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I’ve noticed a trend lately.

In a lot of wildly successful ads recently, there has been well-deserved praise for the brilliant women behind them. However, it often comes at the expense of the men involved. I am lucky to be surrounded by smart, creative, driven women cranking out amazing work day after day, and they absolutely deserve the respect and recognition they’re finally getting. Full stop. But when I see the PR machine praising the “all-women team” and noting that “of course women did this,” I can’t help but feel a twinge of discomfort. I know the collaborative, empathetic, thoughtful men who worked on these campaigns. As someone who soaks up praise like a flower in the sun, I can’t help but feel sad for them to be completely written out of their own successes.

I am a woman. I have experienced workplace sexism like every other woman on Earth. The fact remains that especially in our industry, we are fighting tooth and nail for the same recognition a man would get just for walking into a room. But I don’t think the solution is flipping the power imbalance from men to women. I love a novelty t-shirt as much as the next gal, but the future isn’t female. It’s equal.

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The Fallacy of Beer-Based Hiring

One thing I hear often from the type of people who make a big deal about office culture is that they hire based on who they’d want to get a beer with. (These people always relay this insight smugly, and with the distinct intonation that they were the first person who thought of it.) Or they proudly announce that they don’t want to talk about work in your interview, they want to hear about you. What your interests are. What do you do outside of work.

But here’s the rub. What they mean when they say “your interests” is what 90’s hip-hop records you own. Where you go surfing. What your creative side hustle is. They want to hear about your interests, as long as those interests are also interesting to them.

Judging someone by their interests is how you make friends. Your employees are not your friends. Your coworkers are not your friends. It’s cool if you like your coworkers, and it’s even cooler if friendships arise out of working together, but “always comes to happy hour” is not a prerequisite of a talented creative mind. The weirdo who’s into manga and builds his own Gameboys and is terrible at public speaking could be the most innovative artistic genius you’ll ever come across. You don’t know. Because he seems like a boring hang. The writer who listens to the Game of Thrones soundtrack while she works may have your next award-winning campaign bouncing around her noggin along with a 300-year history of the Targaryen family that she committed to memory in her free time. But you weren’t interested in a detailed breakdown of Aegon’s Conquest.

You know what you get when you hire people who have the same interests as you? You get you. More of you. A million yous, with the same experience, the same worldview, and the same ideas.

Take a chance on a wierdo. Hire people you don’t want to see outside of meeting rooms, let alone outside of work. Hire the shy guy. Hire the awkward girl. Hire someone who pushes you. Hire someone who makes you think, not someone who makes you comfortable.

Hire based on talent. Talent is what makes good work. Beerability is just a bonus.

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Wind River (2017)

Grade: C- and I’m being generous.

Heavy spoilers below.

Where do I even begin unpacking this train wreck?

The plot is thus: Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen investigate the rape and death of secretive teenager on a Native American reservation. Sounds dark and titillating and Top of the Lake-y, but I assure you -- it’s not and it sucks.

I don’t understand how the writer (Taylor Sheridan, who also directed) responsible for the complex, emotional, believably human connections between the law enforcement and brother duos of Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water could follow it with this steaming pile of disappointment. The dialogue was laughable at best and cringe-inducing at its worst, riddled with cliches, awkward exchanges, and incoherent ramblings about how tough this land and its people are. We’re treated to a boring and obvious Tragic Backstory™ for Jeremy Renner, who is dressed like a giant sperm for about 60% of his scenes. That was apparently all the character development we needed because literally none of the other characters get any. The rest of the movie is just gorgeous drone shots of Wyoming and Elizabeth Olsen giving us dead eyes and an open-mouthed pout.

The perfect example of how eye-rollingly shitty and hamfisted this movie gets comes when Elizabeth Olsen asks if they should call for backup before entering a crack den, to which the gruff Lakota sheriff responds: “This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re-on-your-own.” What? The fuck? What bumper sticker did you read that from? I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be funny, since this character was relegated to POC sidekick/comic relief, or a sobering reflection of the harshness of the Wyoming badlands. Either way, I laughed. At it. Not with it. Because it was stupid.

Jeremy Renner, bless his heart, does the best with what he’s given. He does a passable impression of a guy with a dead daughter and a lot of emotional baggage out to find closure by solving a similar case for his friend. Elizabeth Olsen’s bumbling rookie FBI agent Jane leaves something to be desired. Who is Jane? What are her motivations? WHY IS SHE SO CHILL AFTER FATALLY SHOOTING A TEENAGER? We never get to find out because all she does is complain a lot and ask everyone for help doing her job and get saved in the end by Jeremy Renner who, let’s be honest, does 99% of the heavy lifting in this case and movie.

The first time we meet Jane, she’s driving through a snowstorm and woefully underdressed for the weather. Jane, honey, have you ever heard of Wyoming? You didn’t think to check the weather at any point during the multiple plane rides and layovers and trips to the car rental agency and the several hour drive it took to get here? And when the BUNDLED ASS UP locals are like, “Hey so, you should probably get like a thicker coat or something before we snowmobile through this blizzard,” she’s like, “You really don’t think I’ll be fine in my windbreaker and polyester work pants?” Sadly, Jane does not go into a hypothermic coma and spare us the next 90 minutes of this waking nightmare. A hostile old woman lets her borrow (”BORROW. IT’S NOT A GIFT, YOU HEAR ME.”) the same snowsuit I had in 1992 and the story continues, unfortunately for us.

It doesn’t get better for Jane as the plot progresses. She’s utterly useless as a detective -- she doesn’t find any leads or contribute anything to the investigation and she literally says “I don’t know what I’m doing!” at one point. Yeah, I don’t know what you’re doing either but just like. Stop. Stop doing it. Also worth mentioning is her “hilarious" quip about the weather: “Didn’t you guys get the memo that it’s spring?” Jesus Jane, read the room. A girl just died.

As for the other characters -- honestly, who the fuck cares. The writer sure didn’t. The first time we meet the victim’s father he comes in REAL hot, acting inexplicably hostile, uncooperative and generally just being a huge dick to the only people who are trying to help. When Jane shows some honestly valid incredulity about the fact that he doesn’t know his daughter’s boyfriend’s name, he’s like, “She’s 18, she’s an adult.” What the fuck? She still lives with you! You see her every day! Even if you’re not trying to keep tabs on her every move aren’t you like, at all curious about her life? No wonder she’s sneaking around with old ass Jon Bernthal: hello, daddy issues! Then we get a nice conversation where Jeremy Renner volunteers to avenge his daughter’s death and Dad’s like cool, I’ll just fuck off until the last scene. Dude literally does not leave his home the entire movie.

Now, I appreciated Pocahontas as much as the next eight year old, but even I balked at the white savior-iness of this movie. For a movie that wanted to call attention to the harrowing conditions on this particular Native American reservation, the Native characters sure were badly written and one-dimensional and like, kind of useless compared to the (white) main characters (mostly just Jeremy Renner). We had comic relief sheriff Graham Greene, whose only lines were spectacularly corny one-liners; grieving-father-slash-adult-daughter-neglector Gil Birmingham, who was fine and also had amazing hair; and the victim’s drug addict brother who would have fit right in as a bit character in an early season Law & Order episode (“Sometimes I get so mad I want to fight the world!”).

In addition to the mawkish dialogue, every advance of the plot is explicitly called out by the characters. At no point is the audience allowed to make any conclusions for ourselves. Rather than let the camera linger over snowmobile tracks leading into the distance and let us infer where they go and what that means, we get Jeremy Renner handing his binoculars to Jane and explaining exactly how tire tracks and binoculars and using your eyes works. The most egregious flaw of all, however, is that THEY DON’T EVEN SOLVE THE CRIME THROUGH DETECTIVE WORK. As soon as the mystery starts building the slightest bit of momentum, what actually happened is explicitly shown to us in a flashback and then everyone just shoots each other and dies. I’m not even exaggerating; after they look into THE FIRST CLUE, the movie just tells us who did it.

We get another gem of dialogue at the end, as Jeremy Renner is comforting Jane for being such a weak loser.

“Luck don’t live out here. Luck lives in the city.”

Cut to a FarmersOnly.com commercial.