do I look, what is my hair like, am I sexy?” …blah, blah, blah. I can understand why people would be turned off by this.
When you look at men’s movies, they are so much more about achievement. This is why men are the great inventors.
Michael
@vive: Maybe you’re really young. Aliens, The Godfather Part II, Infernal Affairs II, The Naked Gun 2 1/2, 28 Weeks Later, Scream 2, Spiderman II, The Bourne Supremacy, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Batman Returns, Evil Dead II, Toy Story III…..
OzJosh
And let the record show – as the recent Sony hacks have – that the “studio” screwing these women was frequently headed by a woman. Amy Pascal in the case of Sony. Before her Sherry Lansing, Dawn Steel, et al. At various times over the past 20+ years more than half the studios have been run by women. Under their reign movies have become more male-dominated than ever, and women’s roles have pretty much disappeared. It’s not about male power, as is so often implied. It’s about idiots in charge.
demented
@Michael: Blade II, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Prisoner of Azkaban, The Dark Knight…
@OzJosh: Just cuz a woman is a misogynist doesn’t mean that misogyny doesn’t exist.
Franklin
Count me among one of the few of the confused folks when people accuse Hollywood of being liberal. That industry has long been known to be extremely conservative. How many actors continue to remain closeted out of fear of not being able to land leading man roles? Denzel Washington made a mint for the studio when the move “The Equalizer” came out, yet it’s still considered a risk to use African-American actors/actresses in leading roles (except maybe comedies) I’m with Robirob, lets stop supporting these movies and shut the system down till Hollywood decides to start acting right.
smittoons
@OzJosh: Absolutely true. Sherry Lansing was completely in charge of Paramount when “The First Wives Club” was made and when its sequel never got past the negotiation stage. Quite upsetting.
smittoons
@MarionPaige: You obviously don’t grasp the way movies are made. There are movie studios precisely because film is a collaborative enterprise that employs many skilled people, not just actors. This makes it by far the most expensive artistic medium and industry anyone could get into as a whole, and yes, if people want to be involved in a film project that does mean… they get paid by a company looking for a return on its investment. This is of course a totally foreign concept in the world of business so I understand your not being able to wrap your head around it.
It must also be impossible to understand that Goldie Hawn is bemoaning how she and her middle-aged female co-stars took a collective pay cut to get this project made in an industry completely dominated by men on and off-screen, and skewed towards women under 40 on top of that. “The First Wives Club” made $181 million worldwide in 1996. That’s more than Paramount’s own “Star Trek: First Contact” did the same year. That’s what “Mission: Impossible” grossed in all of North America. This movie defied conventional wisdom and did boffo box office at a fraction of the cost of similar-grossing male-driven blockbusters, and yet the studio refused to pay these stars their usual fees for a no-brainer sequel after they’d proven their appeal. Paramount was very tight-fisted in the ’90s, but it was also run by an immensely powerful woman, Sherry Lansing. Goldie Hawn’s criticisms are completely valid and a prime example, however elitist, of gender and age discrimination at its very height.
Cam
@jason smeds: said….”I don’t like women’s movies because they are so narcissistic. It’s all about “how do I look, what is my hair like, am I sexy?” …blah, blah, blah. I can understand why people would be turned off by this.
When you look at men’s movies, they are so much more about achievement. This is why men are the great inventors.
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What a shock, Jason turns an article about how a studio tried to rip off some actresses into an excuse to attack women. Did somebody’s mommy not let him get a candy bar at the checkout line?