Gertz Has Solution to Film Gender Gap

Jami Gertz, the 25-year-old actress who stars in the new movie “Sibling Rivalry,” has a solution to bridge the movies’ yawning gender gap between male-oriented violent action epics and so-called women’s pictures.

“You can’t blame moviemakers for all the male-oriented violent films,” she said. “It’s the fault of the people who go to see those pictures. Audiences are mostly composed of people 13 to 30, and more than half of that age group are women.”

Well, if American women are fed up with squealing tires and automatic-weapons fire, why don’t they do something about it?

The answer, Gertz said somewhat facetiously, may be some drastic reprogramming.

“In order to get Hollywood to make movies that appeal to women, we ought to hold a huge young women’s conference,” she said. “We need to put them all in one room and hit them up side the head with something heavy.

“After they’re in deep pain and kind of disoriented, they need to be brainwashed into telling their boyfriends or spouses they must go to a movie that they want to see or they won’t go to a violent film.

“It’s a trade-off. Compromises have to be reached.

“Every time a woman goes with her man to see ‘Die Hard,’ she should take him to ‘Postcards From the Edge’ or ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ or ‘Steel Magnolias.’ ” Does Gertz practice what she preaches? “I do!” she insisted. “My husband (banker Tony Ressler) goes with me every step of the way. He has no choice.

“For every one of his Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Seagal films, I take him to three films I want to see. He comes out of my films saying, ‘God, I’m really glad I saw that. I’m embarrassed about it, but I liked it. Women can be interesting.’

“Some of my friends in Hollywood do the same thing. I go to Chicago, where I grew up. My friends back there tend to just go along to movies with their boyfriends, no matter what the subject matter is. They ought to tell them, ‘No kissing unless we go to see my kind of movie.’ ”

She added: “Maybe it’s a matter of finding more women writers and more actresses saying ‘no’ to passive, unimportant parts in violent pictures.”