Movie was a personal mission for Diane English
Diane English is familiar with the personal and professional struggles and triumphs of career women — especially those in professions dominated by men. It was, after all, a predominate theme in the Buffalo native’s Emmy Awardwinning television show “Murphy Brown,” as well as a topic she broached in other work.
Still, you would hope that a woman — no, make that anyone— with her credentials (three Emmys, a Golden Globe, three Writers Guild Awards and a Peabody, among others) would not be hampered by matters of gender.
But that hasn’t been the case for English on her latest project, “The Women,” a feature film with an all-star cast including Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith that took more than a decade to bring to the screen. It opens nationally on Friday.
The movie — written, produced and directed by English — is a modern retelling of a 1936 play by Clare Booth Luce that became a well-regarded 1939 film by George
Cukor about the effect a cheating husband has on a circle of high society friends.
The story sounds benign enough, but it has one very interesting characteristic: the cast is all female. There’s not a man to be seen or heard: not in a photo, not in the back-
ground, not even a voice coming from the other end of a telephone.
That idea of an all-female cast is exactly what appealed to English when she read a 1994 article in Variety that tipped her off to a remake of the Cukor movie, a film that showcased a standout cast of actresses at the time: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine and Paulette Goddard. (The film will air as part of “Ladies’ Night” at 8 p. m. Sept. 15 on Turner Classic Movies.)
“I’d always really liked the old film because of the all-female cast,” English said, calling from her vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard. “That was appealing to me. I realized that no one had done that since 1939 and I felt the movie was ripe for a remake since women had come so far from the 1930s. I had my agent chase the project.”
English was hired on as a writer, and, as time went on, became the producer and later the director of the film. But casting and budget issues stalled the project through the years, as did a changing of the guard at New Line Cinema.
What English unfortunately learned was that not many people in the male-dominated Hollywood industry were willing to take a chance on a movie starring only women.
“Hollywood really caters to the demographic of men under 25,” English says. “They have demonstrated over and over again that they go to movies opening weekends and that they go multiple times; that women will go see things that men want to see, but men won’t go see things that women want to see.”
So despite the star power that has accompanied “The Women” since its inception (it was originally conceived as a vehicle for Julia Roberts), many balked at the idea.
“There was a lot of division within the company [New Line Cinema] on whether this was a movie the company wanted to make,” English recalls, adding that her continued frustration eventually led her to buying the film rights. “My husband and I wrote out a very large check. At that point, we decided to try and set the movie up as an independent film.”
Enter Victoria Pearman, a producer who had formed the production company Jagged Films with rock star Mick Jagger.
“She is very, very adept at raising money for independent films,” English says about Pearman. “We spent five years chasing down every last dollar and when we finally got to the $16 million mark we started putting the film in the camera.
“We were hoping to make the movie for over $20 million, but we just could not erase what our financiers thought was the risk factor. Once we got down to the $16 million mark, then we were off and running because at that point they felt that the risk was manageable.”
The final budget was, by Hollywood standards, an appallingly low $16.5 million. To put that into perspective, that’s about the salary Reese Witherspoon makes per film and it’s less than one-third the $65 million budget for the “Sex and the City” movie.
So how could a movie with such an all-star cast get made for such a low sum?
“Everybody deferred their fees or a good portion of their fees,” English says. “It was a labor of love. Everybody who was on board realized it was an important statement to make to Hollywood — that an all-female cast, which was such a fun idea in the 1930s, became a liability in the 21st century. We all felt very strongly that we needed to change that attitude — and this has certainly been the summer to do it.”
English is talking about the success of two of the summer’s female-centric movies: “Sex and the City,” which has grossed more than $152 million in domestic box office, and “Mamma Mia!”, which has earned $132 million in box office receipts, making them two of the most successful movies of the year.
Though it may be logical to assume that the popularity of “Sex and the City” as a television series would prove to the industry that projects featuring women can draw large audiences, English says that wasn’t the case.
“No, not at all. It was actually not even a thought in anybody’s head when I started to write this,” English says about the HBO series. “Then the series came on and we all fell in love with it. But it didn’t help. The fact that ‘First Wives Club’ was a big hit and ‘9 to 5’ and ‘Steel Magnolias’ and ‘The Hours’ … I had a laundry list of movies that featured primarily females and were hugely successful, but no studio saw the pattern — they would say it was a fluke. You would have to start from scratch.”
And she did. Repeatedly.
“The more times people told me to walk away, that it couldn’t be done and it was a fool’s journey, the more committed I became to it. That’s the nature of my personality,” she laughs. “Also, it just felt like an important statement to make that women will go to the movies if we see something that is meaningful to us, if we can see ourselves on the screen, rather than being just the stock characters — the long-suffering wife and the hot girlfriend.
“It became a personal mission. I did a lot of other things in those 13 years, but never a day went by that I didn’t do something to try and make ‘The Women’ happen.”
English describes the original film as a “poison pen letter to high society women who were idle gossips.” That catty nature is one thing missing from her script.
“I feel that coming into the 21st century, women’s attitudes toward each other have to change and have changed. My version of this movie isn’t a poison pen letter, but a valentine and more of a celebration of women and the power of female friendship,” she says.
If women’s attitudes have changed, then, is there a chance for changes in Hollywood, as well? English says yes, if female moviegoers stand up and be counted.
“If women are tired of complaining that there is nothing for them to see at the movies, then go to the box office and open your wallet.”
