Bridesmaids' Well-Deserved Victory Lap

Now that Bridesmaids has shown Hollywood executives to be mistaken in their box office assumptions (if not fixed all show business sexism ever), here’s a moment for its stars and creators to bask.

First, to anyone who thought the worry about the film’s effect on All Movies For Women a little overwrought, Judd Apatow has some news for you. He told The New York Times yesterday,

Sadly, I think some of that talk was true. There are a lot of female-driven comedies on the bubble at the studios and they do look to measure how well these things do, and what levels of interest there are in certain genres. One of the reasons there was pressure is because the studios knew this movie came out very well, and if nobody bothered to go see it, they could say, “Even when you make a really good one, nobody comes.” But because people came, the opposite lesson was learned, which is, there’s an enormous neglected community of moviegoers who want to see films like this.

While Apatow can take credit for getting this celebrity-free ensemble-driven movie made, as well as a few projects to come, some of that “enormous neglected community” has felt neglected by Apatow himself. Melissa McCarthy, the star widely believed to have stolen the show, told EW a while back, “I always thought with Judd…a few more women wouldn’t kill ya! I can’t say that I haven’t said that all along, but his movies are really funny.”

Still, some of the movies with “a few more women” are downright awful, as McCarthy well knows.

So often I see these scripts or these movies and think what are they talking about? They’re fighting over ‘I saw him first and that’s my nail polish and you can’t wear that color.’ It’s the silliest little girl arguments. I have never had that conversation and I don’t know anyone who has. Everyone I know is always like ‘Who the hell are these women?’… I think in lieu of a character or a point of view it’s become these four different choices: the bitch, the slut, the door mat, and the people pleaser. That’s it. You get four types of women. I think in Bridesmaids, Kristen and Annie sat down and said “Okay, who are these women specifically?’

Gee, whatever should she be talking about? Maybe some of the movies shown in the intro to this morning’s Early Show segment on why “we love wedding movies.” Or the one that was lassoed with Bridesmaids, Something Borrowed, a movie The New York Times described as ” ardently committed to the blandness of its characters,” which, whatever you thought of Bridesmaids, you can’t say it’s that.)

There sat Paul Feig, Bridesmaids director and object of our admiration, gamely smiling along, horrifying the two women in the room when he said he didn’t like weddings. (The author of Something Borrowed, Emily Giffin, had just said that women start dreaming of their weddings as small children.)

Apatow says of the ensemble, “I think they all deserve to star in their own movies. It is usually a dearth of scripts which hold great actresses back. Hopefully the studios will develop more movies for them. As will I.”

And perhaps the most promising news yet is that McCarthy is involved with two projects that we’d definitely be into from the outset: “I’m writing something with [Bridesmaids’ co-writer] Annie,” she told EW. “Ironically, and this is not in any way trying to duplicate what we’ve done, because it actually came from a script idea that my husband wrote, is another a female ensemble. It’s really funny and it’s again not what I think what most people would expect from women and I just love it.”

Oh, and a romantic comedy Paul Feig is developing for her. Yes, please.

Judd Apatow Talks About The Aftermath Of Bridesmaids [NYT]
Related: All I Want For Mother’s Day Is For ‘Bridesmaids’ Melissa McCarthy To Be A Movie Star [EW]
Earlier: Bridesmaids Overperforms, Fucks The Haters