The Western genre has for too long been a sausage-fest, movies focusing on cowboys and lawmen with the “wimmin-folk” being merely background at best, or damsels in distress constantly needing the “men-folk” to save the day at worst with few exceptions. Well, not in this film. Courtney Hoffman’s brutal feminist western revenge tale The Good Time Girls, a short film she wrote, directed, and stars in, has been optioned as a feature by Argent Pictures. Presented by the AFI Conservatory Directing Workshop For Women and hosted on Youtube by Refinery29, this Shatterbox Anthology short-film takes the mostly male-fronted western genre and flips the script, giving us a film that is equal parts Kill Bill and Django Unchained.
Hoffman says “The Good Time Girls is dedicated to the ideology that when women
unite, incredible change is possible. I can’t imagine a more important time to tell
this story than in our current climate. I am so grateful that Argent Pictures
shares my vision and is supporting me along with my producers to homage a male
dominated genre with a feminine perspective, on and off the camera.”
The west has never been wilder, as Clementine (Laura Dern) and her band of prostitutes hatch a devious plan to exact revenge on the men who’ve been leaving a trail of death, destruction, and chaos in their wake throughout the frontier. It’s a blood-soaked romp with a just under fifteen minutes run-time that leaves you wanting more, luckily we’ll be getting exactly that in the near future. The Good Time Girls also stars Alia Shawcat and Annalise Basso.
This will mark the feature directorial debut of Hoffman, who also last month signed on to direct Ruthless for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the films of Sergio Leone and John Ford, but it’ll be exciting to see a full-length Western feature film created by women both in front of and behind the camera, and what different story-telling possibilities this will present. And here we thought 2017 was just a reckoning for the men behind-the-scenes in Hollywood, not on-screen as well.