Rose McGowan hasn’t been acting in films with the same frequency that she did in say, the early-to-mid-2000s. But that doesn’t mean the “Scream” and “Planet Terror” star isn’t making headlines. Last month, McGowan made major waves by calling out Hollywood for what she perceived to be its “grossness and sexism,” and revealed that she had been dropped by her agent for making incendiary remarks and biting the hand that feeds, so to speak.
Honestly, whether you agree with her or not, McGowan’s got a point. Gender inequality has been an unfortunate and egregious staple of Hollywood filmmaking for far too long. In this new podcast with Talkhouse Film, McGowan talks to filmmaker Mary Harron, who channeled her own inner feminist making her brilliant adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho," itself a skewering of masculine vanity and the culture of entitlement and exclusion that allows such a sick mindset to flourish. We have the entirety of their talk here, and it’s very much worth a listen.
READ MORE: Mary Harron Lines Up A New Project
Perhaps her truth-telling nature and no-bullshit attitude has been what’s keeping McGowan from appearing in major features all these years. Here she talks boldly about her own checkered past, including her time as a reckless teenage runaway and how she first broke into the industry. She and Harron also discuss the standards of beauty for women, the allure of Hollywood and its slightly toxic nature, and how their respective careers have marked them as important and powerful women in an industry that does not always recognize them for their gifts. Frankly, I would argue that this talk is an essential listen. In a world where we are inundated with frivolous, over-exaggerated non-news every waking moment of the day, hearing McGowan’s fiery and well-articulated rhetoric makes you hope that more people will start to pay attention to important issues like this.
Check out the entire 51-minute podcast below.
