The Problem With The Movie ‘She Said’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really liked the #MeToo books She Said and Catch And Kill. They were insightful and interesting. But I find myself watching the movie adaptation of the former book and it comes across as a humorless Very Serious Film.

I’m just starting it, but I can see what it didn’t do very well in the box office, especially given how divided America is. The movie doesn’t seem to have much heart. It takes its subject matter So Seriously that it can come across as sort of plodding.

But I’ve just started. Maybe it will get better.

Of #MeToo & The Allegorical #Thriller I’m Developing & #Writing



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


Let me begin by saying I’m an idiot and don’t listen to me. I don’t know anything about anything. Go read something else. Having said that, I will note that it’s interesting there is something of a #MeToo subgenre that exists. Now, the issue is, the female rage that produced that subgenre is all very valid and I validate it.

In fact, only because I’m an asshole that I’ve decided, as a man, to embrace the #MeToo movement in as empathetic a manner as possible as a plot point in the thriller I’m writing. Of course, given what this novel is meant to be — a very diffused expression of my rage against the surreal excesses of the Trump Era –my hand is pretty much forced. I feel I have to address things like #MeToo and BLM for no other reason than, well, they’re crucial to understanding the historic clusterfuck we’re living through.

The only issue is, well, ME. I’m a middle aged white male member of the patriarchy and hence need to be slayed. But, like I said, I just don’t see how I can do what I want to do without wallowing in things like #MeToo and BLM. In that respect, I feel like I’m looking to Phoebe Waller-Bridge for inspiration. She doesn’t back down. She has her truth and she’s going to tell it, damn the consquences.

Anyway, that’s where I am right now. I’ve come up with a unique way to talk about #MeToo as an existential part of the novel I’m developing. But, like I said, I’m an asshole. Or, as the late Annie Shapiro would say, “a delusional jerk with a good heart.”

Slay The Patriarchy! Of #MeToo, Olivia Wilde, Booksmart, Jessica Chastain & The #Novel I’m Developing & Writing



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


You know, I try. I try to be as empathetic as possible to a wide range of people. But, alas, I *AM* a middle-aged white male. As such, I know that even though I’m going way, way, WAY out of my way to use the #MeToo movement as a major element in the novel I’m developing and writing, it’s probably a lost cause.

While I’m a big fan of both Olivia Wilde and Jessica Chastain and am trying to develop female characters they won’t hate, I know that in reality, all their complaining about how bad male writers are when constructing female characters isn’t completely in good faith. What they’re really saying is THEY want to write female characters. Men can suck it.

For instant — Ms. Wilde’s movie Booksmart. I was shamed into seeing it by Twitter liberals and absolutely fucking hated it with a white hot rage — and still do. I freely admit I was definitely NOT the audience and, as such, there are plenty of people (mostly bicurious teen girls in southern California) who probably see it as their generation’s fucking Citizen Kane. The reason why it evoked such hatred from me is Ms. Wilde seemed so determined to browbeat me, personally, as a member of the patriarchy that she was willing to alienate me out of the theatre. (Which she did.)

Some of my anger comes from how deep I continue to be in developing my novel. I really want to prove a point to both Ms. Wilde and Ms. Chastain that with a lot of work a man, can, in fact, not only write a novel with the strong female characters they demand, but also tell a great story that, like, entertains people without being preachy?

I have thought up a very interesting plot point in my novel that deals with the #MeToo movement in a very empathetic and compelling fashion. I guess I’m just a little annoyed that Twitter liberals will — should the occasion arise — not even give me a chance to prove that point because I’m a man. (And before you tell me to get my head out of my ass, let me say I AM a delusional jerk with a good heart. I have very strong opinions and some of them don’t fit the media narrative. Deal with it.)

But I really like what I’ve come up with. It’s going to require stepping outside my comfort zone by reading a number of books, but, in the end, I’m going to be very proud with the end product.

Too bad my gender won’t let anyone else agree.