Like many legal nerds, we here at Above the Law are obsessing over the new Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic, On The Basis Of Sex. But according to a new interview with the New York Times, screenwriter — and nephew to RBG — Daniel Stiepleman explains that potential financiers of the film had a problem with the script’s portrayal of Martin Ginsburg.
In addition to being RBG’s husband, Martin Ginsburg was also a talented and successful lawyer in his own right. And backers of the film didn’t think the support and equality in the Ginsburgs’s marriage was realistic. That’s right, the Hollywood execs wanted Martin Ginsburg rewritten as angrier about his wife’s career:
To anyone who was around the Ginsburgs, their unusual parity was obvious. But to financiers and development executives, the character of Martin Ginsburg as a supportive husband was far-fetched. Backers offered to fund the film if he was rewritten as angrier, or less understanding; maybe he should threaten to divorce his wife, if she didn’t drop the case.
“It came up a lot,” Stiepleman said. “I remember at some point saying in a meeting, There’s a 5,000-year history of narrative, of men coming home from battle, and their wives patch them up and boost their egos and send them back out to fight again. You write one supportive husband, and everyone’s like, such a creature could never exist!”
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Thankfully, this bit of poetic license never made it into the final script. For those who haven’t seen the movie yet, it isn’t much of a spoiler to note that Armie Hammer’s portrayal of Marty is of a supportive husband. The actor noted that though that might be an inversion of the traditional gender roles we are trained to see in movies, seeing models of gender identity like Martin Ginsburg is actually important:
For Hammer, the chance to play second fiddle was rare, and welcome. “I’m sure that women feel like they’ve been stuck in these supportive roles for a long time, but for me, to get to play something like this was amazing, because it’s fair,” he said. “And I think that there is a lot to be gained from seeing that a man can be an even better and stronger man, while still being an incredibly supportive husband and a buttress for his wife. It didn’t make him any less of a man. If anything, it made him more.”
Just another reason On The Basis Of Sex is a movie not to be missed.
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).