Robyn Doolittle was the reporter who did most of the legwork investigating Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford. But in the movie about his downfall, a man – a hotshot cub reporter to be played by Ben Platt – gets to be in her hotseat.
“I’m glad they’re rewriting the fact that it was a female reporter who investigated Rob Ford,” Doolittle wrote Tuesday. “Why have a woman be a lead character when a man could do it?”
“I have the utmost respect for your accomplishments,” Platt responded on Twitter. “I play a totally fictionalized character, an entitled, incapable entry-level reporter (my boss is played by Jennifer Ehle) at a fictional competing newspaper. The film alludes to the successful reporting from the Toronto Star.”
The real issue?. The female reporter always has to fall in love or sleep with someone. https://t.co/go7rq4mqQn
— robyndoolittle (@robyndoolittle) April 10, 2018
It’s not just that Hollywood can’t read the room. It’s a black hole of blind incomprehension and any appearance otherwise is just radiation emitted at its event horizon.