A groundbreaking event took place
at the Barnard College Athena Film Festival, which celebrates women and
leadership in film, where for the first time in its six-year history, a man
received an award. Paul Feig, director, actor, producer, and screenwriter, was
honored with the inaugural “Athena Leading Man Award” for bringing women into the spotlight in
comedies such as Spy, The Heat, and Bridesmaids.
“This means so much to me, because
I’m so committed to wanting to have portrayals of women on screen that they’ve
been denied for so long,” said Feig at the Feb. 20 awards ceremony and panel
discussion at Columbia’s Barnard College. “It really just came from years of
seeing the funniest women I knew being stuck being the bitchy girlfriend or the
mean wife and all the guys I knew were getting to be hilarious,” he said,
adding that he wanted to get rid of “what a little boy’s image of what a woman
is.”
Feig said he became a director of
comedies featuring women in lead roles believing they had underlying potential
to be incredibly funny but not being able to show it.
“I haven’t seen them portrayed well
and I wasn’t seeing them get the opportunities they should have,” he said.
That’s really been my only goal.”
Feig also recently wrapped up
directing a remake of the 1984 film Ghostbusters
starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. On
Saturday, Feig and Kate McKinnon of Saturday
Night Live fame and Columbia graduate, participated in a panel discussion
moderated by Time Magazine editor
Brenda Luscombe before a packed audience.
Before the discussion began, a
marching band of young students entered with trumpets and drums performing the
theme song from the movie Ghostbusters
followed by enthusiastic cheering and applause from the audience.
Then Kate McKinnon, who majored in
theater at Barnard College, introduced Feig speaking of his many
accomplishments and her experience working with him.
“Paul Feig is one of the
revolutionary artists, we might as well call him ‘Paul Revere Feig’ a joke
written by pro comedian in car on way here. I knew Paul from being a die-hard Bridesmaids fan and then realized that
he directed some of my favorite episodes on TV like The Office or Arrested
Development. Then I had the pleasure of meeting him when he did me the
greatest favor a person could ever do was make someone a Ghostbuster.”
Paul has let women be tough cops,
CIA operatives, lovable but drunk flailing losers…but his most revolutionary
act has not just been about casting women as revolutionary scientists and
badasses, we’ve [kind of seen that before]. His true subversion lies in
creating female protagonists who are striving for the universal goals of
friendship, connectiveness, justice, and personal growth.”
After Spy, Bridesmaids, The Heat, and now Ghostbusters, these are movies that have elements that I knew could
appeal on a movie-going level, there’s action, there’s special effects because
that’s what foreign audiences will go to see. I wanted to figure out how to
make it irresistible so they will go see this,” he said.
McKinnon also credits Feig for
helping to start her career in film. “The magnitude of the opportunity that he
gave both me and Leslie (Jones, her Saturday
Night Live and Ghostbusters
co-star) cannot be quantified using the numbers of this universe. Saturday
Night Live is an incredible job and practice but is hopefully a launching pad
in a career in other venues. It does
come down to opportunity and artists need patrons and need people to champion
for them and Paul certainly did that for me.”
Besides the panel discussion, the
festival also included workshops and screenings of films.
Of the films shown,
one that stood out was A Ballerina’s Tale,
a documentary about Misty Copeland, the first black ballerina to be a principal
dancer at the prestigious American Ballet Theater. Directed by Nelson George and
produced by Leslie Norville, A Ballerina’s Tale tells the story of Misty
Copeland’s earliest beginnings as a dancer taking lessons at age 13 and how
while living in Southern California and discovered her passion and natural
talent for dance. The film follows Copeland who takes the viewer on a tour of
the studios in New York City where she rehearsed starting at age 16, before
being accepted into American Ballet Theater at age 18.
Through interviews with Copeland
and her friends, colleaugues, teachers, and mentors, we learn about the
challenges Copeland would face while breaking into the industry. The most major
issue was her race as black ballerinas were not considered ideal for the role
of a swan or a fairy, which made her feel isolated in an environment where she
felt most at home. She also suffered a shin injury around 2012, which almost
ended her career. But Copeland overcame these struggles and has broken many
barriers and has been cast in many lead roles including the title role in Igor
Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Gulnare in
Le Corsaire, Swanilda in Coppelia, and she was the first black
dancer to play the dual role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake in 2014. She also played the role of Ivy in Leonard
Bernstein’s musical On The Town on
Broadway in the summer of 2015. Perhaps her biggest accomplishment thus far is
highlighted at the end of the film when the screen turns black with the caption
“Misty Copeland became the principal American Ballet Theater dancer June 30,
2015” before displaying the empowering message “Dreams do Come True.” The
closing scene in the film features Copeland walking past P.J. Clarke’s
restaurant in Lincoln Center hugging a male companion who appears very proud of
what she’s achieved.
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