Help Jen Howell and Susan Smith Make Their Sitcom Pilot!

Susan and Jen

As anyone who’s read this blog probably knows, I’m always interested in learning about and examining the roles women play in the entertainment world, whether it be the way female characters are portrayed onscreen or the success of female filmmakers. It’s also no secret that I’m invested in the role screenwriters play in the entertainment industry. And while this blog is mostly focused on film, I’m also very in love with television. That love has grown since I graduated college and embarked on a very serious relationship with my TV — we’re considering marriage. I’m especially interested in television comedy, and I’m always excited to hear about new spins on the classic sitcom format.

Given these well-established interests of mine, it’s no surprise that I got excited when I learned of Jen Howell and Susan Smith‘s sitcom pilot. Their back story and the description of their show piqued my interest, which is why I’m delighted to tell you about their project on this blog and encourage you to support their campaign.

Jen Howell and Susan Smith recently graduated from Loyola Marymount University’s Masters in Screenwriting program. While there, the women realized they were the only two female members of the program out of twelve, and thus a personal and professional relationship soon formed.

In February, they plan to shoot a television pilot titled Be the Church. The pilot, written and to be directed by Howell, is described as part workplace comedy and part dysfunctional family comedy, similar to shows like The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The spin? It’s set in a church and provides what the women call a “fishtank” view of faith, highlighting both its pros and cons. But just because the show focuses on religion doesn’t mean it’s tame. The show’s tagline alone — “This is some holy shit” — proves that the subject matter won’t alienate fans of secular comedy.

Howell and Smith prove that opposites really do attract and can work together in harmony. Howell is a pastor. Smith, the pilot’s creative producer, is a religious skeptic. One hails from the East coast, the other from California. Their working relationship is evidence that when creative people put their heads together, they can push towards success.

Howell and Smith have relied heavily on social media to get the word out about their project. Howell posts updates about the project on her blog and Twitter account. Last July, the pair started a Twitter project to coincide with Howell’s birthday. The campaign sought to encourage a famous actress to read the pilot. The hundreds of tweets that went out in support of the endeavor were incredible. While the actress could not participate in the project due to a contract with another series, the experience was an eye-opening one, emphasizing the far-reaching power of social media.

Howell and Smith have now extended their social media presence to include an IndieGoGo campaign. They need to raise a little over $15,000 by January 20th, and they’re looking to friends, family, and kind strangers to help them reach their goal. There are even rewards — like the opportunity to be an extra or get your name in the credits — for contributing. The duo is in the process of putting together a reliable cast and crew, and they’d value your help. Even if you can’t afford to donate money, Howell and Smith encourage and appreciate help in various forms, as outlined on their campaign page.

The impact social media has had on their project has led the pair to consider online distribution for their show. It’s certainly a growing industry. Various series, like the comeback season of the beloved sitcom Arrested Development (a show Howell is inspired by), are being distributed on online streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu.

Howell and Smith are great examples of the active roles women can play in film and television production, and hopefully their experience will encourage other young women to make their creative dreams come true.

Check out the links below to find out more and to donate. Here’s to one day seeing Be the Church on our television — or computer — screens!

Jen and Susan’s IndieGoGo Page

Jen’s Blog

Jen’s Twitter

Fashionable Feminism in the Screwball Comedy: Who Wears the Pants?

The following is my entry in the Film Classics Annual Writing Contest.

In the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, everything is upside-down and backwards — most notably the gender roles. While mistaken identities, slapstick shenanigans and witty banter push and pull the madcap couple together and apart, their behavior often defies sexual stereotypes of the period. The man inevitably becomes emasculated and is ordered around by an independent, pushy woman who either doesn’t like him or likes him too much for him to handle.

The gender-bending doesn’t stop at the characters’ personalities and conduct, however. It also reveals itself in their many — usually ridiculous — outfits. Cross-dressing, whether overt or understated, is a major aspect of the classic screwball comedy. It provokes laughter, moves the plot forward, and develops character. Such sartorial choices were often controversial. Katharine Hepburn’s breezy trousers and Cary Grant’s frilly robes caused a fashion revolution and sexual confusion. While many modern viewers think of bombshells like Marilyn Monroe as the major threats to the Production Code, the screwball stars caused an early stir. As Andrew Sarris says, this type of film was “a sex comedy without the sex.”

In screwball comedies, women wear the pants, both literally and metaphorically. In Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) moves around her apartment in a pair of polka-dot pants. She dons trousers and flat shoes to partake in a slapstick adventure in her aunt’s backyard. In The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940), Tracy Lord (Hepburn again) prepares for her upcoming nuptials in comfortable slacks and riding pants which show off her long, slim legs. In My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940), Ellen (Irene Dunne) arrives home after years on a desert island wearing men’s clothes. Screwball women reject ladylike frocks in favor of comfortable clothing.

The masculine aesthetic which these women so much enjoy does much to emphasize their characters’ independence and strong wills, but these traits are emphasized further when they begin wearing the heroes’ clothing, and vice versa. In screwball comedies, cross-dressing is often accidental, impulsive or last-resort, but it always says something important about the characters’ hierarchy. In Bringing Up Baby, Susan steals David Huxley’s (Cary Grant) clothes to keep him from leaving, and on her way out the door, she dons his hat. This act draws attention to her more powerful — traditionally masculine — position in their relationship. It is also interesting to note that Susan also destroys many objects of David’s clothing throughout the film. She causes him to slip and fall on his top hat early in the film, and soon after that she tears his jacket. Later she burns his sock while trying to dry off over a fire, and then her antics cause his glasses to break. Susan ruins David’s emblems of masculinity — his male clothing — or takes them for herself. Susan also experiences destruction to her clothing, including when she loses the heel on one shoe and laughs at the fact that now she has uneven feet, singing, “I was born on the side of a hill.” Susan’s joy at flattening her shoe, and the alternating heights at which she stands because of it, point to her complicated gender role.

Similarly, in It Happened One Night (Frank Capra, 1934), Ellie (Claudette Colbert) accepts Peter’s (Clark Gable) pajamas, complete with pants and a button-front shirt, to sleep in. She does this out of desperation, since she’s lost her luggage, but it points to a larger power struggle between the two, as he shows her the ropes and she continuously berates him.

The cross-dressing isn’t limited to women wearing men’s items. Screwball heroes are sometimes forced to wear women’s clothing. The most famous man to do this was Cary Grant. After Susan steals David’s clothes in Bringing Up Baby, his only option is to throw on a woman’s ruffled robe, an item which stands in stark and fascinating contrast with Susan’s seemingly unisex monogrammed robe. David’s cross-dressing becomes even more controversial when he tells Susan’s aunt that he’s wearing it because he “just went gay all of a sudden.” It’s considered the earliest cinematic use of the word “gay” to mean homosexual. Grant gets girly again in My Favorite Wife, when his new bride presents him with a leopard-print robe to match hers. Its sleeves are too short, and its pattern is feminine. The characters’ donning of such effeminate pieces points to their increased emasculation and helplessness at the hands of the heroines.

To answer the historically relevant and thematically significant question of who wears the pants in the screwball relationship, one need look no further than the characters’ literal clothes. Often the important question becomes, “Who wears the frilly robe?” Odds are it’s not the woman.

The Disney Renaissance: Tarzan

1999 marked the end of the 1990s, so it was appropriate that it also featured the final film of the Disney Renaissance, Tarzan. The studio took the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs story of a man raised by apes and turned it into a sweeping, heartbreaking animated film reminiscent of The Lion King.

My favorite part of Tarzan is the music. The film’s original songs were written and performed by Phil Collins. I can’t hear “You’ll Be in My Heart” without crying, and the various other songs beg to be dramatically lip-synched to. In private, of course. The interesting thing about Tarzan is that its songs are for the most part not performed by the characters. They set the tone for the scenes in which they’re featured, by the movie is not a musical in the sense of the other Disney Renaissance films. Still, Tarzan is undeniably a strong addition to the Renaissance, with its powerful themes, gorgeous animation and an emphasis on music, even if it’s not worked into the plot like in the other films of the period.

After Tarzan, Disney could not return to its 1990s success. Films like Treasure Planet, Brother Bear and Home on the Range failed to live up to their predecessors of the past decade. Even The Princess and the Frog (2009), a rare theatrical 2D animated feature, could not recapture the magic of the Disney Renaissance. Although all the pieces were in place, like reimagining a classic fairy tale in a new setting and working music into the plot, the film lacked that something special which the Disney Renaissance films possessed. The Disney/Pixar collaborations come closest to capturing the 1990s feeling, but even they can’t compare, because of their computer animation and lack of memorable songs.

Maybe it’s time to stop pining for a reawakening of the Disney Renaissance style and to be content with the films the period provided for us. It’s satisfying to pop in an old VHS tape or catch one of the films playing on television. We’ll keep singing along to the soundtracks, and future generations will continue to dress like characters on Halloween and quote the same lines we loved as children. The Disney Renaissance hasn’t died just because no more films are being made in its style. It’s still living because the people who first loved it are still watching the films and passing them on to their children. And that’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

The Disney Renaissance: Mulan

If you’re in your late teens to early twenties, odds are you often find yourself singing, “Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.”  That’s the opening line in one of the most well-known songs from Disney’s 1998 animated feature Mulan.

The title heroine of Mulan probably has the most girl power of any of the Disney princesses.  She plays a young Chinese woman who disguises herself as a man and fights in the army in order to save her sick father from going to war.  After a difficult start pretending to be a man, she ends up becoming a hero for her country.

This film provided a refreshing departure from the typical Disney princess formula of dreaming of a fairy tale marriage and a knight in shining armor.  Mulan finds love in the process of fighting for her country, but marriage is not her top priority, as evidenced by the opening scenes in which she struggles to make a good impression with a matchmaker.  In this way, Mulan is very similar to the newest Disney heroine, Merida, in Brave.

Mulan continues the Disney Renaissance tradition of blending powerful drama with humor.  The film deals with emotional, political themes of family, nationality, and feminism, but comic relief is provided around every corner, mostly from the miniature dragon Mushu (voiced by Eddie Murphy).

The Disney Renaissance: Hercules

Hercules (1997) is my favorite film of the Disney Renaissance.  It’s my favorite for a variety of reasons.  Its songs are my favorite overall of any of the Disney Renaissance songs, its female character is the spunkiest of all the Disney Renaissance girls, and it has the most entertaining villain.  Plus, I like Greek mythology and I enjoy how Disney interpreted the stories for a modern audience.

The music for Hercules was composed by Alan Menken with lyrics by David Zippel.  The decision to give the film’s music a gospel style, best exemplified by the narrative songs performed by the Muses, who act as a Greek chorus for the plot, is brilliant in my opinion.  It plays on the spiritual nature of the Greek myths while giving the film a fun, modern edge.  The film’s famous song “Go the Distance” is gorgeous and uplifting.  Meg’s feisty, jaded song “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)” is impossible to get out of your head.  The songs in Hercules have the most repeat value for me.

The film’s major female character is Megara, a sarcastic and cynical young woman voiced by Susan Egan.  Meg’s wisecracks and flirtations with Hercules make her vastly different from the quiet, blushing princesses of Disney films past.  She’s got a tough exterior but a vulnerability inside, something a lot of women can no doubt relate to.  Plus she has great hair.

Another character who makes Hercules great is the villain, Hades.  Disney villains usually have a sliver of a sense of humor (except for the evil Judge Frollo), but the voice of James Woods brings a new comedy to this film’s villain.  I hate to say it, but I really like Hades.  I still root for Hercules to defeat him, but I enjoy watching the bitter king of the underworld crack jokes and get angry.  Who wouldn’t laugh at his desperate questioning, “Is my hair out?” when the blue flame atop his head is extinguished?

Hercules has a very distinctive visual style.  The Greek key design is incorporated into various aspects of the animation, from the architecture to the clothing to the shape of Hercules’ elbows and knees.  It’s this amusing attention to detail which makes me love the film so much.