A Satirical Follow Up To A Screenwriter’s Guide to Female Characters

Dear Fellow Producers,

In our post Harvey Weinstein, #MeToo, #TimesUp world, women are starting to speak up about the harassment and abuse they face, apparently on a semi-regular basis. They say they’ve been talking about it for a while, but everyone knows something isn’t real until it is acknowledged by a man and given a catchy hashtag.

It looks like this thing is not coming to an end any time soon, so now it’s time to move forward, similar to how we did before, but with minor changes so SJWs won’t be angry at us.

As a well-established Hollywood producer, I have had the opportunity to greenlight many projects. My main criteria for choosing what to greenlight are basically these:

1. Will it make money?
   1. With this, consider: what is the ethnicity of the main characters? Gender breakdown? Sexual orientation? How many stereotypes will not be broken in this film? Does it have Dwayne Johnson in it?
2. Is it as low risk as possible?
3. Does it fit my specific worldview and bubble, while also having the ability to be marketed as “exciting” and “progressive” based on the extremely low standards we have?

Going back to #1a, consider the new dilemma with this whole female empowerment thing. Women now want to be in movies, and not only do they want to be in movies, they want to be a part of movies, in a big way. Big is very hard to define. They want “complex roles” and “equal pay” and to “not be assaulted on set.” Those are clearly not clear expectations.

So I have discovered a solution, and it is this: don’t have women in your movie.

But wait! You may say. I have a woman in my life. I have a woman- wife, a woman-daughter, a woman-mother. I may even have a woman-friend. Last time I checked, women make up, like, at least 30% of the population.

I understand that, dear associates. But think about it this way. If that said woman-person saw your movie, and wasn’t pleased with how women were portrayed in it, then they’ll nag you about it. Wouldn’t it just be better to make a movie without women? That way, nothing bad could possibly happen, and everyone wins.

Suggestions for what movies to make so you don’t have to include women in them:

1. Historical dramas. We here in Hollywood have never been shy about ignoring, white-washing, warping, and outright lying about history. It’s not like women have done much in history anyways. So just make movies that take place in a vague, historical period. If you do want female characters, they can be wives, maids, waitresses, nameless peasants, or whatever, because that’s all women were in most of history. Obviously everyone will understand and accept that. It’s tragic, but true.
2. Superhero movies. Women are just not inherently heroic. Have you ever seen a mother protecting her child or defending her thoughts?  No? I thought not. Also- they don’t have an inward thirst for justice. The normal superhero story, of going from a marginalized, unheard, tread-upon person to an empowered figure is only a male story. How is #MeToo going to object to that?
3. Political dramas. There are no women in politics, and if there are, they lose the electoral college after winning the popular vote.
4. Horror. Either you have no women, or you kill them off in the first few scenes. Then, to keep people from critiquing it, you have a character say in a super meta-way, “oh man, the black guy and the girl always get killed first!” That way, no one will be mad because you are so totally hilarious and making a political point.

I call these movies with primarily or exclusively male casts ‘malevies.’ They represent an important tradition in Hollywood that is our duty to carry on.

Another important thing to consider is that if there are no women in your movie, there isn’t any possibility for pay disparity! Win-win!

As men who were birthed by women, we are all very clearly concerned about the finer points of this feminist movement. We are doing our best to listen to these women, or at least, listen to other men, who in turn heard a news report that reported what another news report said what a woman said, and make the necessary changes.

But it also must be acknowledged that this is a scary time for us. Because of all of these accusations, it is clear we cannot even say “hello” to a woman without her claiming it as assault. We can’t lock the door to our hotel room with the underage intern assistant inside anymore. We can’t even work without our pants off anymore. When will this craziness end? Who knows, but we must move forward.

Throughout all of this, we also have a responsibility as businessmen to keep the status quo strictly as it is. So remember, you can’t be sexist if you don’t acknowledge that women exist in the first place.

Go forth, and make great malevies!