Here’s a cultural generation divide for you. Are you old enough to remember when Meg Ryan was EVERYWHERE? I am! She was the rom-com queen of my Nineties childhood. It seemed like every third movie was a Meg Ryan Movie, and then…well. As much of our current entertainment and docu-tainment likes to remind us, the 2000s, like literally every other era, were garbage for women. Ryan was done in either by the human process of aging, or the rampantly sexist coverage of her affair with Russell Crowe, or a series of box office bombs, depending on who you ask. (Could be argued that the box office bombs had something to do with the insanely mean coverage of her private life happening at the same time.) By the end of the 2000s, she was no longer one of the most visible actresses in the world, and she worked sporadically through the 2010s. Her last film credit is from 2015, a movie calledIthaca, which is also her directorial debut.
But now! Meg Ryan is BACK! And this time, she’s a director. Ryan will direct an adaptation of Sally Franson’s novelA Lady’s Guide to Selling Outfor Netflix. The book centers on Casey, an English major who gets a job at an ad agency and her friend thinks she’s a sellout. There’s just one problem with that, which is that an advertising job would be a GREAT position for an English major, and who is going to call ANYONE with student debt—which most English majors have—a sellout for taking a job with a decent salary? The novel was published in 2018, it’s not like this is a holdover plot from a time before everyone acknowledged student debt is a massive problem and lots of people work jobs they don’t love just to cover those loan payments. Especially English majors, we get made fun of a lot for our “impractical” degree. So, I don’t know who this friend in the 2010s is who’s harping on her BFF for just like, surviving, but whatever. The important thing here is that Meg Ryan is back!
