'Ghostbusters' Director Paul Feig: What I Learned About Being a Woman This Year (Guest Column)

>When the director announced his reboot of the iconic '80s movie with an all-female cast, he unlocked something scarier than a supernatural horde — angry men on the internet: "The film was never meant to be political, but it became just that."

>What did I learn about being a woman in 2016? While I would never dare pretend to know exactly what women go through on a daily basis, as an advocate for women onscreen and in the industry, I definitely learned a lot more than I expected. Mainly, "Wow, the will of women is much stronger than even I thought."

>Over the past few years, I've loved making movies with female leads. The fact that people came to see these films, often multiple times, showed me just how much we still need good, three-dimensional roles for women — not to mention female leads in franchises. And so I thought a Ghostbusters with female leads would be embraced and celebrated, especially given we already had two male Ghostbusters films. I love funny women and thought it would be an interesting take on the long-dormant franchise.

>And I was thrilled that the initial response to the announcement was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. The day I put out the first tweet two years ago saying I was rebooting Ghostbusters with hilarious women, people were ecstatic. They couldn't wait. Everybody was trying to figure out whom I would cast in the roles.

Other urls found in this thread:

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youtube.com/watch?v=eKWilviFU-A
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

>But then the second wave of reactions came in the next day — after the news hit the more guy-centric fan sites — and it was one of pure outrage and ugliness. Simply put, it was like a punch in the gut. I never expected so much blatant hostility.

>Look, many people said they were upset we were touching a classic, and I totally understood and respected that. Rebooting a beloved film is always risky. But the truth is, there were a lot of men critical of the mere fact it would have women in the leads.

>The original starred four funny men — Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis — and it was great. But at the end of the day, what gave the film its power was it was a movie about four funny, smart people who fought the paranormal using technology. That's just a great idea. It's not a male idea. My goal in doing this new Ghostbusters was to assemble the funniest people working today, just as original director Ivan Reitman had done. And I did, recruiting the hilarious and talented team of Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig.

>But what excited me so much was that the overwhelmingly male disapproval that the press then began reporting endlessly on became something that many women rallied against. Every day, as the negativity poured into my feed, so did a much larger outpouring of support and excitement from women around the globe. And honestly, it was not just women. The outreach from both women and men was overwhelming and constant and far outnumbered the trolls and haters. As I would share photos and news from the set, enthusiastic responses flowed in not only from people in the U.S. but also women and men everywhere from Asia to the U.K.

>Sadly, the media kept reporting only on the negativity and insisted on referring to us solely as the "all-female Ghostbusters." I mean, it's 2016. Are we really that shocked that four women can star in a movie? Did it have to drive all our coverage? It points out that gender can still divide folks not just in politics but in entertainment — and boy, do we need to fix that. This film never was meant to be political. But, ridiculously, it became just that.

>However, in the aftermath, the positivity has only grown. I am daily inundated by tweets and correspondence from women and girls (as well as men and boys) who have been inspired by our Ghostbusters, who made the costumes for Halloween and for all the Comic-Cons worldwide and who have told me, "If I'd had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now."

>That's when you know, OK, we're moving forward, and there are people who needed this. And we reached them and we succeeded.

>Those of us in entertainment can't let ourselves be stopped by disapproval, false outrage and resistance from a vocal micro-minority. My team and I created an inspiring group of heroes for women, and that's a big deal. Our Ghostbusters are now owned by the millions of people around the world who have claimed them as their own.

>And that is a victory that no troll can take away.

hollywoodreporter.com/news/ghostbusters-director-paul-feig-what-i-learned-being-a-woman-year-guest-column-952465

And he still failed miserably at making a good film, get fucked feig. Stop pretending to be a woman cause you aren't and never will be.

>I mean, it's 2016.

>It's a pandering cuck episode

not even gonna bother, just wanted to come in and call him a cück

>literally the current year

...

>he thinks cuck is filtered still

WEW.

>Sadly, the media kept reporting only on the negativity and insisted on referring to us solely as the "all-female Ghostbusters."
Yeah, because Paul Feeg certainly didn't make matters worse by posting idiotic tweets or anything. It's the media's fault, you see.

>I mean, it's 2016.

>>If I'd had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now.

Who thinks like this?
Are these genuine thoughts people have?

Even my sisters and her GFs had no interest in it.

You can't even blame men on it failing. Women can easily make a film a hit by themselves. See: Twilight, Hunger Games, 50 Shades of Grey, etc.

>he tried

>But at the end of the day, what gave the film its power was it was a movie about four funny, smart people who fought the paranormal using technology. That's just a great idea

What a piece of shit. If he really believes this he's a fucking imbecile. Ghostbusters was not great because of the idea of it. On paper the script itself seems pretty fucking stupid. The actors made Ghostbusters a classic. That stupid statement alone tells you everything you need to know about Feig and why he rebooted Ghostbusters. He's admitting that he thought the idea was a good cash grab and the name and premise of the Ghostbusters alone would sell tickets. That's EXACTLY why fans don't like reboots.

>What I Learned About Being a Woman This Year

You were always a woman, you fucking faggot.

My friend is literally a transsexual lesbian and she walked out after 30 minutes and demanded her money back.

>she

>what gave the film its power was it was a movie about four funny, smart people who fought the paranormal using technology
What a gross misunderstanding.
The setting and plot was awful. The movie was carried by the 4 most charismatic funnymen of the period. Full stop.
The movie would be been shit with literally any other actors.
He didn't get together the funniest, most charismatic 4 people of our time. He just got together 4 people.

My sister saw it. She said it was god awful. She actually left. She was watching it and some Paki had brought her 3 year old in and the kid was screaming and crying. Sister turned around and said "can you keep her quiet please?" and the Paki didn't say shit. Went quiet for a bit then a 'scary' scene happened and started again. Sister went out to complain. As she was complaining some white girl with hipster glasses came in and said my sister was being RACIST and had VERBALLY ABUSED the poor defenceless Paki my sister didn't even know was a Paki.

So my sister just left.

tl;dr

>"If I'd had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now."

Had I seen Die Hard when I was a kid (i did, obviously, but go with this) I would have become a cop who saves a multinational Japanese company from a German terrorist played by a British guy.

MOVIE
MAGIC

Shan't be reading a single word

This shit must be pretty insulting to actual engineers and scientists.
I'd be insulted if someone said that they would have become an accountant if The Accountant was released when they were a kid. It totally trivializes the work people put into things.

i'll tl;dr for you

>It's the media's fault for focusing on the negative. Film was good. Women are funny. Get over it.

I think it means that they would have been inspired to be [fill in the blank]. Still a ridiculous thing so say. Being a scientist or an engineer isn't easy.

>I WANT TO BECOME A SCIENTIST TO FIGHT GHOSTS
>BECOME SCIENTISTS
>OKAY WHERE CAN I KICK GHOSTS ASS?
>What? Well, nobody has proven ghosts actually exist and paranormal shit is a not a great field to want to get into
>YEAH BUT I SAW GHOSTBUSTERS (2016)! LET ME FIGHT GHOSTS
>Yeah.. no. I want you to run this experiment 10,000 times.
>O-okay.. Well let me just have some Pringles
>You can't eat any food in here, what the fuck you doing? Jesus fucking Christ, gonna have to report you to the University.
>T-THANKS FIEG!

The film was never meant to he political? Calling bullshit on that one, since the main villain was just an angry ghostbusters fan.

>it's 2016

Does anybody have a screencap of that pro-Hillary tweet from the official movie account?

>>O-okay.. Well let me just have some Pringles

THEY DIDN'T EVEN GET PAID FOR THIS SHIT. HAHAHAHAHA.

if it was 4 unfunny men instead of 4 unfunny women no one would care

> My goal in doing this new Ghostbusters was to assemble the funniest people working today, just as original director Ivan Reitman had done.

He's just straight up lying. No fucking way could you actually think that out of every comedian out there, regardless of gender, that these 4 are the best. To say that the overarching gimmick wasn't just "Ghostbusters but girls" is a bullshit lie. He's making excuses for his garbage failed movie.

>"The film was never meant to be political, but it became just that."

The fuck is this garbage, that was the whole fucking premise of the movie to begin with, we know this through the Sony leaks.

Anything less than the original cast would have provoked outrage.

Somebody should tweet that to him.

But 25% of the original cast is dead.

Nah, you could have had a different case, even female ghostbusters.

What made this fail was it was a forced meme reboot movie that was completely unfunny or dramatic.

>$229,147,509

boxofficemojo com/movies/?id=ghostbusters2016.htm

He's right, you know that?

...

When the guys who have the idea write it and star in it, they're what made it good
you can't take an unfunny guy and throw in 4 randoms and hope they can make your non-jokes land, and just pandering to women with 'girl power!' won't make the movie good

I'll be the first to admit I don't think Winston had a place, but that's because he doesn't have any good lines. If he was written in place of Bill Murray's character and Bill Murray joined later (Venkman?) then he would be the one with the useless role

>The film was never meant to be political
Is this why the entire marketing revolved around
>If you don't want to see Ghostbusters, you're a sexist white male

Devin Faraci has been discredited. Please remove him from this infographic.

>And one more thing: Ghostbusters III. Is it really gonna happen? Should it happen? Well, if they made The Santa Clause III, Free Willy III, Home Alone III, Psycho III, The Neverending Story III, Problem Child III, and about 10,000 Scary Movie and American Pie sequels, all the crap that gets shat out of Hollywood's big fat fucking ass, I don't see why Ghostbusters III shouldn't get made. I grew up with those movies. I would love to see those guys put on the proton packs one more time. Even if the whole movie's just the Ghostbusters sitting around taking a shit, I'd go see it.

What will they say when it's no longer 2016?

The new Ghostbusters didn't fail because it starred women.
It failed because the women cast in the movie are terrible actors and even worse comedians.
And the script was total ass.
And the marketing completely revolved around everybody not wanting to see the movie being a sexist bigot.
Had anybody else but Paul Feig been at the helm, it probably wouldn't have sucked so bad.

They don't think about that because in their minds Trump's Death Squads will have killed every single woman, gay, lesbian, transsexual, black, chink and beaner by March 2017.

I wish.

>My goal in doing this new Ghostbusters was to assemble the funniest people working today

This is where he fucked up

I watched this piece of shit and it was just 90 minutes of bad SNL skits.
It was like they got all four women on screen, gave them a basic premise, and said "Ok, now be funny!"
It seemed barely scripted.

Compare that to the original. It was highly controlled by Aykroyd and Ramis.
It wasn't just people thrown on screen and told "Riff off each other!"

>make shitty movie
>let nepotism hires market your movie as feminist drivel
>nobody wants to see it
>word of mouth is that it isn't a good movie so don't bother
He probably would have been more successful if he didn't pay his ((lawyer's))) nephew to market it.

This is why I don't trust that Bill Murray is funny, he's just given funny scripts.

>she
>transsexual
>lesbian
>her

Bill Murray's skill is charisma.
Whether that's the same as being funny or not, it depends.
But he can sell the fuck out of a character

People like to blame others for their own failures and shortcomings.

>a victory

>lost 75 million dollars
>severely devalued and tarnished an extremely expensive franchise
>ruined the careers of the main actresses and himself

Is it possible it failed because it was an unfunny shit movie full of Adam Sandler level jokes? Also, hardcore fans hated that it was a hard reboot erasing the previous films

>"If I'd had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now."

>Is it possible it failed because it was an unfunny shit movie full of Adam Sandler level jokes?
No, it must be the patriarchy combined with evil manbabies who don't know what they like. The same patriarchy that let this abortion be performed at all

>>ruined the careers of the main actresses and himself

No. It was a shitty movie, but it didn't ruin his career, Wiig or McCarthy, who was the only ones with an actual career outside of SNL and internet sketch comedy.

I am legitimately fucking stunned how these people are absolutely unable to learn. Instead they double down, and don't for a single fucking microsecond even entertain the barest thought that their views were not 100% correct. It's astounding honestly.

I'll admit, Leslie does look good in pink

>While I would never dare pretend to know exactly what women go through on a daily basis

That's how chicks work, man.
>i thought it? then how could it POSSIBLY be wrong?
they don't understand critical thinking, verifying ideas, anything. if they think it, that's the end of it.

Is this posted on reddit yet?
I want to watch them say how brave he is

Paul Feig did nothing wrong
Not even the original cast and people could make a good sequel to the original one

From which episode is pathetic... Somebody tell me


inb4 >pathetic for not knowing the episode

Ghostbusters 2 wasn't that bad.
Now that we have a "third" one, we can even say it was pretty good

Don't degrade yourself like that. II was not a good movie, this thing is fucking awful.

I preferred II and I didn't see either of them until 2015, and I watched them the same day.
It wasn't bad, but things in II were just better, especially the minor characters

>dat pic
were did the time ago?

I would call that sort of person a comedic actor, rather than a comedian

I'm pretty sure the shot is from Bart the Genius but i don't think he actually says 'pathetic'

He's not wrong except for
1. The media was annoyingly for the movie and ignored most of the criticism
2. As he admits, a majority of the naysayers weren't complaining about the gender, yet he continued to belittle fans and the naysayers throughout the marketing campaign to the point where they were using it as a marketing tool.

Other than that he's right. The movie was shit but nothing he says he's wrong. Also checked.

Thanks for the reply,I appreciate it.

"It's 2017"

>chum bucket
>free
>krabby patty
>plankton
>giving
>with

This. "Funniest people working today" and you come up with Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and 2 Literally Whos from current SNL? You're either lying or you don't understand comedy, which is why you failed, not because dude misogyny lmao

>which is why you failed, not because dude misogyny lmao

I think "dude misogyny" was part of its failure, too.

Both things contributed to its demise.

>"If I'd had this movie when I was younger, I would have been an engineer or a scientist now.

Hahaha, holy shit.

>it says to do it shitlord
>and I wrote it
>so it must be right!
youtube.com/watch?v=eKWilviFU-A

Da fuck is this from?

>Sadly, the media insisted on referring to us solely as the "all-female Ghostbusters."
Pic very related, his initial announcement tweet

>Sadly, the media kept referring to us solely as the "all-female Ghostbusters."

I wonder why that was...

Oh.

>Sadly, the media kept reporting only on the negativity and insisted on referring to us solely as the "all-female Ghostbusters."

The Sony email leaks said that the only reason you were interested in doing Ghostbusters was if you could do it with women. Fuck right off.

I miss the badges

Paul.

Your film looked shit in the trailer.

The film IS shit, that's why, and would be no better no matter who the cast was.

>rebooting Ghostbusters with hilarious women
>hilarious women

repeating this doesn't make it true

>mfw he starts talking about the current year

*Raises paw*

He's not wrong, you know.

What people are forgetting is that the original was also complete and utter dogshit. If you like any ghostbusters movie, blow your fucking brains out - you're subhuman trash.

>Market your shitty movie as a political statement against a group of people
>Be surprised when said group of people react
wew lad

i'm still waiting for my lightsabre and x wing

faggot trips desu. you should be permabanned

People too deep into leftist ideology that believe you can social engineer babies into anything you want.

Women and their orbiters. I hate them so, so, so fucking much.