Unfortunately, for the film going public outside of a few metro areas, the aforementioned examples are the only ones too many women, and men for that matter, are bombarded with.  Don’t believe me?  Let’s take a look at what raked in the big money this summer.  The Hangover was this summer’s raucous buddy comedy where the women serve as 1) ever consumed with the impending wedding 2) nagging and keeps her husband stuck in a straight laced life he can’t break free of 3) prostitute who helps the straight laced dude see what he’s been missing.  The loud and flashy, recession mocking $250 million Transformers 2 co-starred Megan Fox.  Make no mistake; she isn’t going to live out the rest of her fifteen minutes rivaling the credibility of someone like Audrey Hepburn.  Megan Fox’s incredibly stiff performances are overlooked for her physical attributes.  Judd Apatow was back with Funny People and he cast his wife, Leslie Mann, to play his typical women role. You remember the women from The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up don’t you?  Yeah, they were there to help the immature lead character grow up, and he did, but it seemed to take about thirty to forty-five minutes longer than any comedy should. Of course there were countless examples of the “Oh-my-god-I-need-those-shoes-and-if-you-are-any-kind-of-woman-you’d-need-them-too-so-run-up-your-credit-card-immediately-dammit!” movies, each as formulaic as the last.  These would be for the reality show culture that doesn’t have an interest in quality writing, directing, acting, or seemingly much sense of self worth.  Alas, they eat it up.

Think of the only film that got a national release in its first week that showed strong women?  It may not be obvious, so I’ll wait.  It couldn’t be!  Really?  Ding, ding, ding!  It was Quentin Tarantino’s World War II re-imagining Inglourious Basterds.  But, wait…Quentin? The hyper-violent auteur who is known best for his “men in black suits carrying off frenetic speeches filled with expletives, pop cultures references, who intersperse their diatribes with blood baths?”  While people have been sitting around, munching popcorn at the boatloads stereotype movies, Tarantino made Jackie Brown, the Kill Bill films, and Death Proof.  All filled with ass kicking powerful women.  Even Pulp Fiction has Uma Thurman, used sparsely, as a strong female character.  Inglourious Basterds had two ultra powerful women in Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger, both involved in separate plots to take down the Nazis. They used their sexuality, intelligence, and charm in ways the men working to the same goal could not.  Amazing don’t you think?  The problem is between Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (two of the greatest films in the past twenty years, in my opinion), Tarantino has built a bloody reputation that the studio marketing teams have countered with stereotype.  And when has marketing ever lied and misrepresented anything?

So, you’re not living in the New York, LA, or Austin film communities, nor are you willing to include a two or three-hour drive/bus trip in your dinner and movie plans, but you want realistic portrayals of women.  Women, you want to be empowered.  Men, you want to see characters that remind you of people you know or could know.  Yeah, indie film is chock full of characters like this – but the indies don’t make money outside of the metro areas.  What are you to do?  First thing first, when an indie comes to town, go see it!  Chances are good it will only be in for two weeks, the wonderful (500) Days of Summer being an exception this year.  So get your ass in the theater and support the indies.  When you are confronted with the choice of (500) Days or Inglourious against, maybe, The Proposal choose wisely.  Send your message to Hollywood in the way ticket sales.  If people just say no to stereotypes the studios will stop buying them, funding them, and pushing them on you.  Megan Fox won’t sit in front of a room full of people, show all that emotion she usually shows (see none) and promote Jennifer’s Body with talk of a girl on girl kiss. If that is all that is there to draw you to the theater, why not save the money and watch on YouTube?  Just skip it and send your message.  People quickly forget what they can do.  All the excitement and empowerment we should feel in our post 2008-election seems like it faded to complacency.  America the power is in your hands to push for important issues like healthcare reform, stopping climate change, and an end to unrealistic, stereotypical entertainment.  In the meantime, make Netflix go crazy with queue adds for films starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, and request the hell out of real, intelligent films at your favorite local theater.  I mean, it’s that or sit and watch that movie where a gorgeous actress spends two acts in plain clothes and glasses, then all of a sudden gets a makeover and falls in with the shallow crowd that never excepted her before, only to realize how she is blowing off her real friends.  I hear there’s a new movie like that coming out.

James McCabe is an adjunct professor of English at Misericordia University, Dallas, PA and currently in preproduction on short films he wrote and will direct.

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I have to say that Jean is a writer and person I adore, a true gem. You'll love her reading, and then come see her panel discussion Saturday afternoon.

Here are the details for the reading:

8 pm, Thursday, October 1, 2009 in room 405 of the DeNaples Center.

The event is free and open to the public, but call 570.941.7619 with questions.

And then at 8pm Friday, Kaylie Jones -- novelist, memoirist, and member of the Wilkes University creative writing faculty -- will read her new memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, at Anthology Books.

Kaylie will be joining Pages & Places' authors, scholars, and editors the Prologue Party Friday evening from 5:30 to 7:30.

Remember, tickets for the party are still available at a (tax deductible) $100 each.

Lisa Greenwald writes Lucy’s story in My Life in Pink and Green. Lucy is another young woman who learns she must takes matters in to her own hands if things are going to change in her world. When her family’s pharmacy is in jeopardy of going out of business, she comes to the rescue. Always a fan of cosmetics and a skilled make-up artist, she turns the pharmacy around and joins the “go green” movement along the way!

In The Patron Saint of Butterflies, Cecilia Galante offers the story of two young women who have been growing up in a world that is very different than those us who are most likely to read the book. Agnes and Honey were raised on a religious commune. The story shows the girls as foils for one another when we learn that Agnes wants to embrace the religious ways of the commune, even become a saint. Conversely, Honey has quite the opposing dreams in mind—she wants to be free of the commune and its rules. Galante’s story follows these two girls as they grow up and confront realities that neither would have guessed were ahead of them – or behind them. So yes, these young women on the pages of these three books face challenges. And although they cannot rely on a magic wand or a benevolent werewolf to help them with their struggles, all three stories are definitely filled with magic.

The books mentioned -- Shug by Jenny Han, My Life in Pink & Green by Lisa Greenwald, The Patron Saint of Butterflies by Cecilia Galante, as all available at Anthology Books in Scranton.

Anna Kilcullen is a Young Adult Librarian at the Albright Memorial Library, Lackawanna County Library System.

But the day's performers aren't limited to regional practitioners. Writers from Philly and New York, at least, will reading from recent work. First City Review editor and Independent Publisher panelist Michael Pollock is bringing a bevy of his journal's contributors who will take the mic in succession immediately following Michael's panel discussion, at 2:30.

Independent Publishers panelist Michael Pollock edits First City Review

Among those you can be lucky enough to hear are:

PAULA BOMER, whose fiction has appeared in Open City, Fiction, Nerve, The Mississippi Review, The New York Tyrant, First City Review, Storyglossia, juked, Best American Erotica 2002, 2003(S&S), Word Riot, Sub-Lit, and lots of other places.

Paula Boomer will read on Courthouse Square

MICKEY HESS is Assistant Professor of English at Rider University, and the author of “Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory” (Garrett County Press, 2008), which was featured as “Critic’s Choice” in The Chicago Reader, described as “thoroughly humorous” by The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, and mentioned online at The New Yorker, Poets & Writers, and USA Today.

Mickey Hess will be reading on Courthouse Square

Mickey’s stories and essays have been published in Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category (Knopf, 2005), and such journals as McSweeney’s, Ninth Letter, Punk Planet, Fourteen Hills, Pear Noir, Opium Magazine, and The Foundling Review. A lifelong rap listener, he is also the author of three books on hip hop music and culture.

JOHANNAH RODGERS is a writer who lives in Brooklyn.

Joanna Rodgers will be among the festival day readers on Courthouse Square

Her chapbook “Necessary Fictions” was published by Sona Books in 2003, and her short stories and essays have appeared in Fiction, CHAIN Arts, The Brooklyn Rail, Pierogi Press and Fence. Her latest book “sentences,” a collection of stories, essays, and artwork, was published by Red Dust Press.

CHAD WILLENBORG is completing a collection of short stories which recast James Joyce’s “Dubliners” in the contemporary American Midwest.

Yup, Chad Willenborg will also be reading on Courthouse Square

He’s also begun a new novel of speculative fiction involving a chance encounter between Isoroku Yamamoto, the admiral who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Ada Kepley, a suffragette and prohibitionist who was also the first woman to graduate from law school.

WE CAN HELP!

If you're hoping to attend one or more of Pages & Places' panels, you might consider getting tickets now. They're limited in number, as the venues are intimate, and moving quickly.

Click here to buy them online:

Since then, we’ve created a number of projects (mostly books made in the accordion form) that used photographs that Michael made or found, and pieces Melissa wrote. Michael has been the craftsman of the actual books so far, printing and cutting and folding, with bookbinding beautifully done by Ivana Pavelka.

In ours works together, sometimes the pictures come first, and sometimes the writing. More often than not, we find that the other person’s work or insight or off-hand remark distills for us our own muddy thinking on the topic in view, and opens the door to the next stage of our individual progress. Working together has helped us each to be more and more who we are. And when we come to the end of a project, the satisfaction of being done always has to share space with not only the disappointment of being done, but with curiosity about where the next one will go.

Book artist Michael Poster and writer Melissa Whalen Haertsch will join Pages & Places' panel on Book-making as Art.

As for that hoped-for and dreaded first kiss, Shug's desire for it comes on suddenly, and she wants to share it with the boy she grew up with, Mark. Unfortunately, Mark doesn’t seem to see Shug in the same way.

(Spoiler alert: Shug does get her first kiss, but it doesn't come in some intense moment with Mark.)

Shug also worries that she is too plain. She has always seen her sister as popular, pretty, and favored by their father but whom, she starts to notice, has her own problems. When Shug’s father comes home, which seems less often, she is starting to realize that her parent’s fighting is more than just little squabbles, and starts to wonder if they are going to divorce.

Jenny Han will join Cecilia Galante and Lisa Greenwald on Pages & Places Young Adult Novelists panel

As is typical of girls her age, Shug sees only her own problems, and to her mind, everyone else’s life is perfect or better. She begins opening her mind and ears and slowly realizes she isn’t the only one with problems. This is a lesson people of all ages forget at times. At the end of the novel, the process isn’t over, but Shug is learning who she is and I found myself wanting to continue following Shug's life.

Leigh-Ann Puchalski is Youth Services Librarian at the Carbondale Public Library

Johnny Temple of Akashic will moderate Pages & Places' Women Noir Novelists panel and join our Independent Publishers panel.

Little did I know that this contest, which I was lucky enough to actually win, was the 1999 James Jones Literary Award for a first novel in progress – an award coming with first, a prize of $3,000, and, best, the support of novelist and writer Kaylie Jones, daughter of the award’s eponymous James Jones. Kaylie called me at the seminary where I was then sharpening pencils for my employer, a professor of black theology,
Dr. and Reverend James H. Cone. I had won the award, she said, and should expect good things.

By the time the novel was actually finished, it was Kaylie, not my New York agent, who submitted it to Johnny Temple at Akashic Books. It was Kaylie who championed it, and it was Johnny who accepted the novel. After that, as Kaylie predicted, good things did happen. Despite the fact that I had by then fled from New York to New Zealand, Johnny was happy to proceed. Despite his rock and roll pedigree, he was all gentleness, all calm and grace. We edited Since You Ask online. Johnny sent me good questions such as did I really need 186 (or somesuch) mentions of the word “though.” We picked a cover; the book arrived in New Zealand. It was not until the book launch in New York that I met the handsome Johnny.

Johnny Temple in his other guise, as bass player for Girls Against Boys

Since then, I have grown more and more pleased to be an Akashic author. Because Akashic is small, because its authors are hand-picked by Johnny and his editors, because they have a distinct goal in mind – to publish neglected, literary, darker, or unexpected books - when you meet Johnny you feel he has chosen you for some good reason. You can also feel – and this can be especially good when you are living in some foreign place – that you will have some kinship with another Akashic author. You are not one of a raft of authors yoked together for a host of multifold reasons. You are one of a group that is allied in a specific way. Johnny, one feels, picks people with some similar sensibility. So you can be flung out far into the southern reaches of the southern seas and still feel part of something.

While living in New Zealand, I ran into two other Akashic authors. One was Chris Abani, the Nigerian writer who spoke to my MA class in New Zealand; another was Parisian novelist Dominique Mainard who Johnny published in his Paris Noir anthology. We were floating in our backs one day off the Wellington Coast, not knowing at all that our work would ever be represented by the same person in the same country. Yet when later it was, and with Johnny, this did not seem too great of a stretch. He is an excellent editor and an excellent publisher and it is with pleasure that in this blog entry I might introduce him to you.

Louise Wareham Leonard was born in New Zealand, grew up in New York and is now living in Australia. Her first novel was Since You Ask, published by Akashic. Her second novel, Miss Me A Lot Of, was published in 2007 by Victoria University Press. She has work in the current edition of Gargoyle.