Sunday with Nancy

I know I've been a little checked out this week. My apologies. With school closing, the year ending, and a two week vacation coming up, there's been a lot to get done, most of which I haven't gotten done. I did, however, manage to read Daphne Merkin's profile of writer/director Nancy Meyers titled Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women? Merkin and her editors must have agreed on this ambivalent title because it's not clear from the article that Merkin really likes the movies that Meyers makes. Oh she enjoys them. They're so soft! They're so pretty! Just like Meyers herself, at least how Merkin portrays her. She's tough, that Nancy, she's one of the only gals in Hollywood making movies on her own terms and getting a slice of the gross.

But, she's still nice. Merkin quotes Jack Nicholson as telling a story in which he insisted on wearing a shirt that Meyers didn't like. In the end, Nicholson wore the shirt even though Meyers, we're told again and again, is a stickler for aesthetic details. So what's the point of the story? Meyers is a stickler for detail but not so much of a stickler that she won't let Jack wear his shirt? She really sticks it to the guys, that Nancy! The whole article was like that, like I wasn't sure what the point of it was. I read it without my reading glasses and I kept rereading sentences, thinking I must have gotten them wrong. But I didn't. In Merkin's view Meyers makes movies that are like good candy and good candy is hard to make. Everybody, even Merkin, likes good candy. I think, though, ultimately Merkin must prefer salty to sweet. The whole thing made me wish I could read another article by a different women about other women making other movies. Maybe, though, that was the whole point.