There’s “a bit of a movement afoot” to get Fox Searchlight to send DVD screeners of (or otherwise make available) Kenneth Lonergan‘s Margaret for top-ten lists and whatnot, says critic/essayist Bilge Ebiri. A online petition was launched online yesterday.

“Searchlight is already responding, apparently,” he writes. “There are reports that they’ve set up additional screenings in Chicago and Boston in response. Hopefully we can keep this going and inspire them to make Margaret available to more people. Obviously the Searchlight staffers are good people, but I’m not sure they realized how much interest there is in this film (which is assured a spot on my Top Ten list).”

Sidenote: I’ve just concocted a theory-in-progress that the name “Margaret” or “Margret” is a metaphor in movies for “willful, tough, unsettled, demanding, anguished, afflicted, self-absorbed, bothered.” There’s Meryl Streep‘s Margaret Thatcher, a headstrong and highly assertive woman who certainly didn’t became Prime Minister by being a “day at the beach” type. And the untrustworthy Margaret character in Get Carter whom Michael Caine despises and eventually murders. And…uhm….

Anna Paquin‘s Margaret character is named Lisa Cohen, but she certainly fits the description and the movie is called Margaret so…okay?

Does the feisty and unserene association exist off-screen? Margaret Cho, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Mead…all dig-down toughies. Then there’s the late Princess Margaret and all her issues. And Ann-Margret‘s Bobbie character in Carnal Knowledge…okay, now I’m stretching.

I’m just saying that in movies (i.e., NOT for the most part in real life) female characters fitting the traditional paradigm of the loyal, nourishing girlfriend, wife or homebody — i.e., breeder types who spend a lot of time in the kitchen — tend to be named June or Faith or April or Nancy, and that the flintier, more gnarly and accomplished ones will sometimes (often?) be named Margaret. Somehow or someway, screenwriters have made this association, I mean.