The Bitch List Project

Curator's Note

The Bitch Pack is a collective of creatives and film & media students (current + past), men and women who believe that there should be more screenplays produced into films (reel life) that reflect how women talk, in real life. We started a media literacy campaign called The Bitch List, aka The Bechdel List.

The Bechdel Test states that a film has to have at least two [named] women in it, who talk to each other, about something besides a man.   

Our goal is to find scripted material with:

Brilliant
 
Intriguing
 
Tenacious
 
Creative
 
Heroines

that passes the Bechdel Test for more than one page. Our first Bitch List of writer submitted Bechdel Test passing screenlays (un-produced) can be found on our website.

We’re in contact with The Blood List, The Black List and The Hit List and are inspired by their work to feature quality writing and content in the entertainment areas in which they concentrate. We focus on Bechdel Test passing screenplays and dialogue between women.

Since film is the world’s largest medium, we know film can change society’s perceptions and people’s lives. There’s a lot of discourse after films are released. We seek to go to the source of why so few film projects show women how we are and not from a “male gaze” or how we’re currently dominantly portrayed. We’re going upstream to the screenplay. First the writer is in full control of all the decisions in the original draft, then execs and producers and directors are capable of preserving progressive scenes to make positive change.

Comments

Change takes time, but sitting around and watching the clock doesn't bring change--action does. And you've taken such action through your Bitch List. Just by existing, you're already raising awareness. The more you can educate people about the inequities, the more people will begin to recognize the deficit. Baby steps! You've got to start somewhere. Susan B. Anthony lived 86 years and still saw only small change before she died. And yet, within her lifetime, she helped abolish slavery by forcing the 15th Amendment in 1870, allowing African American males to vote; she also persuaded the University of Rochester to allow women to study there in 1901 (after giving them her life insurance policy--money always talks). And of course, she inspired a whole generation of women, like Alice Paul, who did, in fact, bring Anthony's life's work to fruition fourteen years after her death in 1920 with the 19th Amendment. When you think about it, women have only had their political voices heard for 93 years in the States--that's not very long. But women like Katherine Bigelow, Nora Ephron, Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Amy Pascal, Laura Ziskin, Sherry Lansing, Stacey Snider, and others have now collected a number of female firsts in Hollywood--thanks to the work of Anthony and Paul. Your Bitch List is also among those firsts. In the next twenty years, the handful of ladies bringing change will blossom into numbers that can fill a state like New York (which has only 5-million people less than the entire country of Canada!). So keep up the GREAT work!!! Like Anthony, your work will flourish and there will be women all over the world looking back and saying, "It's all because of the Bitch List!"

Thanks, Thuc, for the important work that The Bitch Pack does. Your video makes the excellent points that films featuring active female characters reflect the wonderful complexities of who women are today (thus resonating with a 21st century audience), and that these movies are financially successful. I look forward to seeing the work of female filmmakers--and all filmmakers--who tell a variety of diverse stories to add to the mosiac, thus widening the canon in terms of onscreen representations of women. Thanks to The Bitch Pack for continuing to advocate for the Bechdel Test precepts. We need you! I watched a number of films trying to figure out which 2012 movie I wanted to discuss this week. It surprised me how many films still do not pass the test--in 2013. Shouldn't all films made today pass the Bechdel Test? (And thank to Alison Bechdel for "The Rule" in 1985: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zizyphus/34585797/)

What a terrific, powerful video! It's amazing what an impact numbers have, and how eye-opening a tool like the Bechdel Test can be. So glad to have been introduced to it! Thank you ladies for putting even more energy and strength behind it with the Bitch List - what a fabulous resource for producers and filmmakers, and at the same time you've provided a super "of course we can and should do this!" goal for screenwriters (that's also, I'd guess, a wake-up call in many cases). Can't wait to see more brilliant, intriguing, tenacious, creative heroines on screen. And to get the scent of what the bitch pack is up to next!

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