Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The take that Gerwig’s Barbie (starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds) is a good match up comparison film for IEWU is priceless. Keep digging that hole, PP!

Barbie did not at all star Ryan Reynolds, but go on…?

Right — the other, handsomer Ryan who made La La Land and can dance! Keep digging!

I’m so confused

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The movie completely unexpectedly made $350 million dollars but “she screwed up” is a position I do not understand. $350 million with a no name director Lively and Slate being the only somewhat big names is a miracle. Everyone should be hiring BL and JB to feud through another movie tif they somehow banked $350m out of a romantic drama where the two leads break up and the family splits apart.

Love that you left off the Colleen Hoover factor here. The film only had a built-in fan base of tens of millions of people who couldn’t wait for it before Blake was even cast lol

DP but I think it was a range of factors, that include:

1) Lively's name and face, which likely gave the movie some box office heft and drew at least some audience members
2) Hoover's popularity, which also helped bring along some built in audience
3) The marketing of the movie. This is one place where Wayfarer's court arguments are really problematic for me. The truth is that a movie about DV is simply a hard sell at the box office. So the decision by Sony AND Wayfarer to frame the movie in marketing as being about redemption and this woman's journey, as opposed to being about DV explicitly, was smart and I am certain it helped the movie. The floral-heavy theme in marketing also helped. You want potential audience members to have a positive, enthusiastic mental association with the movie. The combo of Lively's face, the flowers, and the sort of light "this is about a woman on a journey" tone of the marketing helped do that. Had they marketed the movie directly as a film about DV, it simply would not have made so much. I feel confident in that.
4) The decision to heavily promote the movie in Europe. The movie had multiple European premieres. I suspect Hoovers books are popular in Europe and that might have been a major reason for this. Lively herself attended the London and Copenhagen premiers, and Baldoni showed up to a screening in Sweden (not a premiere, and unclear if this was part of the marketing campaign -- I think he was vacationing in Sweden with his family and just went). If you look at the box office break down, the overseas numbers are really good. This was a smart strategy, to get the movie on so many screens abroad and then to back that up with a lot of marketing directed at those audiences.
5) The controversy with Baldoni/Lively. I absolutely think some people went to this movie in part because they heard about the drama between Baldoni and the cast! Hard to quantify how many but some.
6) The crappy costumes! Again, you will laugh at me, but the wacky wardrobe probably helped the movie get buzz. This is not something new for IEWU. People also went to see the SATC movies, which were TERRIBLE, in part to see the women wearing their stupid designer clothes. Also, while the costuming in the movie looks weird and wrong to millennial and Gen X eyes, it's actually very on trend for Gen Z audiences. With a 350m box office, I'm guessing this movie got a bit more of the Gen Z audience than you would expect a movie like this to get, and the look of Lively's character might have contributed to that. That's how Gen Z dresses.

Honestly, when you take it all together, it all looks genius -- the casting, basing it on the book, the marketing, the international angle, the free press from the infighting, and the insane costumes that got talked about and criticized all over the place -- it almost looks like a carefully plotted publicity plan to help a mediocre romantic drama gross $350m dollars and shock the world.

But then it's funny to see people criticizing a lot of these elements when they all combined to help this move become very successful.

I'll note that Wayfarer and Baldoni's involvement really didn't seem to offer an ROI at all. That doesn't mean they did a bad job, just noting that they have no box office pull. No one went to this movie because Baldoni starred and directed, or Wayfarer made it. It was a net neutral.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The movie completely unexpectedly made $350 million dollars but “she screwed up” is a position I do not understand. $350 million with a no name director Lively and Slate being the only somewhat big names is a miracle. Everyone should be hiring BL and JB to feud through another movie tif they somehow banked $350m out of a romantic drama where the two leads break up and the family splits apart.

Love that you left off the Colleen Hoover factor here. The film only had a built-in fan base of tens of millions of people who couldn’t wait for it before Blake was even cast lol

Yep. This is about Colleen Hoover. I'm not her demographic but she is hugely popular, probably the most popular writer of the last 5-7 years. The BookTok phenomenon on TikTok started with her books and they became phenomenally popular. I had no doubt the movie would be a hit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The movie completely unexpectedly made $350 million dollars but “she screwed up” is a position I do not understand. $350 million with a no name director Lively and Slate being the only somewhat big names is a miracle. Everyone should be hiring BL and JB to feud through another movie if they somehow banked $350m out of a romantic drama where the two leads break up and the family splits apart.

Love that you left off the Colleen Hoover factor here. The film only had a built-in fan base of tens of millions of people who couldn’t wait for it before Blake was even cast lol

The Girl on the Train sold 11M copies within the first year of its release — extremely impressive and probably even comparatively better than IEWU which has sold 10M worldwide cumulatively over time — but came nowhere near $350M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The movie completely unexpectedly made $350 million dollars but “she screwed up” is a position I do not understand. $350 million with a no name director Lively and Slate being the only somewhat big names is a miracle. Everyone should be hiring BL and JB to feud through another movie tif they somehow banked $350m out of a romantic drama where the two leads break up and the family splits apart.

Love that you left off the Colleen Hoover factor here. The film only had a built-in fan base of tens of millions of people who couldn’t wait for it before Blake was even cast lol

DP but I think it was a range of factors, that include:

1) Lively's name and face, which likely gave the movie some box office heft and drew at least some audience members
2) Hoover's popularity, which also helped bring along some built in audience
3) The marketing of the movie. This is one place where Wayfarer's court arguments are really problematic for me. The truth is that a movie about DV is simply a hard sell at the box office. So the decision by Sony AND Wayfarer to frame the movie in marketing as being about redemption and this woman's journey, as opposed to being about DV explicitly, was smart and I am certain it helped the movie. The floral-heavy theme in marketing also helped. You want potential audience members to have a positive, enthusiastic mental association with the movie. The combo of Lively's face, the flowers, and the sort of light "this is about a woman on a journey" tone of the marketing helped do that. Had they marketed the movie directly as a film about DV, it simply would not have made so much. I feel confident in that.
4) The decision to heavily promote the movie in Europe. The movie had multiple European premieres. I suspect Hoovers books are popular in Europe and that might have been a major reason for this. Lively herself attended the London and Copenhagen premiers, and Baldoni showed up to a screening in Sweden (not a premiere, and unclear if this was part of the marketing campaign -- I think he was vacationing in Sweden with his family and just went). If you look at the box office break down, the overseas numbers are really good. This was a smart strategy, to get the movie on so many screens abroad and then to back that up with a lot of marketing directed at those audiences.
5) The controversy with Baldoni/Lively. I absolutely think some people went to this movie in part because they heard about the drama between Baldoni and the cast! Hard to quantify how many but some.
6) The crappy costumes! Again, you will laugh at me, but the wacky wardrobe probably helped the movie get buzz. This is not something new for IEWU. People also went to see the SATC movies, which were TERRIBLE, in part to see the women wearing their stupid designer clothes. Also, while the costuming in the movie looks weird and wrong to millennial and Gen X eyes, it's actually very on trend for Gen Z audiences. With a 350m box office, I'm guessing this movie got a bit more of the Gen Z audience than you would expect a movie like this to get, and the look of Lively's character might have contributed to that. That's how Gen Z dresses.

Honestly, when you take it all together, it all looks genius -- the casting, basing it on the book, the marketing, the international angle, the free press from the infighting, and the insane costumes that got talked about and criticized all over the place -- it almost looks like a carefully plotted publicity plan to help a mediocre romantic drama gross $350m dollars and shock the world.

But then it's funny to see people criticizing a lot of these elements when they all combined to help this move become very successful.

I'll note that Wayfarer and Baldoni's involvement really didn't seem to offer an ROI at all. That doesn't mean they did a bad job, just noting that they have no box office pull. No one went to this movie because Baldoni starred and directed, or Wayfarer made it. It was a net neutral.

I disagree domestic violence wasn’t a pull for this film because of the extremely popular book. I agree if somebody had just wrote a random movie about domestic violence, that would be a hard sell, but people loved the story! I posted it earlier, the title it ends with us, literally applies to the ending of the cycle of abuse. It’s in the title. It did not do well in spite of being a movie about domestic violence, it did well because it was a movie about domestic violence that was already packaged in a way that appealed to a large fan base.

Downplaying Baldoni and team like this is really rich, considering that they conceived of this whole screenplay and bought it to light. No one else was doing that. And Blake was not attached this movie until just a couple weeks before filming. If it wasn’t for them, Blake wouldn’t have done the character, Blake wouldn’t have picked out the outfits. I mean, it’s just crazy to discount the four years worth of financing and work they did to create this film and act like just because she flits in and picked out an outfit she made the film. She didn’t even read the book.

Colleen Hoover was very picky about who she let do this, it really speaks to Baldoni and the work he did that this film was made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The movie completely unexpectedly made $350 million dollars but “she screwed up” is a position I do not understand. $350 million with a no name director Lively and Slate being the only somewhat big names is a miracle. Everyone should be hiring BL and JB to feud through another movie if they somehow banked $350m out of a romantic drama where the two leads break up and the family splits apart.

Love that you left off the Colleen Hoover factor here. The film only had a built-in fan base of tens of millions of people who couldn’t wait for it before Blake was even cast lol

The Girl on the Train sold 11M copies within the first year of its release — extremely impressive and probably even comparatively better than IEWU which has sold 10M worldwide cumulatively over time — but came nowhere near $350M.

I think Colleen Hoover is much more of a popular figure than whoever wrote girl on the train, was that Rachel Hawkins or something? Or Paula Hawkins I’m not even sure. Like a PP said the whole book tok phenomenon… It’s hard to overstate the popularity. 11 million copies is a lot, but Colleen has sold a lot more than that, and girl in the train was one book where it ends with us was going to be a franchise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

I’m PP who originally called it mansplaining in a comment above this and totally agree with this, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain this so well. This is an excellent rebuttal to the constant refrain here that anything a male director says can’t be mansplaining. Thank you!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The take that Gerwig’s Barbie (starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds) is a good match up comparison film for IEWU is priceless. Keep digging that hole, PP!

Barbie did not at all star Ryan Reynolds, but go on…?

Right — the other, handsomer Ryan who made La La Land and can dance! Keep digging!

I love Ryan G!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The take that Gerwig’s Barbie (starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds) is a good match up comparison film for IEWU is priceless. Keep digging that hole, PP!

Barbie did not at all star Ryan Reynolds, but go on…?

Right — the other, handsomer Ryan who made La La Land and can dance! Keep digging!

I love Ryan G!!

Me too! Justin Baldoni is no Ryan Gosling! The idea that IEWU and Barbie are similar films in style, tone, director, or leads is just laughable, to me anyway. Barbie was a musical lol!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

I’m PP who originally called it mansplaining in a comment above this and totally agree with this, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain this so well. This is an excellent rebuttal to the constant refrain here that anything a male director says can’t be mansplaining. Thank you!!!

You are welcome.

I also want to point out that if this movie had come out and Lively had been totally nude during the childbirth scene filmed in a hospital setting where she is in a hospital bed with legs in stirrups and with a male OB delivering, the mostly female audience (especially those of us who have had kids before) would have been like WTF. There are women who might be nude during a hospital birth, especially if working with an OB/midwife or at a hospital that facilitates water birth. The less medicalized the birth is, the more likely the woman might be to be nude. But this particular character had a pretty standard hospital birth. Her partner was a surgeon, not a crunchy Californian working in the arts. In that setting, it would be unusual for the mom to go without the gown.

If the scene had shown a woman totally nude with exposed breasts, I personally would have found it bizarrely gratuitous (even if they didn't actually show her breasts and shot around it) and out of character. I think Lively was right to fight for her character to be more covered up, as it's likely a lot more true to the character and the situation, and it strikes me as bizarre that Baldoni and Heath seemed to be using their wives' experiences as a guideline for the scene, when the character was such a different person and in a much different relationship and headspace than presumably their wives were when they gave birth. I'm pretty sure the water birth video Heath wanted to show Lively was of a home water birth? That just has nothing to do with the characters and relationship being portrayed in the movie.

I think when they get to depositions or if it goes to trial, this is going to become more obvious to people. If Baldoni and Heath really want to sit there and explain that they thought it was important for this character in this movie to be nude during childbirth, they can go ahead, but the women on the jury are going to be like "wut." It makes no sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

The problem is mansplaining is not harassment. Blake’s harassment claims seem like a reach at best, which is why so many people have reacted so strongly about this case. She comes off like a Karen. Only her worldview matters and if someone should dare make her uncomfortable by “gasp” mansplaining or talking to the dead they should be ruined. It’s honestly a bit much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

I’m PP who originally called it mansplaining in a comment above this and totally agree with this, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain this so well. This is an excellent rebuttal to the constant refrain here that anything a male director says can’t be mansplaining. Thank you!!!

You are welcome.

I also want to point out that if this movie had come out and Lively had been totally nude during the childbirth scene filmed in a hospital setting where she is in a hospital bed with legs in stirrups and with a male OB delivering, the mostly female audience (especially those of us who have had kids before) would have been like WTF. There are women who might be nude during a hospital birth, especially if working with an OB/midwife or at a hospital that facilitates water birth. The less medicalized the birth is, the more likely the woman might be to be nude. But this particular character had a pretty standard hospital birth. Her partner was a surgeon, not a crunchy Californian working in the arts. In that setting, it would be unusual for the mom to go without the gown.

If the scene had shown a woman totally nude with exposed breasts, I personally would have found it bizarrely gratuitous (even if they didn't actually show her breasts and shot around it) and out of character. I think Lively was right to fight for her character to be more covered up, as it's likely a lot more true to the character and the situation, and it strikes me as bizarre that Baldoni and Heath seemed to be using their wives' experiences as a guideline for the scene, when the character was such a different person and in a much different relationship and headspace than presumably their wives were when they gave birth. I'm pretty sure the water birth video Heath wanted to show Lively was of a home water birth? That just has nothing to do with the characters and relationship being portrayed in the movie.

I think when they get to depositions or if it goes to trial, this is going to become more obvious to people. If Baldoni and Heath really want to sit there and explain that they thought it was important for this character in this movie to be nude during childbirth, they can go ahead, but the women on the jury are going to be like "wut." It makes no sense.

We really don’t know if this nude hospital birth scene allegation is true. Like Steve Sorowitz supposedly being on the set that day, so much of what Blake has said has been shown to be a lie, exaggeration or out of context.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

The problem is mansplaining is not harassment. Blake’s harassment claims seem like a reach at best, which is why so many people have reacted so strongly about this case. She comes off like a Karen. Only her worldview matters and if someone should dare make her uncomfortable by “gasp” mansplaining or talking to the dead they should be ruined. It’s honestly a bit much.

Mansplaining can be harassment, yes.

[Anonymous]

I love this!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ItEndsWithLawsuits/comments/1jcw3ua/blake_getting_shade_from_america_ferrera/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not linking to that giant comment, but the movie made over $350 million dollars! Everyone should be paying Blake Lively to help with the wardrobe on their movies going forward! Most movies like this are lucky to make $50 million, and $100 million would have been a huge success! The wardrobe stuff obviously created buzz that translated into ticket sales.

I’m just noting that the mean moms calling Lively fat are hypocrites, which I’m allowed to do, just like you’re allowed to focus on the parts of this saga that are boring to me. To each her own.

But it’s disingenuous to say Blake lively made the movie $350 million. She clearly contributed to that, but the movie was coming in with a huge fan base. Colleen Hoover is one of the best selling authors to ever exist in the world. Of the top 20 best sellers in the last year, 8 of those are Colleen Hoover books. That is pretty unprecedented and IEWU is one of her most popular and it has a sequel so people were really excited for this franchise.

Absolutely agree that she contributed to why this movie did so well I’m not trying to take away from that, but what annoys me about this is Justin and his team had been working on this since 2019. They fought for the rights, They secured financing, they hired a screenwriter to adapt the book for the screen and got Colleen Hoover’s approval on that. They set up a whole world which took years of work and Blake stepped in and wanted to make some changes and call it her movie.

Also, with a movie with so many built-in fans, she didn’t treat them very respectfully. She constantly had her lawyer threaten her walking away from the movie which she could’ve easily done since she never signed her contract. That would have caused the production company millions and no doubt tank this movie and it would likely not have been made for many years. The utter disrespect and just overall gall is absurd.

I don’t totally disagree with some of what you say but to pretend this is about her disrespect of HIM after surprisingly trying to have her naked for the delivery scene and mansplaining to her (mother of 4) what a “normal woman” looked like in childbirth is a little much for me. The problems started with him.

Nobody mansplained anything to her. They were trying to direct a scene in the movie about a woman giving birth. They actually were not trying to coach Blake through her fourth birth.

If what you described is mansplaining, any female who has ever given birth in real life and gave birth in a movie, or has ever become a mom in real life and plays a mom in a movie, has been mansplained by a director. Let’s not act like all women are so fragile they can’t actually play a character.

Blake alleges that Baldoni said it was "not normal" for women to remain in a hospital gown while giving birth. This is both (1) wrong) and (2) mansplaining. He wasn't saying that he believed this particular character would be nude during childbirth (something that based on my understanding of the character, I also think is wrong -- she'd 100% be wearing a hospital gown), he was saying that women in general don't wear hospital gowns while giving birth. And he was basing this on his narrow experience of watching his own wife give birth, not on having done any research into common practices of women in childbirth. If he had done literally ANY research on the subject, like say talk to an L&D nurse in the same kind of hospital the character is supposed to be giving birth in, he would discover that it's incredibly normal for women to wear hospital gowns during birth. So, this is actually classic mansplaining.

Likewise, Heath is alleged to said, after Lively declined to watch the video of his wife's birth and asked him if his wife had given permission for him to show it, that his wife "isn't weird about this stuff." The "stuff" he's referring to is childbirth. The implication is that Lively was "weird" for not wanting to watch the birth video of another woman.

Also, Heath showed Lively the video AFTER they'd filmed the birth scene, and there is no indication that they had plans to re-shoot it. So it had nothing to do with directing her or telling her what they wanted in the birth scene. He just really wanted to show Lively a video of his wife giving birth for some reason.

Anyway, this is all classic mansplaining, a couple of men assuming a level of knowledge and expertise about a subject that the woman they are talking to actually has more firsthand experience with, and then lecturing her about it.

I’m PP who originally called it mansplaining in a comment above this and totally agree with this, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to explain this so well. This is an excellent rebuttal to the constant refrain here that anything a male director says can’t be mansplaining. Thank you!!!

You are welcome.

I also want to point out that if this movie had come out and Lively had been totally nude during the childbirth scene filmed in a hospital setting where she is in a hospital bed with legs in stirrups and with a male OB delivering, the mostly female audience (especially those of us who have had kids before) would have been like WTF. There are women who might be nude during a hospital birth, especially if working with an OB/midwife or at a hospital that facilitates water birth. The less medicalized the birth is, the more likely the woman might be to be nude. But this particular character had a pretty standard hospital birth. Her partner was a surgeon, not a crunchy Californian working in the arts. In that setting, it would be unusual for the mom to go without the gown.

If the scene had shown a woman totally nude with exposed breasts, I personally would have found it bizarrely gratuitous (even if they didn't actually show her breasts and shot around it) and out of character. I think Lively was right to fight for her character to be more covered up, as it's likely a lot more true to the character and the situation, and it strikes me as bizarre that Baldoni and Heath seemed to be using their wives' experiences as a guideline for the scene, when the character was such a different person and in a much different relationship and headspace than presumably their wives were when they gave birth. I'm pretty sure the water birth video Heath wanted to show Lively was of a home water birth? That just has nothing to do with the characters and relationship being portrayed in the movie.

I think when they get to depositions or if it goes to trial, this is going to become more obvious to people. If Baldoni and Heath really want to sit there and explain that they thought it was important for this character in this movie to be nude during childbirth, they can go ahead, but the women on the jury are going to be like "wut." It makes no sense.

We really don’t know if this nude hospital birth scene allegation is true. Like Steve Sorowitz supposedly being on the set that day, so much of what Blake has said has been shown to be a lie, exaggeration or out of context.

Baldoni admits to there being a debate about whether or not Blake should be nude in the birth scene in his own timeline. He also admits that he asked Heath to go show Lively the birth video the day after they filmed the birth scene. This is in his own timeline.