Film Gives Teen Secret Crush On The Fat Woman Next Door
Raymond de Felitta, writer/director of the film City Island, discusses his film’s attention-getting subplot in this article in Salon.
A subplot involves the Rizzo family’s youngest son (the brilliant Ezra Miller) who is secretly ashamed of his adolescent yearning for the woman next door, an Internet “goddess” named Denise who is 400 pounds and a proud advocate of BBWs… one of the most frequently asked question I get at Q&As is: “What’s with you and the fat chick stuff?” Only people don’t come out and say it quite that way. Instead they say:
“Uh … the section of the film with the … larger woman … and the boy who um … likes her … (pause, then) … um — why?”
The director explains that he created this subplot to try and find a secret for the teenage boy to keep that was original, rather than “been there, done that.” The article also has a look at the casting process for the character of Denise which will surprise, oh, nobody.
When I wrote the word “obese” in my script, it somehow got translated to “overweight” to the breakdown service. As a result, we were deluged with photos of women who were, like, 170 pounds. As I poured through them in dismay, I realized that a Hollywood casting director’s idea of obese and what I was writing about were about 200 pounds apart. When I told them that I needed to see people much, MUCH larger, they answered:
“Oh. But you don’t really want to cast somebody that fat, do you?”
To which my answer became a defiant: “Fatter.”
Thanks to Weetabix for the link!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Kids, Movies
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De Felitta’s article in Salon was great. The comments were all over the place, but a surprising number were fairly fat positive. Of course, there were a few requisite idiots who blamed fat people for being lazy fools who sat around stuffing their faces. The usual. Yawn.
Well, considering how many times I was told how fat I was when I was trying to get an agent in Hollywood (I’m 5’9″ and weighed 140 at the time), this doesn’t surprise me one bit. For Hollywood producers, ANYTHING is better than having to look at a woman with any fat on her body. Seriously, most of these folks would rather have cancer than have to be in the same room as a REAL fat person!
“Oh. But you don’t really want to cast somebody that fat, do you?”
To which my answer became a defiant: “Fatter.”
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I must admmit, I kinda love that above bit.
I’m with silentbeep. That’s sort of beautiful, and I wonder how much brain-breaking it will end up doing in the long run.
Diana – lots, I hope.
I really loved that part of the movie, the fact that the fat women were NEVER a punchline, not ever, and the kid wasn’t a joke for finding them attractive. Also, I just loved the movie, but I’ll admit, fat women as part of the plot that wasn’t a weight-loss plot really made me happy.
People’s intolerance of difference, is so painfully shallow to me. Maybe if more people were asking “um…why” when people hire extremely underweight women as actresses, we wouldn’t be here. It’s just beyond me, don’t these people have lives outside of policing others?