Attending the opening of her film Angel Number 9 at New York’s Lincoln Art theater on November 19, 1974, Roberta Findlay experienced a brief yet intense altercation. In a later interview, Findlay recalled that at the premiere two women—who she perceived as lesbians—confronted her about some press statements she had made to publicize the film; as Findlay put it in a derogatory manner, “these two women—and I use the term loosely—came in—real bulldykes—and started to rant and rave.” The two women took issue with Findlay’s statement in the film’s press materials that she would never hire a woman on her film crew for any reason, a statement reflecting both Findlay’s extreme dislike for women and her past negative experiences on an all-woman film crew. As Findlay recalled, one of the two women was particularly furious, pointing her finger in Findlay’s face and stating, “How the hell do you come off saying something like that? How’re the rest of us going to get ahead?” The two women reportedly left the theater as the film started.

This confrontation, which underscored gender inequity in relation to film industries, prefigures the more substantial feminist response to the Findlaylensed Snuff (1976, dir. Michael Findlay), a film that instigated a large degree of feminist anti-pornography organizing. Yet importantly, the main criticism Findlay received at the earlier Angel premiere was not focused on the film’s pornographic content, but rather on Findlay’s vocal commitment to sexist conditions of socio-economic inequality. This incident underscores the effectiveness of Angel Number 9’s marketing campaign at circulating Findlay’s persona as an anti-feminist pornographer. In fact, the incident itself was recounted in press interviews with Findlay, in order to further promote her filmmaking enterprise and entrench her anti-feminist persona.

Roberta Findlay has repeatedly stated in interviews that she is not a feminist, through both direct refusal and explicit statements of her misogyny. Such statements circulate primarily in the contexts of male-dominated publics: maleoriented adult magazines, interviews with male journalists, and oral histories for cult cinema fandom venues. While certainly Findlay’s anti-feminist statements are an expression of an ideological perspective (often reiterated by Findlay in a sarcastic and comical tone), what if we take the various iterations of such statements in the contexts of Findlay’s rise from contract employee (as primarily a cinematographer) to management as CEO of Reeltime Distributing?