Eva Longoria complains ‘a white male’ can survive directing $200M flop

Eva Longoria spoke out about the film industry’s apparent sexism during her Kering Women in Motion presentation on Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

The 48-year-old actress-turned-director claimed she and other female filmmakers had higher expectations for the industry.

She claimed that “a white man” with a huge “$200 million” box office flop could still get a follow-up film to direct, while she and other women probably wouldn’t get another shot at directing even after a smaller failure. according to Variety.

During her talk, she also spoke about her upcoming directorial debut Flamin’ Hot, which presents a version of the disputed history of the creation of the wildly popular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

Longoria said she felt “the weight of my community” and “the weight of every female director” when she began working on the comedy film.

Speaking to Variety, Longoria was adamant that there was no margin for error for her or other female filmmakers, even though men were given multiple opportunities after directing big money losers.

“We don’t get many bites into the apple,” she said of Latina directors. “My movie wasn’t low budget by any means — it wasn’t $100 million, but it wasn’t $2 million either.

When was the last Latina-directed studio movie? It was like 20 years ago. We can’t get a movie every 20 years.’

She continued, “The problem is, if this movie fails, people say, ‘Oh Latino stories don’t work… female directors really don’t make it.’ We don’t get many at bats.’

But “A white man can direct a $200 million movie, fail, and get another one. That is the problem. I get one at bat, one chance, work twice as hard, twice as fast, twice as cheap.”

Longoria added that the struggles of previous female and Latin American directors “fuelled” her ambitions.

“You really carry the generational traumas with you while making the movie,” she said. “For me, it fed me. I was determined.’

During her lecture, Longoria was accompanied by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, a professor and researcher at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The actress and filmmaker has been praised by the academic for “taking the walk” with her work on The Inclusion List, as she surveyed a number of producers, film and distribution companies to increase inclusiveness in the film and television industry.

“This was a concerted effort to reward people who do well on screen when it comes to representation across multiple categories: gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities and over the age of 65,” Smith said of the list . “Are we showing the stories that aren’t being told? And who works behind the camera?’

Longoria jumped in to note that the way studios measure success can be suspicious.

She accused executives of encouraging themselves by saying, “We’ve doubled the number of women behind the camera!”

However, the new filmmaker said those increases are pointless if they are based on such a small figure.

“They went from one to two. And you’re like, “Okay, technically yes, but you still only hired two women.” So it is very important how you measure success. And because inclusion is that benchmark, it’s so great because you get to applaud the people who are doing it right,” she explained.

The Desperate Housewives star also dug into her new movie Flamin’ Hot, saying it was inspired by Latin characters resembling people in her own family, which she hoped would resonate with viewers.

“Twenty-eight percent of ticket buyers at the box office are Latino,” she explained. “Your movie won’t succeed if you don’t have a Latino audience. Do you know how many Latinos showed up for Crazy Rich Asians? Do you know how many Latinos bought a ticket to Fast And The Furious?

“We over-index on moviegoing, so why shouldn’t there be content for us if we’re the ticket buyers? If we are the viewers? … For me, I take pride in throwing that purchasing power weight around. If you don’t talk to us, we might not buy that movie ticket,” she added.

Despite the strength of the Latin audience, according to Longoria, there were still too few Latin performers working on movie sets.

“We’re still underrepresented in front of the camera, we’re still underrepresented behind the camera, we’re still not tapping into the women of the Latino community,” she said. “We were at seven percent in TV and film, now we’re at five percent, so the myth that Hollywood is so progressive is a myth when you look at the data.”

She called Hollywood’s so-called “progressive” nature a myth, adding, “The reality is we’re still way behind on equal representation.”

Longoria’s film Flamin’ Hot follows the life of Richard Montañez, who claimed he came up with the idea for the hugely popular Flaming’ Hot Cheetos while working as a janitor at Frito-Lay.

The film, which stars Jesse Garcia as Montañez, appears to poke fun at Montañez’s story, though Frito-Lay has disputed his claims that he came up with the idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

He has claimed that the spicy treat came about after a machine malfunctioned, leaving Cheetos with no cheese-flavored powder, so he took some home to give them more kick with seasonings reminiscent of Mexican street corn.

After reportedly presenting his new creation to the CEO, Frito-Lay tested the product and gave it a test launch in Los Angeles before a national release in 1992.

However, one Los Angeles Times May 2021 research interviewed more than a dozen former employees who said Montañez was not involved in making the special Cheetos.

Records at the company did not appear to support his involvement in the process.

The producers of Longoria’s film were reportedly warned in 2019 about discrepancies between the records and her subject’s story, but went full steam ahead.

Shooting of the movie seems to have started just around the time the exposé was released.

While large parts of the film are reportedly a fabrication, Montañez still has an inspiring story after rising from factory worker to vice president at PepsiCo.

His stories of inventing the Flamin’ Hot Cheeto apparently didn’t start to surface until the late 2000s, when most of the people involved in the original rollout had retired, leaving few people to factor into the veracity of his claims. .

Flamin’ Hot will be released to stream on Hulu on June 9, 2023.