plinytheelder_t at 2013-01-31 03:06:12:

Sean & Scott, thanks for the interview and congratulations to Sean on the Nicholl result. As someone who's had a few false starts on trying to write a Hitwoman movie, even though I think I have some original takes on the genre, I've come to the conclusion that it's technically one of the more difficult genres to write (on top of being notoriously hard to sell). Moreover, unless you have an actress like Angelina Jolie or Gina Carano, it's hard to take this kind of role, written for a man, and just change the gender. There are two main problems: i) Psychologically men & women are different, and while existential loner works great for a male protagonist, it just doesn't for a girl. ii) Physically, there's a huge difference, and in the action scenes that invariably populate such a movie, again what works great for a man, doesn't work nearly as well for a woman, simply because of the believability issue. I wonder how Sean dealt with these issues. The reason I finally shelved these feature scripts is that in order to deal with these specific issues and a desire to avoid any misogyny and make her totally kick-ass, there was a tendency to "fetishize" (for want of a better word) my female anti-heroine protag, in almost a puerile, comic book way. That was particularly true in set pieces and action scenes where I ended up writing some very gimmicky scenes (btw, in my research I discovered a whole set of sub-cultures dedicated to such women.). Consequently, she either became a very one dimensional character or the feature ended up as an extended Nikita episode.

Sean Robert Daniels at 2013-02-02 01:09:57:

@plinytheelder_t Good morning, thanks for the thought provoking question... I think I'll start by clearing something up a little: In the interview with Scott I mention that sometimes I'll get more interested in a protagonist when I change their gender from a man to a woman...but this is making it sound like I just flip a switch and do a "find-and-replace" search, swapping out all the 'he's and 'his's for 'she's and 'her's... When, in fact, it's as difficult a process as you suggest - men and women have well documented differences. So, how did I approach these differences? I'll start with your second point: ii) Since, generally, woman are physically slighter than men (The pilot of "Wire In The Blood" deals with this in a very classy and informative way) it always seemed unlikely that a Hitwoman would try and kill the same way men do. A passing knowledge of murder statistics will tell you that women tend to murder through predominantly non physical means - poison (the number one choice), shooting (unexpectedly, so gun in a gun totin' shootout), stabbing while their victim is sleeping/not expecting the knife. In Killers there are no action scenes involving the Hitwoman (I agree with you that this does dampen the believeability, and it was vital to me all the characters in Killers are seen as real) but she does kill four people - shooting two, poisoning one and breaking the neck (in a moment of surprise) of one more. So maybe my advice here would be summed up like so - If you want your Hitwoman screenplay to more in the realm of the real, as opposed to enjoyably escapist fun (Alias, Mr & Mrs Smith etc), then avoid masculine methods of murder and perhaps classical brawn vs brawn action scenes. If you can't compete on a physical level what's left? Personally I find writing brain vs brawn so much more fun to write (and brain vs brain even more so) Okay, now to your first point: i) I completely agree that the psychological nature of women and men is vastly different (If it wasn't I think the world'd be a far more dull place to live) However, I must entirely disagree with your statement that the characterisation of a girl as an existential loner doesn't work. South Africa is, sadly, a country that still has a very patriarchal nature. Not only are women still seen, in many circles, as inferior to men, they are seen as incomplete until they are married and raising children as a housewife. In my opinion, there is a certain element of this mentality prevalent throughout the rest of the world...just look at the movies - the role of the 'brooding male protagonist' has been around for decades...you never saw a 'brooding female protagonist' because the predominant view, socialogically, was that married women were safe and ideal, while single women were femme fatales or spinsters. These days it seems that, at least in the movies, you can be independent as a woman...but that just means you can have a job and a boyfriend/husband and family. Society wise, I think people are still very uncomfortable with the idea of a commitment free, career driven woman who genuinely has no interest in having a family of her own - the love only of 'I'. Yet we love bachelors. Simply, Women can be existential loners, as long as we can accept that not everything a women thinks about is how to keep a man in her life or exist solely within the structure of a family. Perhaps it's time we wrote more female characters like this, then maybe more people would believe in them. * * * So, thanks again for your questions...if you have any more - please let me know! All the best, Sean Robert Daniels