Institute History
Description
Novelist and filmmaker Bruce Wagner concocts a deliciously satiric romp packed with great performances and plenty of insider hooks and jabs. With its absence of male characters, Women in Film is reminiscent of the classic 1939 George Cukor film The Women, but skewed for the new millennium. Using a clever video diary format, Wagner takes you into the lives and minds of three women, desperate for a seat at the filmmaking table.
Their three stories overlap cinematically and thematically. Phyllis (Beverly D'Angelo), a sharp-tongued, onetime successful producer who is not without appreciation of a good pharmaceutical, hawks her troubled film project. . It has been suggested she keep a journal, " a Linda Obst-but-indie-thing," a running commentary on woman's struggle to survive. Sara \(Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a casting director spurred on by the birth of her blind baby boy while suffering the strains of a failing marriage. Her story, told through letters to her child and personal letters to her friend Holly Hunter, reveals her desperate need to get back into the thick of things. And then there is Gina (Portia de Rossi), on-edge Gina, actress and professional masseuse who "steals" energy from her celebrity clients. She is obsessed with the delusion that Darren Starr stole her ideas for his hit TV show and is determined to draw him "into my web" for retribution.
Hollywood is no place for women unless you have obsession, power, and luck. The three characters in Women in Film have the obsession, want the power, and just need a little luck. But for them, luck is hard to come by.