Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” has been garnering critical acclaim ever since its first press screening in late November. I mean, what else would you call a 91 on Metacritic and a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Hell, it’s even the seventh-most mentioned film in critics ten best lists, making it poised to be a big hit and a major awards contender. With all this acclaim, you would think this major studio film is bound to reap the awards, but that hasn’t really happened. The Golden Globes gave Gerwig’s film a pathetic two nominations (Best Actress, Best Score) and, even worse, SAG gave it a grand total of zero noms. This has led to all sorts of speculation and backlash, to the point where now, in some circles, if you don’t like “Little Women” then you must be a sexist.
Producer and former Sony head honcho Amy Pascal has joined into the fray; in a new interview with Vanity Fair, Pascal is subtly calling sexism when it comes to the awards chatter “Little Women” has received. She’s ascribing to the theory that women love the film, but men just can’t connect to it due to unintentional bias/sexism.
“It’s a completely unconscious bias. I don’t think it’s anything like a malicious rejection,” said the producer. ”I don’t think that [men] came to the screenings in droves, let me put it that way. And I’m not sure when they got their [screener] DVDs that they watched them.”
“I think it’s kind of the same thing [as ‘Queen & Slim’]. It’s a different bias,” Pascal said. “[Voters think], these kinds of stories are important to me, and these kinds of stories are less important to me.”
Ok, here’s my take on it — I really do hate to bring this up, mainly because I don’t think Sony or Gerwig want this cat out of the bag, but, since I have been accused of sexism myself for not liking Gerwig’s film, I have to tell you, the readers, that this theatrical version everybody is raving about was not the one Gerwig wanted in theaters. Hear me out: I have been told, by a few very reliable sources, that there was major studio interference into Gerwig’s original vision of the film and she never got the final cut she wanted. This will likely never slip out into the mainstream due to Sony and Gerwig trying to nab those precious Oscar-nominations, but it does need to be mentioned. The reason “Little Women” is a disjointed mess may lie in post-production tensions between studio and filmmaker which occurred, mostly, in the editing room.
“Little Women” arrives in theaters on December 25.