Looking Back at Searching for Debra Winger through the #MeToo Lens | Chaz's Journal

“People wonder why movies stars do television … (it’s) because the parts are more interesting,” Samantha Mathis says at Griffith’s house. “In television, they’re more interested in showing women in a real way, in giving us something to do.”

Meantime, many of the women confess being told that in their 30s and 40s, they’re just too old for most parts. But they actually become better actresses as they age. 

“Men in their 40s find women in their 40s attractive, but the whole American movie industry is skewed towards the male teenage demographic; and the problem with teenage boys in America is, they’ve lost interest in sex altogether,” says Roger Ebert, the one man Arquette interviews. 

These paradoxes actresses deal with aren’t limited to the studios. They also happen at home. 

Robin Wright tells Arquette that she is—at that point—working about once per year.

“That’s what it’s come down to,” she says. “But when you get to 11 months, you’re chomping at the bits.”

Arquette asks Wright if her then-husband Sean Penn would ask her to forgo her project so he can do his. Wright hesitates, eventually saying, “it depends on what his ‘big thing’ is.” Just the same, from 1992 to 2004, while their children were born and growing, Wright worked once or twice per year, accumulating 17 titles to her credit. Meantime, Penn earned 24. In 1997, he got 6 credits while she got 2 (one of those titles was “She’s So Lovely,” starring both).

Wright chose to work less in the absence of someone else making that choice, but it’s clear that she would have liked to work more. She doesn’t because someone has to look after the children.

“Anyone who says that having children is not a sacrifice is pretty much lying, or not taking care of their kids,” says Debra Winger, the titular interviewee, who took a break from the business at least in part to raise her kids with actor Arliss Howard.

Apart from considering what has and hasn’t changed since the movie’s 2002 release, what makes it harder to watch now is that it’s a painful reminder of just how long we haven’t been listening to women. While it received decent reviews, most of them focused on the execution rather than any of the claims made by the actresses.