With her new film, "Disobedience," Rachel Weisz found something she had been seeking but couldn't find: a story with two female leads; former comedian and TV host Byron Allen has quietly built a company with interests in both film and television.
Rachel Weisz is finding new roles for herself. First up, a lesbian. Next, a man
Rachel Weisz is on the lookout for roles she hasn't played before, and so far she's having a fair amount of success. After years of playing opposite a male love interest, in her new film, "Disobedience," she plays a lesbian. In an upcoming movie, she'll play a man (sort of).
Weisz was searching for stories she wanted to tell when she came across the novel, “Disobedience," written by Naomi Alderman. It's a lesbian love story set in an Orthodox Jewish suburb of London. Weisz optioned the book for a film adaptation and serves as a producer on the film.
"I was expressly looking for a film that would have two female leads," Weisz told The Frame's John Horn. Weisz says she was interested in making a film with "women front and center, and really exploring their subjectivity, their complexities, their appetites and their longings."
The story begins as Weisz’s character, Ronit, who’s been living in New York for years, hears of the death of her father, a respected rabbi, and returns home. Weisz stars opposite Rachel McAdams in the film. Their characters reconnect first as friends and then embark upon a forbidden romance.
Interview highlights:
On what inspired her to tell this story:
I was looking for material. I had been asked by people, What story would you like to tell? And I'd been asked that for many years. I never really knew the answer. So I just started reading and thinking and was really interested in the idea of a woman being in a relationship with another woman. It could've been a story about friendship, which this is. It's the story about friendship since childhood which then developed into a sexual love affair. I feel like I've told a lot of stories where I'm in relation to a man and a man is in relation to me. It seemed like an expression of freedom somehow to have two women relating to one another.
On her upcoming role as the surgeon Dr. James Miranda Barry:
As a woman [in the mid-1800s], you could not only not become a surgeon but you couldn't go to medical school. You couldn't even go to university. So she disguised herself as a boy, became educated in Scotland, became a surgeon, became the chief medical officer in Capetown when it was a British colony. And she lived her whole life as a doctor and a very fine surgeon. There was some scandal between herself and Lord Somerset, who was the governor there. It was called the "sodomy scandal" because everyone assumed that they were two men together. And she – he — was very colorful, a dandy. That was the fashion at the time, always challenging people to duels and didn't really lie low and quietly.
On her affinity for characters who don't play by the rules:
I suppose I like stories where certain things aren't possible. And people are transgressive. So in the case of Dr. Barry, she was transgressive by becoming a man and a doctor. In the case of this story – it's disobedience! It's all about disobedience. They're all disobedient characters. And I think disobedience can be a very beautiful, healthy, extremely necessary thing. And certainly in storytelling. Bring it on.
On the lack of opportunities for female directors and why it matters:
I always get kind of overwhelmed with a sense of the absurd talking about women in film — which is really a serious issue and something I have to do — because I always feel like, well, we're not some weird outlying endangered species. We're just half the planet! We're half the human race. It's so odd. But we do have to have the conversation. I've seen thousands of films from a male point-of-view, written by a male and directed by men, that I cherish and will take with me to the grave. I do think women have a really different point-of-view and tell stories differently. And I just am keen and hungry to see more of them.
"Disobedience" opens in theaters on April 27.
Byron Allen wants to build bridges between theaters and studios
Not that long ago, comedian and TV host Byron Allen was watching a lot of movies as part of Hollywood’s press junket gravy train. Today, Allen is evaluating movies a little more critically. In the past year, Allen launched Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, a new studio that is trying to change the relationship between movie distributors and theater owners.
Allen’s film company is an outgrowth of his television unit, which owns niche cable channels such as Pets TV and, through a recent deal, The Weather Channel. While his movie company hasn’t yet produced any films, it has acquired and distributed several independent titles, including last year’s surprise killer shark hit, “47 Meters Down.”
For the first time, Allen publicly unveiled his company’s ambitions at this week’s CinemaCon, the annual convention in Las Vegas for movie theater owners. And while most studios were showcasing the latest "Star Wars," "Jurassic World" and "Mission: Impossible" sequels, Allen was trying to sell not so much new movies as a new business model.
Essentially, Allen wants to give theater owners a bigger cut of ticket sales in return for their investing in his studio. That way, when a film leaves a theater and becomes available on streaming services and on cable TV, the theater owners would get a cut of that money, too. And Allen is also committed to keeping his movies in theaters longer, what people in the biz call a “window,” so that audiences don’t just wait for a new release to come to Netflix.
The Frame's John Horn caught up with Allen in Las Vegas.
Interview Highlights:
On how he's trying to harness change in the movie business:
The business is changing rapidly. You have to be more involved, in my humble opinion, with content. That is the fuel of your business. You have to make sure that you protect that content flow to your theaters. For the first time in 100 years, the interests may not be aligned. The studios are very clear that they're having serious conversations about shortening the windows and going direct to the consumer, or just straight to the streaming services. That's competition and that's fair, but we can't act like that's not happening. There's no reason for theaters not to come together and pool their resources, invest in the acquisition and promotion of movies. You don't have to make them. You have to actually look at them and say, I like that movie and I think it will work in my theaters.
On convincing exhibitors to embrace new business models:
We're happy to put up half the money. And if the movie theaters are putting up the other half, then I'm happy with that. We're invested. You have us as partners to make sure we vet and curate the better movies. It's a partnership to make sure you're protected and that [the screening] window is protected. First, the studios whisper about shortening the window. They just kind of put it out there. And the next thing you know, what they're thinking, they start doing. And what you want to do is make sure you don't have four suppliers who all play golf together in Burbank who say, Look we're supplying all the movies to you. And now that settlement, that's now 85-15 in our favor and you guys try and make it all just selling popcorn.
Those numbers don't work. But that's okay! They're in the power position. They have the relationship with the moviegoers. And they should not let anybody come in between them and that relationship. You need to make sure that those movies are coming in a nice flow like water coming out of a faucet. Start creating those independents. Start creating those producers who aren't going through the studio system, so that you're not depending on four people playing golf in Burbank.
On partnering with theaters so that movie exhibitors become capital for directors:
I'm doing something very similar with TV stations. I finance the shows, I put it on their TV stations. They keep half the barter and I keep half the barter. They get half the ads. They pay me a license fee sometimes. There is a strong partnership that's just automatic with TV stations. This relationship between content and movie theaters became paired with the government stepping in with anti-trust. At one point the Fox theaters belonged to 20th Century Fox, the Paramount theaters belonged to Paramount. And the government said, No, you guys have to separate this. But it's different from those days 100 years ago. Now we need to come together and say, Okay, we need to invest in a pool to make sure that we are acquiring good movies. The studios aren't going to bring you "Chappaquiddick," but that should be in theaters. They're not going to bring you "47 Meters Down." We got these movies because the studios didn't want them.