Audiences are finding diversity at summer movies

I’ve already linked to a few of these extended back and forth conversations between NYT critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis; they are uniformly excellent. This week’s topic adds optimism to what tends to be a sore spot in the summer movie season: diversity. We’re finally seeing a lot more films this summer that appeal to multiple tastes, not just the hyper violent, lightweight teenage segment. I especially liked Dargis’s indie funding idea:

If I were running a studio (ha!), I would take the money that I’d set aside for the next bad idea (like a remake of “Total Recall”) and give a handful of directors, tested and less so — Todd Haynes, Barry Jenkins, Kelly Reichardt, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Aaron Katz, Benh Zeitlin, Damien Chazelle — $10 million apiece to make whatever they want, as long as the results come in with an R rating or below and don’t run over two hours.