For today's Female Filmmakers let's talk about someone that we have sorely missed: the one and only Nancy Meyers! Nancy is a hit-maker and one of the highest-grossing female directors of all time. She deserves our respect and, luckily, her films feature iconic skin.
Nancy hails from Philly where the 5'1" creative fell in love with theater after reading Moss Hart's autobiography. When she watched The Graduate, she became especially interested in writing. How does one write a movie like that?! Well, she was about to find out. She studied journalism at American University, but she wound up working in public television post-graduation.
When she was 22, she moved to Los Angeles to try her hand at national television. She started working as an assistant on the game show the Price is Right, but writing had her heart. After a lot of grunt work, she eventually was hired as a story editor in the film department at Motown. After a while working there, she befriended people who worked with her to write what would become her first full-length feature: Private Benjamin starring Goldie Hawn and P.J. Soles.
Of course, it did not immediately get made. Meyers said almost everyone had turned it down before Goldie Hawn read the script and was interested in it. At the time, studios thought that female leads were box office poison and some studios even told Goldie Hawn that starring in this film would end her career. It did the opposite! The film was a huge box office success and it earns Nancy Meyers her first Oscar nomination.
Now that she had written a hit, her scripts were much easier to develop. She wrote Father of the Bride and Jumpin Jack Flash as well as the series Baby Boom in 1988. She was bangin' out the hits!
She finally stepped into a directorial role with her debut behind the camera in 1998's The Parent Trap. That children's movie was a huge success which cemented Nancy's role as a trusted director. She followed that up with 2000s What Women Want, but it was her next few films that delivered the skin. Something had to give...and it did!
Something's Gotta Give was written and directed by our fair lady in 2003. This mature romantic comedy gave us all what we didn't know we needed: Diane Keaton's full-frontal! This is an absolutely iconic scene in a refreshing romantic comedy between two older stars who prove that your sex drive never really goes away with age. And Diane's body? She looks amazing!
She then wrote and directed The Holiday in 2006 which has become a Christmas classic. The film features hotties Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as an American woman and a British woman who are both in desperate need of a change. They swap houses, one going to a rural village in England and the other going all the way to sunny Los Angeles, where they come alive. Part of coming alive means getting down to your skivvies which is what Cam does for us.
Finally, let's get complicated with 2009's It's Complicated. There was nothing complicated about a divorced couple that goes to their son's college graduation and reignites their relationship...except that the ex-husband has since gotten remarried. Okay, whoops, that is complicated. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin play the ex-couple, but the skin comes to us from Lake Bell. Her cleavage really rings our bell!
Nancy has clearly made her mark on Hollywood. She has specialized in female-forward romantic comedies and family films that make everyone laugh. She has worked with some of the biggest stars in the industry, bringing out their best. She's so special that Goldie Hawn was willing to risk career suicide by taking a chance on Nancy's debut script. You know that a writer has talent when a star risks it all to make their film come alive!
I am so glad that Nancy Meyers also became a director. She has full control of her films and has said that studios don't mess with her work. Why would they? She has proven over several decades that she knows what she is doing. Now that she has full control, her movies have only gotten better.
Nancy is also unapologetically herself and she demands the same respect as any other mover and shaker in Hollywood. On being a female filmmaker, Meyers has flippantly said: "We don't want to be our own niche. We're filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row are we going to talk about the fact that we make films and we are women? Enough already." Cut! That's a wrap on Nancy!
