From the moment that Frances McDormand warned the audience “I’ve got some things to say,” it felt like we were about to get something special. And it was: a pleasingly raucous speech with snowboarding references and a Coen shoutout and a lovely moment where she got the (all too few) female nominees to stand up together. And then, in a move that only proved its brilliance afterwards, she said two magic words: “inclusion rider.”
Initially, the reaction was a sort of ‘huh?’ Half the viewers seemed to think she said “inclusion writer.” But soon, the term was trending, and people were googling, and they were discovering what it was. In short, the idea is, as the term ‘rider’ might suggest, a perk of stardom that powerful performers and filmmakers can ask for in their contracts, like always having a bowl of jelly beans in their trailer BUT NOT THE RED ONES, JUST THE PURPLE ONES, HOW MANY TIMES DARREN.
But this isn’t an ego trip or a power play, it’s a way of helping people up the ladder behind you. Invented, per Vanity Fair, by USC communications professor and civil-rights and employment-practice attorney Kalpana Kotagal, it’s a provision that stipulates that supporting roles in movies should reflect the world around us better, with the idea it would maintain equal gender parity, 40% of roles for people of color, 5% for LGBTQ performers and 20% disabled actors.
Hopefully, similar measures could be applied to crew hiring practices as well — Dee Rees, for one, says that she’s insisted on minority representation on sets since her debut, though has never had it in her contract.
Almost no one, it seems, was aware that the inclusion rider was a thing — McDormand herself says that she only learned of the concept last week, while Meryl Streep told Vanity Fair “It’s something we didn’t know we could demand. It’s because girls ask for permission, but now, we are just bursting.” But McDormand highlighting it, and even the way in which she highlighted it, dangling only the term and ensuring that a bunch of explainer pieces like this one would be written, ensured that it would be the talk of the town the day after. This year’s equivalent of the Best Picture snafu.
You know that a generation of newly powerful female and minority stars and filmmakers — your Jessica Chastains, your Ava DuVernays, your Taika Waititis, your Greta Gerwigs, your Chadwick Bosemans, your Lupita Nyong’os, your Ryan Cooglers — will be emailing their agents this week with the subject line ‘Inclusion Rider.’ Hopefully some of their woke male allies too, your Chrises Evans and Pine and the like. And that’s how change starts. Not overnight, necessarily, but it lays the seeds for it.
Of course, this moment likely wouldn’t have happened without the last six months post-WeinsteinGate, or indeed the conversations that were taking place in the years before that too (it’s interesting to note, too, that for all the problematic political elements of “Three Billboards,” it’s been a vehicle for effective protest, be it McDormand yesterday, or the aping of the film’s titular signage to highlight gun control or the response to the Grenfell fire in London).
But that shouldn’t take away from the brilliance or bravery of McDormand’s move, the media savvy of doing what she did when she did it, and how she did it. The conversation’s still ongoing, and maybe a year from now few stars will have implemented these changes in their contracts, but it feels more than likely that in years to come, the 2018 Oscars will be remembered best for those two words: inclusion rider.
Click here for more from our Oscars 2018 coverage, including the Best & Worst of the ceremony, all the speeches, and the Snubs & Surprises.
Frances McDormand photo credit: John Farrell / A.M.P.A.S.
