The Father of the Bride, The Parent Trap, Something’s Gotta Give, Father of the Bride Part II, What Women Want, The Holiday, It’s Complicated.

These are some of my absolute favourite movies, ones I return to again and again. I watch ‘The Holiday’ every Christmas, I’ve actually seen ‘The Parent Trap’ over 100 times (I used to count when I was little – what a nerrrrd) and have fallen back in love with ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ thanks to Netflix.

The common factor in all of these masterpieces is, of course, the wonderful director and writer Nancy Meyers.

This woman is so incredible at what she does. I recently stumbled across her interview with Joanna Goddard of Cup of Jo which concreted my affections for her. Give it a read, I promise you’ll love her too!

Nancy on the left, Jo on the right.

I love how she is trying to fight stereotypes and change the way woman are viewed on the big screen. As she says in the interview “Hollywood has trained audiences to think, the woman boss is a bitch. We had to undo that wherever we could.” The stereotypical character of the female boss is Miranda from ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. They are often horrible, power hungry, robots with no husband or children. Or worse, the woman has a family and career but instead of juggling them both, the storyline often paints her as struggling and over-emotional.

Enter Nancy.

The character of Amanda in ‘The Holiday’ is the owner of her own movie trailer company. In ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, Diane Keaton’s portrays the hugely successful broadway writer Erica (she has her own Hamptons house for goodness sake!). Do you even want to talk about Liz designing wedding gowns for Greek princesses in ‘The Parent Trap’? Annie Banks puts her put down and fights for her right to a huge career opportunity in ‘Father of the Bride Part II’ – while being 9 months pregnant, I might add.

I love watching these female characters and the way their storylines are written. The focus isn’t on how they became successful, they just are. Easy as that. Nancy has created fantastic role models and given them beautiful relationships as an addition to their lives – not as the sole purpose for their existence.

Round of applause.

She currently has a new movie (the focus of Jo’s interview) that just hit theatres, which I CAN’T wait to see:

Anne Hathaway as the boss and Robert De Niro as the intern. So much yes.

Hooray for women! Happy Friday all…

Hanbel.
x

P.s. if you haven’t seen any of these movies, watch them! Now! Invite me over!