Only four women have been nominated for best director in the eighty-two year history of the Academy Awards.  Is this sexism?  At first glance it seems to be but a Google search for best movies directed by women will show a paucity of classics to be had.  There is not a Citizen Kane, The Godfather or a Pulp Fiction amongst the lot.  Does this mean directing is  better left to the guys to do?

Hardly. Men are simply given more opportunities to helm Hollywood movies than our better halves. Only ten percent of the 600 films reviewed by the New York Times last year were directed by women, and most of those were obscure releases that never made it to a theater near you.  Even this award season's critical darling The Hurt Locker maxed out at only 535 theaters--a typical wide release shows at over 3,000--and never cracked the box office top ten.

Much like the NFL prefers to recycle failed white coaches like Norv Turner and Wade Phillips instead of hiring qualified minorities, Hollywood producers are much more comfortable hiring good old boys who are suspect directors instead of giving women a chance. Take the case of actor-producer-director-writer-hyphenate-hog Warren  Beatty. Here is what uber-producer Robert Evans had to say about his good buddy:

"How many pictures has Warren made in his career? Twenty-one? How many hits did he have? Three! Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, and Heaven Can Wait. That's batting three for twenty-one. In baseball, you're sent back to the minors for that." 

And if you're a female director responsible for even one flop, you suffer a fate far worse than even a bumpy bus ride in the Carolina League.  They send you down to TV. And not a classy The Office style show either. I'm talking way down.  According to Jim down.  That's exactly what happened to Penny Marshall, director of such feel good classics as Big and A League of Their Own.  After Riding in Cars with Boys failed to recoup its budget in 2001 (it cost $48 million and grossed $29.7 million), she literally received no other offers save that execrable Jim Belushi vehicle.

Even after being responsible for two of the most notorious flops in history--Ishtar and Town & Country respectively--Mr. Beatty never had to suffer such indignities. In fact, he is still held in such high esteem that he gets the luxury to turn down parts other actors would kill for, like that of the titular villain in Kill Bill.

Admittedly directing a classic like Reds will earn you some slack, but even a studio hack like Renny Harlin, whose only success is directing part two of the indestructible Die Hard franchise, keeps getting more second chances than former baseball drug addicts Daryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and Steve Howe combined.

Dollar-for-dollar, his 1995 production Cutthroat Island is the biggest bust of them all. This $92 million dollar high-seas adventure only earned back $10 million dollars worth of its production cost. Think Hollywood tightened the purse strings on director Renny Harlin's future pictures? Think again. The next year he made The Long Kiss Goodnight, which only earned back $33 million of its $65 million budget.  Six years later he was given a $72 million budget to direct the Sylvester Stallone formula one epic Driven.  This time he lost $40 million for the studio.  After three colossal flops, you would suspect Mr. Harlin would never work in this town again, right? Wrong.  Today he has five more pictures under his belt and is on post-production on a sixth.

While these hacks keep getting work, a talented director like Patty Jenkins--who directed Charlize Theron to an Oscar victory in 2003's Monster--has yet to land a follow-up theatrical gig. The Hague needs to look into these crimes against humanity.

Women certainly have all the intangible skills necessary to direct a movie. Both surveys and research show that women are better at multi-tasking than men, which is a necessity on a movie set.  Women also make up 82 percent of public school teachers and what is a director but a glamorized teacher with a bigger budget?  Each must manage a classroom or set filled with combustible personalities, interpret a textbook or script for the class and cast, and all the while convey clear and concise instructions so that everyone stays on task. Answering to the principal and parents for flagging test scores is just as stressful as explaining to the producers and investors why you need to re-shoot that climatic scene in your costume drama.

So where should Hollywood look for its next batch of directors, aside from our public schools? Looking in front of the camera is usually a good place to start.  Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood have all gone behind the camera and won Oscars for their work.  Unfortunately Hollywood actresses are rarely afforded the same opportunities to direct as their male counterparts. Only Barbara Streisand has helmed multiple big budget productions.  Haven't actresses like Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts earned a shot at directing their own movies by now? 

Television is a second place to look.  Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard all got their start on the boob tube. Karen Gaviola has directed two critically acclaimed episodes of television's most cinematic show Lost.  Remember "The Whole Truth", the episode where the imprisoned Ben (Michael Emerson) finally convinces the survivors of Flight 815 that he is hot air balloonist Henry Gale, who lost his wife in a crash?  She is the one who directed him to one of that show's most memorable performances. Each episode of Lost is a mini-movie already, so why not give her a chance to helm the real thing?

Cop Out opens today.  It's the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan 48 Hours knock-off that is seemingly played during every Olympic commercial break. Who did Hollywood hire to direct this big-budget action comedy? None other than Indie darling Kevin Smith, who once admitted:

"Right after Jersey Girl came out and kind of underperformed, I was just like, 'I got no business making large-budget movies.' I should always make movies that cost less than 10 million bucks... I just don't think somebody like me should be in charge of big-budget movies. I'm too interested in dialogue, and dialogue and big budgets just don't blend very well."

As Cop Out's 13% on the Rotten Tomato meter attests, Mr. Smith is well aware of his limitations as a director so why not hire someone who has successfully manned big budget comedies in the past, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High's Amy Heckerling or Wayne's World's Penelope Spheeris?

Blaming Academy Award voters for failing to recognize female directors is like blaming sportswriters for failing to name an African-American as coach of the year during the first 70 years of the NFL (hint: there weren't any until Art Shell in 1990).  How can you possibly recognize those who are not even given the opportunity to succeed in the first place?