Should Actresses Have To Strip?
Posted on September 12, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Karen Valby has an excellent essay in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly about stripping scenes in recent movies, like Jennifer Aniston in “We’re the Millers” and Gwyneth Paltrow seducing her new boyfriend in “Thank You for Sharing.” Both, of course, are featured in the movie’s advertising and trailers. Valby asks, “Are actresses losing more than their clothes?”
The real foolishness in all of this, though, is the critics’ suggestion that the person who should feel shame is not the “We’re the Millers” screenwriter but the woman hired to perform what’s on the page. Let me be clear: If a woman in your script is a stripper, then the problem is you — specifically, your laziness and your limp imagination. You want to give your female character an edge, make her vulnerable and hungry for redemption? You haven’t nailed it by making her a stripper. All you’ve done is prove that you (or your producer) are likely a venal horndog who wants a T&A moment for the trailer.
It is particularly disappointing because this has been such a poor year for women’s roles in studio films. It’s really good to see people like Valby speaking out.
, released today, is the story of Corman, the self-proclaimed king of the B movie. No one would consider his films works of art, but he gave hungry and ambitious actors and directors their first opportunities to make movies. As told by Corman himself and graduates of “The Corman Film School,” including Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese, this comprehensive oral history takes readers behind the scenes of more than six decades of American cinema, as now-legendary directors and actors candidly unspool recollections of working with Corman, continually one-upping one another with tales of the years before their big breaks.
. And watch his movies, including 
, 
. Plus, this classic: