Today, in my story-boarding class, I had to pitch a short film. The film I pitched was called "The Red" and it was about a young woman who takes extreme risks in order to administer vigilante justice on men who take advantage of women.

It starts our with our protagonist, a young woman sitting at a bar. I am going to try and make this brief and simple while still including all necessary details; the lady is wearing a dress with a red hooded sweatshirt. A man comes up to her and starts hitting on her. He's wearing a shirt that says "Your birthday suit would look better on me" or something else horrifyingly disgusting and faux-clever. He has messy, almost wild hair. For a millisecond, she looks at him with pure disgust; then her glassy eyes and drunken stupor seem to take over. He doesn't seem to notice, having been staring at her chest. She is displaying obvious signs of being too drunk: she is wobbly, laughing loudly, closing her eyes a lot, slurring words.

The focus shifts to the bartender, who is looking concerned. He has been giving her shots of a clear liquid that we can assume is vodka. The grizzly man suggests that he and the lady "get out of here." She replies negatively, but in her drunkenness, the man takes her arm and leads her out. The bartender looks at her, and she looks back and gives him sort of a look of confirmation.

They walk to his apartment, him leading her by the arm, like an animal taking home its prey. She walks clumsily, but occasionally when he isn't looking at her, the audience sees a flicker of determination and deliberation in her face.

They arrive at his apartment and he takes little time before starting on the barely conscious woman, laying on the couch. As he is kissing her neck, almost devouring her, his hand begins to go up her dress. She kicks him in the groin and he crumples to the floor. She stands up soberly, pulls a gun out of the pocket of her sweatshirt and points it at him.

"the hell?!" he yells, and he starts to get up, attempting to recover.

"Stay down!" she yells. He does so.

"So is this your game?" she says, loudly. "You find a young lady on the brink of consciousness and you try to take advantage of her. You think that if she can't fight back, that counts as consent?!"

"Please," he says shakily, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"You didn't know I'd been taking shots of water all night? Or that I had a gun in my pocket? Or that raping women isn't an acceptable pastime?" She yelled.

"I... I won't do it again. I swear!" He pleaded.

"I know," she said, smirking. She pulls the trigger and closes her eyes as blood droplets splatter her face. She wipes it off with her already red sleeve.

She is sitting on the man's couch, his lifeless legs jutting into the screen, but his head out of sight. The young woman is smoking a cigarette, and is on the phone.

"Hey, I'm alright. Yeah, I took care of it. Yeah, I'll see you. Bye."

She hangs up the phone, drops the lit cigarette on the couch, and exits the apartment. The last shot shows her walking away, putting her hood up and putting her hands in her pockets.

Now, we'll keep in mind that there was only one other girl in the room that I pitched this to, but you wouldn't believe the response. Guys were super offended that the character was pretending to be drunk. That was their big thing. I know that her shooting him is controversial, and frankly it should be; killing is bad, we know that. But I have sat through pitch over pitch from this group in several classes, and they love killing people in movies. They do it all the time. The film is not intended to be anyone's moral compass. Someone said that this sounded like it was alienating the entire male audience, but her confidante, the bartender, is male, and he is in on it. I definitely don't want to paint the picture that all men are rapists. Only men who take advantage of women in that way are. If you don't do that, then you shouldn't feel threatened by the message of this film. Several guys said it wasn't fair if he hadn't done it before or were confused at to why it would be bad to take a girl home to have sex with her. Am I alone in thinking that if she's drunk, like legitimately under the influence, she can't consent and it is rape? I don't want this to be a big thing, but I just figured that was most people's opinion. Then they got all upset because she wasn't actually drunk, so she was able to consent (to which I may have rolled my eyes because that is such a ridiculous double standard. If he thinks he's raping her, but he's not, then it's okay. dur da dur da dur.)

I don't agree with everything the main character does. I avoid shooting people when I can. But this would have been so different if it was one man shooting the other for raping his woman. Are we just so uncomfortable with women not needing to be rescued by men? Or that a female would write a short film that isn't about a sad break-up or a puppy? I want to push the envelope, at least just once, because frankly, I want to be a comedy writer, but this came to me and I wanted to write it, especially in response to all the films with violence against women as their central idea coming out of the department.

Also, I hope you picked up on the Little Red Riding Hood aspects of the story. I wanted to take what Leeper said about the classic story and apply it so and audience could see the wolf as a more sexual predator.

I'll be really interested to hear your thoughts.