A Life Through Film #034: The First Wives Club
A fun movie that, based on when I watched it, triggered a deep depression within me.
Release Date: 9/20/1996
Weeks at Number One: 3
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
You know what’s interesting? As a young man watching television, I felt annoyed by the number of “chick flicks” I saw advertised on TV whenever I ventured off my normal go-to hubs of masculine entertainment, Comedy Central and G4. Every channel I surfed, I saw ads for movies about women doing women things, and for some reason this irked me.
How dare Cameron Diaz try to find love? Why should I care about Diane Keaton and her friends? Where were the explosions, the “important” drama? Clearly, all those 30 second ads on TV revealed that there was nothing valuable to be gained from watching romantic comedies and gal pal dramas, as opposed to the obvious merits of the shows I usually watched where nerds talked about video games and middle aged standups joked about boobs.
Obviously I’ve grown out of this adolescent mindset and into an appreciation of things like romcoms; if you go to my Letterboxd profile right now, When Harry Met Sally deservedly sits at the top of it as one of my favorite movies of all time [5/5, obviously]. But I also wasn’t 100% wrong when I was younger, in that this saturation of women led movies wasn’t just in my head. You only have to look at the amount of ones that have lingered on in the minds of fans everywhere for proof. I found a couple of lists online of the 100 Best Chick Flicks of all time, and the 2000s holds a mighty influence. A solid half of those lists come from that one decade.
That said, the nebulous definition of what even constitutes one of these movies means that they aren’t all equal in subject matter or even tone. Does the value of a chick flick come from its appeal to women? Or in its representation of them? Does When Harry Met Sally, which has a pointedly male perspective for much of its runtime, even count towards the genre?
One pattern I found in reading those lists was a general skew towards young women. Chick flicks that focus on women in their teens, twenties, or thirties aren’t inherently a negative thing. After all, there are plenty of interesting, good stories that can be told about those age ranges. The problem comes when you realize this comes at the expense of more stories related to women in middle age or older. That ChickLitClub list of movies only had around 14 films on it that were even somewhat about older women. The IMDB list only had one.
This is doubly disappointing, because it’s not like it's any better in movies with a male focus. I’ve seen plenty of talented, beautiful actresses in my lifetime who’ve seemingly been blackballed for the industry for no real reason beyond the crime of turning 35 while their male counterparts continue to work consistently and successfully. Sure, Jessica Alba was never a great actress, but neither is Taylor Kitsch. He was born the same year as Alba, and her career flamed out long before Disney blew a ton of money trying to make Kitsch a leading man in John Carter. Even after that bombed, Kitsch later got to be a lead in True Detective (surely a coincidence that it was the worst season of that show).
It’s tough for actresses of a distinguished age in Hollywood. Thankfully, this week’s movie is one the few movies brave enough to ask the age old question: “What if we let women over the age of 40 be funny?”
The First Wives Club is a 1996 comedy starring Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn that’s directed by Hugh Wilson. The story follows three old friends brought back together by the suicide of a fourth. That death makes the survivors realize that all of the women were dealing with the same issue that killed their friend: a husband abandoning a decades-long marriage after finding financial success for a younger, more attractive woman. Inspired to be the change that could have saved their friend, the protagonists collaborate on a grand plot of revenge against their respective husbands as The First Wives Club.
Despite being such a female-forward premise, The First Wives Club was primarily handled by a few men at Paramount. The director, its primary writers, and the producer who exerted the most control over its creative direction were all fellas despite the film’s subject matter. This is far from a rarity in this Substack; Waiting to Exhale and The Craft mostly lacked women in key creative roles, with only the exception of the former’s screenwriter. Thankfully for this week’s movie, it at least started with a pair of women.
It was the late 1980s, and Olivia Goldsmith had just lost everything in the divorce. The house in the Hamptons, the co-op, the Jaguar, everything gone to her now ex-husband. Frustrated at losing decades of her life to a relationship that was now kaput, Goldsmith channeled her feelings into a novel. The tale was a revenge story, a piece of wish fulfillment of wronged middle-aged women getting back at the ex-husbands who wouldn’t be shit without their first wives. Goldsmith shopped the novel around to all the major publishers, but no one bit on picking up the book. At least, no one at the book companies did.
Movie producer Sherry Lansing got her hands on the manuscript for The First Wives Club and adored it. She later told the New York Times that it was one of the best ideas for a movie she’d ever heard, an empowering story where women were not victims but masters of their own fate. Despite the fact that the book was not yet published, Lansing purchased the film rights in 1990 and held onto them, waiting for the right opportunity to adapt the story.
Six years later, Lansing was chairwoman at Paramount and had the sway to get her pet project made. She went to super producer Scott Rudin, a Hollywood power player if there ever was one who will appear with frequency in this column going forward, to get The First Wives Club off the ground.
It was Rudin who passed the book, finally published in 1992, along to Robert Harling to write an adaptation. Harling was no secret to writing legendary chick flicks. After losing his sister to diabetes, the writer processed his grief by writing the stage version of Steel Magnolias, before later writing the screenplay of its film adaptation.
Steel Magnolias hits some similar notes of middle aged women finding power through their friendship, specifically in upper-middle class Louisiana. It’s far more melodramatic and a bit more diverse in terms of the ages of the main group than First Wives Club, but it's got an enduring legacy to this day as a bonafide tear jerking classic. [4/5]
Harling took the novel version of The First Wives Club and turned it into…something. His script may have been incredible, it may have been dogshit. We don’t know. Rudin saw it and didn’t see the vision, so the producer handed it off to a friend of his for a total overhaul. That friend, Paul Rudnick, had been working as a comedian and writer around New York for a few years by this point, perfect for nailing the Manhattan setting of the story. He was also perfect for getting Rudin creative access to the movie.
As Rudnick describes it, Rudin would instruct him on basically every story beat and location to add into the movie.
“Add a scene where the characters go to a lesbian bar,” said Rudin.
“Why?” asked Rudnick, reasonably.
“Because literal coherence doesn’t matter as long as the three female stars are riffing off one another and the jokes are funny.”1
You know what? Fourth wall break here folks.
I’ve really been struggling with this review. Don’t get me wrong, I liked The First Wives Club. It’s a funny movie starring a trio of women with great chemistry with one another and a generally positive message. I watched it with my wife and we both enjoyed it so much that I failed to take many notes for it.
That’s not the reason I’m having trouble writing about the movie though. If I’m being honest, the more I think about the film, the more disconnected I feel from it, even though it made me laugh plenty. Truly, I think a lot of it is due to timing and narrative circumstance. Basically all the characters in The First Wives Club are very wealthy residents of New York City, something inspired by Goldsmith’s own background (remember, her ex got the house in the Hamptons and the Jaguar).
It just so happens that I’m writing this review the week of the Inauguration. Watching as every prominent member of the American techno-oligarchy bend the knee to the most extreme fascist threat to American democracy ever, I have found myself unable to escape into the whimsy of The First Wives Club. Right now, the socioeconomic class represented in the film reminds me only of a powerful group of people who would fail to even register me as a human being in order to ensure profits grew optimally for the next couple of quarters.
I recognize this isn’t fair to the movie. Bette Midler is so funny in this, as is her Hocus Pocus costar Sarah Jessica Parker. The script is more a disconnected series of scenarios more than an actual story, but it leads to plenty of hilarious moments. I had a lot of fun researching divorce statistics for different age groups and across different time periods. Yet all my brain wants to do with The First Wives Club is put it away and not have to think about it again until the rich in this country are not constantly putting their boot to our collective back. It may be a while.
This is a really good chick flick, but its message of empowerment via financial advancement on a scale I will never achieve rings worse than hollow right now. It feels empty in a frightening, useless way. I thought I was overthinking things, but then I remembered one of the many lauded cameos in this movie.
Towards the end of the film, Ivana Trump shows up and spouts the movie’s slogan to our main trio: “Don’t get even, get everything!”
Ivana died in 2022. She’s currently buried unceremoniously on the back corner of a golf course owned by our current president, her ex-husband. She didn’t get even, she didn’t get everything. Like we are currently, she was ultimately and tragically beholden to the whims of an unwell, unfortunately powerful man.
As fun as it is for the most part, The First Wives Club is also proof of America’s long history of revering those who can afford to live the lavish life depicted in the film. Enough people believe in the Prosperity Gospel that wealth has become equivalent to moral power in this country. Maybe we deserve this.
The First Wives Club doesn’t deserve it though. It’s a fun movie. Maybe it’ll work better as an escape for you. It’s unfair of me to let my personal turmoil get in the way of a review this week, and I’m sorry for that. Maybe one day I’ll be able to come back and give this movie the effort it deserves.
Rating: 3.5/5
Next Week: Sorry about that folks. The next edition of the column will be a regular piece of programming. Have you ever wanted to see Val Kilmer hunt some lions? It’s a decent time. We’re taking a look at The Ghost and the Darkness next week.
See you then!
-Will
A direct quote!