baby bones here, As a guy far away from Hollywood, my input on this issue might be rather limited, but here goes. I think that movies have changed as far as their demographic goes. That is, who the marketers are targeting determines much of the content out there today. And from that perspective, it is easy to see that movies are now made for foreign audiences and teenage boys. The common characteristic of all foreign non-English-speaking audiences is that they do not want to see human dramas in anything but their own culture and language but are willing to tolerate endless assaults on their intelligence when it comes to action movies. Why? Who wants a big think or complex story that relies on subtitles or poor dubbing to understand? Combine that with the teenage boy demographic in the US and you can see that the future is Transformers Gangnam style. This is not to say that the foreign movie audience is monolithically stupid for big dumb American action movies but 70-85% definitely are stupid for them. And as far as kids go, my own experience as a teen is telling: I was rather concerned that Star Wars was so completely stupid and yet I loved it when i first saw it in 1979. It took me almost twenty years to enjoy Die Hard because it looked so damn stupid. When I was young, I liked 2001 a Space Odyssey, Ordinary People, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Network, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Alien, and Blade Runner. My friends were the same, so it was and still (probably) is true that the teenage audience isn't monolithic either. But Hollywood treats it so, increasingly because the costs of marketing a movie are now on the same order as the production costs. The implication as it relates to women screenwriters, I think, is clear. Not many women grow up to be nostalgic for Transformers, GI Joes, or other products branded for boys. These things form the core of the movie going experience, and I bet that girls these days attend merely because their boyfriends are going. It used to be that a guy would take a gal (1950s style language) to the movies. Alfred Hitchcock said that he made thrillers because women loved them. The only reason he cited for men to go to his movies was that he would guarantee that their dates would be holding their arms tightly the whole way through. I've sat with female friends through all the Star Wars movies. These are terrible date movies, I admit. Most of my dates said they liked the movie. None said they loved it. None was ever thoughtful enough to comment on anyone except that my wife is very fond of Jar Jar Binks. This clearly indicates that Star Wars meant little to them and I doubt if my wife or any of my former girlfriends can consistently identify which scene was from which movie. For them, Star Wars was good enough entertainment, but not a life changing experience. On the other hand, my wife loves Silence of the Lambs, the Bourne Series, and the Harry Potter movies, especially the one with Gary Oldman. The common factor of these movies is the tremendously charisma of the lead or some key player. Charisma trumps cute. Make movies with charismatic actors in proper roles (not Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider).

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