Earlier this month, Meryl Streep talked numbers at the Women in Film Lucy & Crystal Awards. To paraphrase her point, there were five movies over five years — “The Help” (2011) “Bridesmaids” (2011), “The Iron Lady” (2011), “Mamma Mia!” (2008), and “The Devil Wears Prada” (2008) — that earned a collective $1.6 billion for Hollywood. True, she starred in three of them, but if they had been cop movies, zombie thrillers, or Westerns, there would be a stream of films trying to cash in on the women’s market. So Streep’s question — “Why don’t studios want the money?” – hangs heavy in the air.

TV Writer Nell Scovell (“Warehouse 13,” “Monk”) had the most straightforward answer: “They want the money but don’t want to give women the power. It’s a conundrum.”

Animator Signe Baumane responded: “I think Hollywood is stuck in the notion that only 21-year-old men go to movies. The New Yorker article on Ben Stiller says that much too. Big studios are like big animals, they can’t adapt to small changes quickly, but small changes accumulate into BIG ones before soon.”

We hope so. In the meantime, where do we stand?

[Related: Adams on Reel Women: Director Lynn Shelton talks Emily Blunt and 'Mad Men']

Those five movies are just the tip of the iceberg

If you add in the year’s top grosser, “The Hunger Games,” and the movies from “The Twilight Saga,” that earnings number grows exponentially. Then there’s a surprise hit like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which grossed approximately $38 million domestically and $121 million internationally on the backs of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith (anybody who’s watched TV’s “Downton Abbey,” starring Smith as the dowager matriarch who speaks her very sharp mind, wouldn’t be surprised). Add in the gushy Nicholas Sparks drama “The Vow” with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, and there’s another 2012 film that hosed up $194 million globally, following on other films in the successful Sparks franchise (“The Notebook,” “Dear John”), which have frugal production budgets and easily earn out theatrically. Toss in the female-dominated action franchises like Kate Beckinsale’s “Underworld” ($459 million worldwide) and Milla Jovovich’s “Resident Evil” ($675 million worldwide) and the money grows. You, readers, can probably add more to this list.

One answer: The demographics within Hollywood

When it comes to green-lighting films in Hollywood, women don’t have their hands on the switch — and those who do tend to be part of a male scrum. They made it to the top by assimilating into the male studio culture, not by rebelling against it. On the production side, a San Diego State University study last year found that among writers, directors, editors, cinematographers, producers, and executive producers, the division of labor was 82 percent men and 18 percent women. The disconnect is that the audiences do not reflect that same split. The gap between 18 percent and 51 percent is a red flag. Serving that market has a huge profit potential. Healthy industries should be constantly seeking growth, and this is an underserved market.

Another answer: The power of critics as gatekeepers

The critics function as gatekeepers — telling readers what to see and what to skip. Guess what? Men dominate that arena, too. That’s why we’ve seen Michael Cera lose his virginity so many times in coming-of-age comedies and there were so many inexplicably positive reviews for “The Three Stooges.” A San Diego State study based on 100 newspapers, in 2007, concluded that men dominate movie criticism in a way that echoes male dominance behind the screen. In a study conducted by Martha M. Lauzen at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, 77 percent of film critics are male. As a female member of the New York Film Critics Circle, which includes newspaper, magazine, and online critics, I’ve always been a fortunate minority. According to our website (www.nyfcc.com), there are 31 members, including the late Andrew Sarris. Of that number, seven (or 23 percent) are female — and that’s considerable growth since I joined the organization in 1995.

One solution: Women, vote with your box-office dollars:

Go see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” or Streep’s upcoming middle-age marriage comedy, “Hope Springs,” or the cluster of microbudgeted and intensely satisfying movies like Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister”; Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz” (opening Friday); or Nancy Savoca’s “Union Square” (opening July 13). If we build the audience, the product will come — and it will come from a variety of sources, small and large.

Another solution: Women, make movies

Meryl Streep joined with director Phyllida Lloyd to make “Mamma Mia!” and “The Iron Lady.” She voted with her box-office clout. This is what Mira Sorvino is doing with “Union Square,” Emily Blunt with “Your Sister’s Sister,” and Drew Barrymore with her underrated movie “Whip It!”

And another solution: Opening-weekend grosses are not king, er, queen

Let’s ignore Hollywood’s obsession with opening-weekend numbers and echo models like that of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” building the female audiences one movie and one weekend at a time. Carla Stockton, editor in chief of Dapt’d, explained: “Women, especially women in the next-up age brackets, are more likely to weigh critics’ reviews, friends’ word of mouth, etc., and they will wait to see the film till it’s been out awhile. Too much focus, it seems, gets placed on opening weekend. So, while the industry is aware that we want films with strong women’s POV, it is intimidated by the pressure of first weekend from delving too deeply into that fountain. I also think we writers must persevere in creating more, better, stronger, more compelling women for stage and screen.”

[Related: 'To Rome With Love' star Greta Gerwig is wild about Woody Allen — just read her high school yearbook]

I’m definitely with Carla: We’re listening, and we’re going to be writing, producing, and directing the movies we want to see — and supporting them in print. And when one person speaks out, like Streep did, we’ll rally around her, until our voices are heard.

And there’s some reason for optimism. According to USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna: “I think much like Snow White, they are slowly waking up to the fact that if you please them, women will show up in hordes, and even for more than one viewing. I was astonished and gratified that ‘Snow White and the Huntsman,’ which is essentially an action film with two female leads, did so well. How often does that happen? And even Pixar finally woke up and smelled the estrogen with “Brave.” There is movement afoot. The female screenwriting ranks have been growing, and now there just needs to be more female directors doing big studio films.”

See the trailer for ‘Brave’:

 

The Monroe Doctrine: Michelle Williams Discusses Her Months with Marilyn

My first major Yahoo! Movies interview

Pixie powerhouse Michelle Williams, 31, is Oscar-nomination bound for her drop-dead Marilyn Monroe in the whimsical memory-piece “My Week with Marilyn.” The two-time Oscar nominee (“Blue Valentine,” “Brokeback Mountain“) talked to Yahoo! about that famous wiggle — “It was like she was doing a figure eight in a vat of honey” — while making tea. Then she was off to the set of Sam Raimi’s “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” where she’s playing yet another blonde with pop culture baggage: Glinda the Good Witch.

Thelma Adams: How did you transform into Marilyn?

Michelle Williams: It was a long process. I started my prep maybe ten months in advance of shooting, I started watching her movies over and over again, listening to her voice on headphones, or playing it in the car when I drove carpool. [Click for full interview]

This cover is exactly what I’ve been afraid of ever since I heard that David Fincher was making the American version of the Swedish best sellers. How very dare he subordinate the girl to the he-man? The title of the books is THE GIRL with the dragon tattoo, and Lisbeth Salander is the main character, the through line. She is definitely no ingenue! I read the first book when it came out in America, and then was so impatient that I ordered the next two from Amazon UK. Her story is a shocking journey that ranges from the highly personal to a scandal capable of taking down a corrupt government. Salander does not need to clutch at the chest of a man, as she’s represented here. My concern has always been that she was too much woman for Fincher to handle. International audiences have been eating her character up; will Hollywood smother her in ketchup, add ground beefcake, and insists it tastes the same?

Kirsten Dunst, like Drew Barrymore or Lindsay Lohan, is a blond that grew up in front of the camera – arguably the most gorgeous, and certainly the finest actress of the three. In Melancholia, she also becomes the most daring and memorable as Justine, a young bride whose anxiety spoils her lavish wedding but prepares her to cope with the impending world cataclysm. She embodies the relief that Chicken Little must have felt when the sky finally fell. Her crippling depression, in such contrast with her gorgeous shell, comes to represent the swirling contemporary societal anxieties in response to any number of external threats: economic collapse, religious fundamentalism, the energy crisis, super bugs, or global weather confusion.

We first saw Dunst as a toddler in commercials, as an unsettling child undead in Interview with the Vampire, and then as the spunky damsel Mary Jane caught in the web of Spiderman.

But, as the actress aged, despite the roles cast her way, there was a sneaking Garbo, a larger, more disturbing presence, the potential for a knock-down drag out fight between beauty and bitterness that Marie Antoinette suggested. It comes to full fruition in Melancholia, where even a girl with fairy-tale princess looks can never have a happily ever after.

As written and directed by Lars von Trier, and arguably a projection of his own struggles with clinical depression (the shingle is out), Dunst’s Alice in Apocalypseland starts off as a gorgeous canvas, a surface beauty. Her veneer is so vivid that it weighs on her – because she knows and is consumed by the darkness within. It’s the Marilyn Monroe tragedy, the moment when Garbo wants to be alone.

The movie begins by depicting Justine in a painterly way. In one lush shot, she’s filmed to recall Shakespeare’s tragic suicidal heroine Ophelia as romantically envisioned by pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais.

But Justine is not the mad victim heroine of Hamlet. She owns Melancholia; her character arc is central not tangential. As the movie unfurls, Justine is both the luminous sun at its center and its black hole, her personal melancholy bleeds into the new planet, unsubtly called Melancholia, which threatens to knock into earth like a cosmic croquet ball.

At the outset of the movie’s extended wedding sequence, Justine could have stepped out of an Estee Lauder Beautiful advertisement with her cumulus cloud strapless dress. She almost literally trails perfume, her make-up flawless, her skin without pores. She’s playful, loving, smart, and affectionate. She’s the bride as idealized object.

But, because it’s von Trier, that doesn’t last long.

As the endlessly over-structured ritual continues in a remote country estate, Justine’s eyes glaze over, her smile slips, her make-up fades, her coif comes undone, her dress tears. She takes a pee on the adjacent golf-course (an image that recalls Maya Rudolph’s Bridesmaids dump without the farce). She ruts with a guest other than her groom. Fearful, she desperately seeks solace from her parents, who give her none. She mercilessly rips her arrogant advertising executive boss a new one. Later, she even beats a stallion with a whip.

Cue part two. In the aftermath of the failed wedding, Justine collapses into depression on earth as the planet Melancholia appears ever bigger in the sky. The sheen of beauty dissipates. She struggles to leave her apartment, get into a cab and walk. Food tastes like ashes in her mouth. In one scene where her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) tries to bathe her, she doesn’t even have the will to raise her own leg to climb into the tub. She is completely detached from her golden, glorious nudity.

The filmmaker has now shifted into a more despairing sense of realism. Von Trier rips the blinders off. This is what a seriously depressed person looks like when the inner darkness overwhelms the outer glow, and Dunst follows him all the way, shedding pretense and glamor like an unwanted wedding dress.

But von Trier takes Justine one more step on this journey. As the previously put-together Claire crumbles under the weight of her fear of death, her coping skills – let’s watch the end of the world with a glass of wine on the terrace – fall away. Meanwhile, Justine’s acute sense of the world rises.

Having been treated as a hysteric because of a personal sense of impending doom, the fatalistic Justine finds her center and her courage when doom is externalized. In what could be their final hours, she becomes the caretaker of her sister and nephew. And it’s this heroic transformation that takes Justine, the beautiful blond of advertising and romantic painters, and puts her into apocalyptic heroine territory. In the movie’s final moments, Justine sits cross-legged and back straight, and becomes an everywoman, the last sane human on the planet facing extinction.

Is Justine happy? No. But she has the satisfaction of knowing she was right.

(Caryn James of James on ScreenS inspired this post during a discussion at the New York Film Critics series hosted by Mark Ehrenkranz in Morristown, NJ)