9 Most Insane Things Happening In Movies & TV Right Now (Jan 4th)

3. A Film Was Almost Changed Because A Husband Was TOO Supportive

Imagine a world where no husband can ever be supportive. Where women have hopes and dreams and then come home to a brusque stereotype in a stained vest telling them to give up on their dreams and concentrate on looking after him and the kids. It sounds familiar because it's literally a thing (a perfectly reasonable allegorical response to toxic patriarchal power, whatever you want to call it).

And it seems that it's still ongoing among film executives, who tried to get Mimi Leder's On The Basis Of Sex changed because they felt it was unrealistic that Ruth Gader Ginsberg's husband Martin (played by Armie Hammer) would ever be as supportive of his wife, who is played by Felicity Jones.

In a new interview with The New York Times, the film's screenwriter Daniel Stiepleman said financiers and execs demanded changes before they'd finance it:

“Backers offered to fund the film if [Martin] was rewritten as angrier, or less understanding; maybe he should threaten to divorce his wife, if she didn’t drop the case. It came up a lot. I remember at some point saying in a meeting, ‘There’s a 5,000-year history of narrative, of men coming home from battle, and their wives patch them up and boost their egos and send them back out to fight again. You write one supportive husband, and everyone’s like, such a creature could never exist!'”

The mythical unicorn of movie marriage, apparently.