You and Pepper share a track of the film just together that was interesting because it wasn’t a jealous, “We’ve both been with the same man” kind of thing. It was all business.
Rebecca Hall: To be honest with you, it’s one of the main reasons why I took the job. When I initially heard about it, I thought, okay they’re bringing another woman in, it’s going to be two females in this, it’s going to probably end up in this horribly reductive, stereotypical cat fight. When I saw that it wasn’t and that it was actually daring to write something that was grown up and sophisticated, where women are actually bigger than being defined by the people that they’ve slept with, I thought it was kind of great! I applauded it and I applaud Marvel for keeping it in because it would very easy for them to have gone, “Well, no one’s interested in that sort of stuff in a film like this.” But the truth is, actually, that they are because I have yet to do an interview with someone who hasn’t said exactly that.
Have you heard of the Bechdel Test before?
Rebecca Hall: No, what’s that?
It’s by a cartoonist called Alison Bechdel. The test for a movie is, is there more one woman in the film? Do they talk to each other about something other than a man? And most movies will fail it.
Rebecca Hall: I’m sure! That’s brilliant! I’ve never heard of that. That is brilliant.
They’re talking to each other about technology. The guy they slept with is almost incidental to the whole thing.
Rebecca Hall: Exactly. They’re smart women. That’s what people want to see now, that’s the stuff that women are complaining about when they say, “Nobody writes good female characters.” Sure, you can get big characters in movies that are women, but nobody’s writing them particularly interestingly or making it real. It’s that sort of stuff. [Iron Man 3 is] taking a different take, not the obvious one. That’s great. (x)
knitting in the dark 