But when the actresses are out in the lobby right now, no one is going to dare bring that one up. Early on we had to decide whether this was an action picture or a drama with action. I was a strong advocate of the latter because I could not think of one action film in recent history with a female lead. When we were trying to set the tone and the genre for G.I. Jane, I surmised that we would want to stay clear from an action genre because we'd miss our target audience. One of the things that people say about Speed is that women like it because it's got a strong woman in it.
Speed does have extraordinarily unidimensional characters, maybe two-dimensional at best.
That was one of the strengths of Speed-the character of Annie. Hopefully, that will intrigue more women into trying their hand at writing action stuff. But it's a tough boys' club to crack. The women writers that I know all seem to work in episodic television or are writing comedy features. Maybe women writers are not particularly interested in telling these stories.