If you haven't yet seen "La La Land," PLEASE go and catch it, if anything, for Emma Stone's career-peak performance. The film is a knockout, but she carries it with the raw, amicable talent of a true movie star. She will, most probably, win the Best Actress Oscar and you won't hear any complaints on my end about it (although, if this were a fair and just world, Isabelle Huppert would win it hands down for "Elle," but Oscar voters don't usually warm up to a film that has, oh the horror, subtitles.
In a new cover story/interview with Rolling Stone, Stone reveals some of the more upsetting behavior she's encountered as a woman on a movie set.
If the rumors that actresses get paid considerably less than their male co-stars is accurate, and I do believe it is, I think it's okay to be pissed when you're providing extra value that your male co-star isn't or isn't capable of.
"There are times in the past, making a movie, when I've been told that I'm hindering the process by bringing up an opinion or an idea," she said. "I hesitate to make it about being a woman, but there have been times when I've improvised, they've laughed at my joke and then given it to my male co-star. Given my joke away."
"Or it's been me saying, 'I really don't think this line is gonna work,' and being told, 'Just say it, just say it, if it doesn't work we'll cut it out,'" she continued. "And they didn't cut it out, and it really didn't work!"
On a lighter note, I do like this paragraph from the RS interview:
"Drinking helps. "Do you want sake?" she asks. We get a bottle and Stone pours me a glass, per Japanese custom. I return the favor, mentioning that I once discussed this bit of etiquette with a chef in Tokyo, who likened filling one's own sake glass to public masturbation.
"Masturbation? I've only heard it's bad luck!" Stone says, laughing. When I finish my glass a few courses later, I space-out and absentmindedly refill it myself. She gasps: "You just jerked-off on the table."
I apologize and pour her some more. "Go ahead, please," she says. "Jerk me off, too."
Read Rolling Stone's full interview with Stone here.
