The Quagmire of the Female Character with Lindsay Doran

Once upon a time there were movies about men who saved the world and women who stood on the sideline and shouted, "Way to go!" And there were romantic dramas and romantic comedies about women who cared about love and almost nothing else. And there were animated movies about princesses who waited around until a man came along to kiss them.

Then one day everyone woke up and decided it wasn't a good idea for our female characters to be so passive, so the women turned into action stars and the animated princesses turned into warrior princesses or sometimes just warriors. Whatever the men were doing in a movie, the women had to do it too, only better. Love stories and romantic comedies were deemed a thing of the past that sent the wrong message
(i.e., that love matters more than anything else).

But – What if women really like love stories? And what if girls really like princesses? Is that so wrong? And what if love really does matter more than anything else? Is it OK for our female characters to cry once in a while? Is it OK for them to wear sexy outfits? Should a female character's dialogue be indistinguishable from a male character's dialogue? And is it a better message if the female characters are just as good at fighting and killing as the guys? What if the message we're sending is that women won't be satisfied until half the school shooters in America are female?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but I think the important thing is to start asking the questions...

PANELIST BIO:
Lindsay Doran has worked in the movie business for more than 30 years as a studio executive and producer. She has served as the President of United Artists Pictures and as the President of Sydney Pollack's Mirage Productions. She currently divides her time between her producing duties and her work as The Script Whisperer® – story consultation on high priority projects including the Oscar-winning SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE. Lindsay's first film credit was Executive in Charge of Production on the mock-documentary THIS IS SPINAL TAP. Her producing credits include DEAD AGAIN, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, NANNY McPHEE, and STRANGER THAN FICTION. She is an Oscar nominee and the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Picture and the British Academy Award for Best Film, both for SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. Lindsay is also known for her talk The Psychology of Storytelling that investigates a correlation between the principles of Positive Psychology and the elements of popular films

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This program is sponsored by 202Creates, Interface Media Group, Maryland Film Office, OCTFME, and Virginia Film Office.

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