The sex­ist Black Wid­ow joke sal­vaged by Nicole Holofcener

The super­hero tent­pole du jour Black Wid­ow is a film about many things: espi­onage; large CGI objects explod­ing in the sky; but above all else, the bond between two women. Scar­lett Johans­son​’s assassin/​spy Natasha and her younger coun­ter­part in Flo­rence Pugh​’s Yele­na find com­mon ground in their shared trau­mas and forge a way for­ward, while sur­viv­ing in a world that would use their wom­an­hood against them.

One eye­brow-rais­ing moment in the film address­es that much head-on, when Yele­na pro­vides a cut­ting reply to an offhand­ed remark about her ill-tem­pered mood being due to her time of the month. She throws the com­pul­so­ry hys­terec­to­my all Black Wid­ows-in-train­ing are forced to endure back in the man’s face, dis­arm­ing him with the grim truth behind his patro­n­is­ing joke.

Direc­tor Cate Short­land stopped by the Truth & Movies pod­cast this week to dis­cuss her new film, a con­ver­sa­tion that even­tu­al­ly touched on that very exchange. Short­land con­fessed that the line was the result of an ear­ly draft of the script that she and her stars both thought was ​“so dumb”, in which the offend­ing joke appeared but went uncom­ment­ed on.

It was altered by Nicole Holofcener, the wit behind Love­ly and Amaz­ing, Please Give and Enough Said, who was brought in to pol­ish up the dia­logue. As Short­land recalls, “[Holofcener] said, ​‘We don’t take it out – we’ll get the girls to answer it.’ She was punch­ing things up by not dimin­ish­ing the polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect stuff, but say­ing, ​‘Let’s get the women in there and get their hands dirty, too.’ That was fun, and made the film more robust, and made the girls tough. They didn’t back down or squirm. If you want to talk about this, let’s talk about it.”

You can lis­ten to the full exchange here.

Suc­cess­ful­ly work­ing any stand of prin­ci­ple into a mul­ti-hun­dred-mil­lion-dol­lar stu­dio project rep­re­sents a cre­ative vic­to­ry for the writ­ers, and in this instance, it’s also in keep­ing with Natasha and Yelena’s no-BS spir­it. Their great­est pow­er isn’t strength or agili­ty, but the abil­i­ty to shut down a chau­vin­ist smartass.

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