The answer is easy, and hard. It’s because men are allowed to operate under certain assumptions — that it’s okay to fail, that it’s okay to not be brilliant all the time, that it’s perfectly normal and something to be accepted without thought that not every attempt to achieve a difficult feat will succeed, and that there’s no reason not to get back up on that horse when you fall off. Yet a woman’s failure in one instance is evidence of total, complete failure for all time. It’s because the work of one man is never, ever presumed to represent the work of all men — if a Superman movie fails, it’s because Bryan Singer fucked it up, not because “men can’t direct comic book movies”; that would be silly. Yet the work of one woman is frequently assumed to represent the work of all women — if Jennifer’s Body fails, it’s because women can’t direct horror comedy; that’s just common sense.”

Half of this statement is questionable to me. The point I agree with is that it’s ridiculous to say that one failure (like Jennifer’s Body) suddenly spells doom for any woman looking to direct a horror comedy. Obviously the hilarious Drag Me to Hell tanking doesn’t mean the genre is dead either. However, the first part, I think, goes a little too far in suggesting that failures by men go unpunished. I imagine there are a lot of non-name male directors who make bombs and never get to work again. I think you would have to have several examples of male directors who made two or three expensive bombs in a row and were still getting movies made.

I mean, earlier in the article Mann is brought up, and he’s not the best example of a male director failing, IMO. He made an expensive movie that didn’t quite gross back its budget but scored a few Oscar noms, and used his clout to make a considerably less-expensive movie that was a massive worldwide hit. That got him enough to direct another expensive movie that didn’t quite gross back its budget, and didn’t make a movie for a couple of years. I think the key is what happens now that his expensive Public Enemies has only managed to break even, at least in the US. I imagine whatever he does from here will have to be scaled back, like the difference between Ali and Collateral’s budget.

And with Bigelow, is it not possible there’s a reason she took time off? I’m not saying the point being made is untrue, but it has to be considered that maybe she went off to recharge her creative batteries or didn’t like the scripts she was getting. It’s only a relevant comparison if she was actively trying to get films made.