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The Terror of an All-Female Film Crew
I recently worked on a film where nearly all the department heads were women and let me tell you, I barely knew how to function without all those men around. I nearly forgot to always be on guard to deflect unwanted compliments. The act of tramping down my emotions when a male coworker tries to pass off one of my ideas as his own, has nearly been eradicated as one of my special skills. What the hell am I going to list on my resume now? That I’m great at problem-solving and being part of a team? Gross!
The act of showing up each morning and just being able to do my job was jarring. For instance, I discovered that I don’t actually like coffee. For the last ten years, when I would grab a cup of coffee in the afternoon, I would fetch it in an attempt to get out of an uncomfortable conversation with a man complaining about how much of his money his wife was spending while he was working. On this show, I found myself mindlessly grabbing coffee at 3:30 PM, taking a sip, and thinking, “This is totally burned.” Interestingly enough, I also discovered that craft service people don’t know what to do with all the afternoon avoidance coffee that is no longer needed.
There’s a not-so-quiet harrumphing going around Hollywood that hiring more female crew members, or seeking out people of color, or anyone who isn’t a middle-aged white man, is reverse discrimination to which I say, let me show you pictures of my cats. You would not believe how many hilarious things they do. Sharing photos of cats at 2:00 AM, while shooting in Atwater Village, is the salve I need to get through a long shoot. Bonding over how absurd cats are, and not having to witness a male grip demonstrate how far his balls can hang out of his cargo shorts, is true, unadulterated freedom.
Our fearless writer/director (and I mean that — she wore designer clothes to a dive bar location that offered $5 beer/shot combos that I’ve consumed, then un-consumed, on the floor of said dive bar), never once raised her voice in anger, offered solutions to production issues by rewriting things, and, something I never thought I’d witness — addressed people by their names.
What I’m saying is she’s ruining everything. How am I supposed to go to the next job where male assistant directors only refer to me by my job title? Now that I’ve heard my name…
