In celebration of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8th, I have decided to bring some attention to women in film; more specifically female screenwriters. As a whole, screenwriters tend to be overlooked by your most general film viewing/cinema going fans, especially the women. Without further ado, here are some great screenwriters who have written wonderfully successful films. I appreciate that some of these are already incredibly well-known, but they are simply the best.
Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay is a Scottish film director and writer who is best known for her gritty and realistic visual style. Ramsay encountered success from the start of her career as she won the 1996 Cannes Prix de Jury for her graduation short, Small Deaths (1996) and continued to make further shorts as well as her feature length debut Ratcatcher in 1999.
Ramsay’s work features strong themes of death and grief that take place predominately in the lives of families, especially those involving children and young people. The worlds Ramsay creates in her films are often low on dialogue and story exposition and instead rely on images, music and sound to create the dull, unsettling realities for the characters and audiences. Her films by no means aim for the happy ending many seem eager to create.
She has won many awards for each of her films including the Best Director at the British Independent Film Awards for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). Usually, Ratcatcher is cited as one of Ramsay’s greatest works, and whilst it is, I particularly favour the darkness and performances within We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Best work: Ratcatcher (1999), Morvern Callar (2002), We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011).
Diablo Cody
Brook Busey-Maurio, who is best known under her pen name Diablo Cody, is an American screenwriter, director, author and journalist. She first became known for her candid chronicling of her year spent as a stripper, which she recorded first in a blog and later in a memoir.
After Cody completed her book, she was encouraged by film producer and talent manager Mason Novick to writer her first screenplay, which happened to be Juno (2007).
Juno, a coming-of-age film about a teenager’s unplanned pregnancy, did incredibly well upon its release due to its quirky characters and honest writing style. These have become key characteristics in Cody’s screenwriting and won Juno around thirty awards, notably Best Original Screenplay, including an Oscar and a BAFTA.
I particularly favour Jennifer’s Body (2009) as it explores female friendship, growing up as a woman and going through puberty and of course Cody’s usual quirky and honest “I don’t give a fuck” characters. Whilst Cody’s films often feature over the top situations, they are fun and still dare I say relatable?
Best work: Juno (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), Young Adult (2011).
Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola, daughter of director, producer and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola, is an American screenwriter, director and actress. Coppola began acting in some of her father’s films and eventually took to writing and directing her first short film Lick the Star in 1998.
Next came her feature length debut, The Virgin Suicides (1999), which is based on the novel of the same title by Jeffrey Eugenides. The film received critical acclaim upon its released at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and is still well received and praised to this day.
Coppola – both written and cinematically – has a distinctive dreamy and ethereal style to her films. She is often praised for being able to capture the lives of teenagers and adults in interesting realistic ways.
Her films tend to focus on people selfishly and often take a deep look at what is going on inside the character’s head rather than really move the story forward. This often results in some of her films seeming as though they are essentially about nothing, however the otherworldly experience and in-depth character exploration usually win people over.
Best work: The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Somewhere (2010).
Karen McCullah
Karen McCullah was born in the Philippines but is an American screenwriter nad novelist. She has an impressive seven film resume with all films being successful. All the films were co-written with her screenwriting partner Kirsten Smith. The first four of McCullah’s films are adaptations of novels or a William Shakespeare play.
McCullah is most famous for her and Smith’s first two films: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and Legally Blonde (2001). 10 Things is an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew which is instead set in a modern American high school environment. The idea also came from ’10 Things I Hate About Anthony,’ a diary McCullah maintained about her high school boyfriend.
Legally Blonde is often classed as a feminist masterpiece. The film takes the rich sorority dumb blonde girl stereotype and flips it 180 degrees. The film follows Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) who is desperate to get her boyfriend back after he dumps her and heads off to Harvard Law School. It’s there she truly finds herself, realises her full potential and ditches her loser ex-boyfriend.
“You got into Harvard Law?”
“What? Like it’s hard?”
Whilst the film is still full of female stereotypes, McCullah takes them elsewhere with her comedy, her wit and her determination to show that women have more power than they think. Much like the character of Elle Woods, which is taken mostly from the novel it’s based off by Amanda Brown, McCullah is a tall, successful blonde who was in a sorority and always has a can-do attitude.
McCullah has been writing and adapting strong, successful, smart women ever since she began screenwriting.
Best work: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Legally Blonde (2001), She’s the Man (2006).
Haifaa Al-Mansour
Haifaa Al-Mansour is the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia and she is regarded as one of the most significant cinematic figures there. Al-Mansour has a bachelor’s degree in Literature and a Master’s degree in Directing and Film Studies.
She made a successful documentary titled Women Without Shadows (2005) which won many awards, including some in Saudi Arabia itself. The documentary explores what has happened to the woman’s role in the Saudi society, with Al-Mansour conducting interviews with people on all sides of the debate. This opened up huge discussions in their society about women covering their faces in public, why cinema is banned in Saudi Arabia and even encouraged and influenced a whole new wave of Saudi filmmakers.
Whilst Al-Mansour is a pioneer of being the first women from Saudi Arabia to direct a feature film, it was not an easy title to achieve. For her film Wadjda (2012), she had to direct the exterior scenes from inside a van, watching the actors on monitors and communicating via walkie-talkie because of how the country is segregated for men and women. Women are not supposed to work in public with men and are required to limit the amount of time spent with conversing with men they are not related to which made it a real struggle.
Wadjda is a great film where Al-Mansour continued to explore the regulations of Saudi Arabia. It stars a young girl who wishes to ride and buy a bicycle. For the longest time, women were not allowed to ride or buy a bike which is demonstrated in the film although it is easier with a female protagonist of twelve years old (ten in the film). In 2013, it was ruled that women are now allowed to ride bicycles in public, but only for entertainment in restricted, recreational areas.
Best work: Women Without Shadows (2005), Wadjda (2012).
Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling is an American screenwriter and director who studied Film and TV at New York University and got a Masters Degree in Film from The American Film Institute. Heckerling has had lots of commercial success from both writing and directing, including her major directorial debut for Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) which was written by writer and director Cameron Crowe. The film was based off of his experience posing undercover for a year as a student in a San Diego high school. After this, Heckerling wrote Look Who’s Talking (1989), a few sequels and Clueless (1995).
Whilst John Hughes captured adolescents’ life perfectly, so did Heckerling with Clueless; a coming-of-age film which is loosely based on Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma. The film was highly successful and well received by critics and is still incredibly popular today as it is introduced to a third generation two decades on.
Clueless focuses on its use of fashion, fun, teens, relationships and has made a major cultural impact. The film is highly quotable and is often compared to Heathers (1988) – written by Daniel Waters – and Mean Girls (2004) – written by Tina Fey – for they are the most popular teen coming-of-age films for women of each of their decades.
The phrase “As if!” which is used by Alicia Silverstone’s character Cher is one of the most favourable. Heckerling explained that she is always compiling slang words because she’s interested in how people use language. She said “At that time, which was like early 90s, ‘As if!’ was floating around in the gay community and I thought it was really a multi-useful, multipurpose word. I thought it would be a good thing for teenagers to be saying. Some of the people I knew were already beyond ‘As if’ so they were just gong ‘Zif!’”
Best work: Look Who’s Talking (1989), Clueless (1995).
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron was an American journalist, playwright, screenwriter, novelist, producer and director who is known mostly for her romantic comedy films and has producer, written and directed a lot of her films.
Ephron has been nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Writing for Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally… (1989) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and won a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally…
Most of Ephron’s films centre around relationships between men or women or just women. Ephron is praised for her fresh and female outlook presented through her characters and her dialogue. When Harry Met Sally… has been listed in many lists that pertain to best comedies, including coming 23rd on AFI’s ‘100 Years… 100 Laughs’ list and 60th on Bravo’s ‘100 Funniest Movies.’
One scene in particular earned Ephron this achievement; the Deli scene which features Harry and Sally arguing about a man’s inability to recognise when a woman is faking an orgasm. To prove her point of how they fail to be able to tell the difference, Sally vividly and loudly fakes an orgasm, whilst fully clothed and still seated in the Deli, for all to see. The scenes comes to a casual end with Sally returning to her food as a woman places her order with the line “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Best work: When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Julie and Julia (2009).
Jane Goldman
Jane Goldman is an English screenwriter, author and producer. She is mostly known for co-writing Stardust (2007), Kick-Ass (2010), X-Men: First Class (2011) and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) with Matthew Vaughn. Goldman’s first solo screenplay was The Woman in Black (2012) which is based on the novel of the same name. Most films she has written are typically based on a book, comic or story by someone else.
All of Goldman’s films have been well received by its audience including critics, and Kick-Ass gained a cult following. Kick-Ass won Goldman various awards including Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Award for Best Filmmaker, Total Film Magazine Award for Best Writer, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Women in Film and TV Writing Award.
Goldman is also credited on the sequel to X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) as writing the story with Vaughn. She is currently working on the screenplay for the upcoming film adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) for Tim Burton, and a second Kingsman film.
Best work: Stardust (2007), Kick-Ass (2010), X-Men: First Class (2011).
Kate Dippold
Katie Dippold is an American comedy writer, actress and improvisation comedian. She wrote frequently for MADtv and the NBC television comedy series Parks and Recreation and wrote the screenplay for The Heat (2013) which starred Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy. This film won Dippold the American Comedy award for Best Screenplay and Favourite Comedy of the Year at the People’s Choice Awards.
Dippold is someone to keep looking out for (and was aptly listed in the 2012 ’10 Screenwriters to Watch’ by Variety and ’13 People to Look Out For in 2013’ in Interview) as she also wrote the upcoming all-female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016), also starring Melissa McCarthy.
Dippold has also announced that she is writing The Heat 2 and working on an untitled mother-daughter/action comedy project.
Best work: The Heat (2013), hopefully Ghostbusters (2016).
Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist and screenwriter. She is mostly known for her 2010 novel Room which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Donoghue, who is gay herself, has also written many books based around sexuality, including Hood (1995) which tells the story of an Irish woman coming to terms with the death of her girlfriend. Hood won the 1997 American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award for Literature (now known as the Stonewall Book Award).
Although Donoghue wrote a short film in 2002, she further broadened her screenwriting career with an amazing adaptation of her novel ‘Room’ which was made into a film, released in 2015, and nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Room was named one of the best films of 2015 by over 60 critics and publications. Donoghue is another screenwriter to look out for – hopefully she will write more screenplays or adapt some of her older or future projects which have the potential to be as successful as Room.
Best work: Room (2015).
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