Nell Scovell on Hollywood’s Obstacles to Women Directors

Posted on July 18, 2016 at 7:50 am

My friend Nell Scovell has a terrific article in the New York Times about Hollywood’s poor record on women directors. While just about any male director with an indie at a festival is handed a superhero movie with a $100 million budget and, even more telling, male directors whose films lose money still get a chance to make another, women directors, even those with a record of excellent work, do not.

In television, most studio executives and showrunners claim they are looking for female directors, but I suspect it’s the same way that I sometimes look for the sunglasses on my head: They’re right there, but I can’t see them.

People insist it’s a pipeline problem when it’s really a broken doorbell problem. Competent and talented women are right there on the doorstep, hitting the buzzer, but no one is answering the door. Last year, even with constant calls for more gender diversity, 86 percent of the first-time TV directors were still white males.

Past efforts, including allowing aspiring women directors to “shadow” established directors, have not been successful at increasing the number of women in director jobs. Scovell has some practical suggestions for change that go beyond the usual “let’s try harder.”

All networks and showrunners should look at the genders of their directors for the coming season. They don’t have to balance the roster 50/50 — although that would be awesome — they just have to make sure they beat last year’s 17 percent benchmark, which includes a scant 3 percent minority women. Make every fifth director a female. Just do better and the numbers will rise each year, creating a new benchmark to beat, until we hit equality.

Next, studios should flip the shadow programs. From now on, let the newcomers do the directing and pay the old hands to shadow them. The green directors get to rack up real credits while the show has a safety net.

Hidden Figures Will Tell The Story of Three Black Women at NASA

Posted on July 10, 2016 at 8:00 am

Three of my favorite performers will star in a new film called “Hidden Figures,” the true story three African- American women who worked for NASA during the 1960s space race. of Janelle Monae, Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson will star as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who are a crucial part of NASA’s history.

Here’s Katherine Johnson.

And the cast congratulates her.

Jen Yamato on Three Awful Articles About Actresses

Posted on July 9, 2016 at 3:22 pm

There have been a lot of complaints about the Vanity Fair cover story on Margot Robbie by Rich Cohen (“Vinyl”), which reads like a parody of skeezily raphsodic profiles of beautiful women. I particularly like the takedown from Rebecca Shaw, who is, like Robbie, Australian, and so addresses Cohen’s idiotic comments about her country as well as his idiotic comments about Robbie.

Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people.

Bloody hell, calm your farm Richo. We’re America 50 years ago, so what – increasing our troops into Vietnam?…

That was the middle of a search that finally led to Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan and Robbie as Jane. Jerry spoke of the actress in a tone he reserved for the big stars, the sure things, the Clooneys and Pitts, those whose magnitude seems old-fashioned. “When I think of Margot Robbie, a single word comes to mind,” Jerry said. “Audrey Hepburn.”

A single word: these two words. Earlier in the piece Richo said that Wolf of Wall Street defined Robbie. It “put her up with Sharon Stone in Casino and Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull – one of Scorcese’s women.

I know I am 50 years behind all of this being one of the throwback people and all, but did you know that women don’t have to be defined by 1. being compared to other women and 2. belonging to some man or another? Astonishing stuff from here, downunder.

The Fug’s Heather has some thoughts as well.

The piece reads like an interview in which subject and questioner had zero chemistry. But it’s an interviewer’s job to find that, or fix it, rather than go home and throw Google searches at the problem. Frankly, when I read that conclusion and it so strongly created the image of her just casually standing up and leaving, I wanted to shake her hand. Australia has a right to be offended by the finished article (and it is, from what I’ve read). So too does Margot Robbie, though I suspect she will calmly say nothing. She’s already won, honestly. She, somehow, still comes across as normal and cool even though she’s not given as much voice as she deserves.

At The Daily Beast, Jen Yamato insightfuly brings together the Rich Cohen profile of Margot Robbie with two other articles about actresses that have provoked complaints. Variety’s critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that the trailer for the new “Bridget Jones” movie made him think that Renee Zellweger “no longer looks like herself,” and thus he might not be able to enjoy the movie. (See Thelma Adams’ response, too.)

And the usually-better Wesley Morris wrote a piece titled “How I Learned to Tolerate Blake Lively.” He spends most of the article explaining that he was expecting to see Kate Hudson starring in “The Shallows,” but no, it was another lithe blonde actress from California instead. Yamato has some good advice: “One glaring (and fixable!) factor in this trend of vaguely lecherous, sketchy filmbro culture: Hire more women writers and editors to represent a more accurate diversity of opinions, analysis, context.”

#OSCARSlesswhite — New Additions to the Academy Bring Some Diversity

Posted on July 2, 2016 at 4:31 pm

Some good news from the Motion Picture Academy — the acceptance of a younger, more diverse group of highly qualified members, which should help with the embarrassingly narrow focus that led to the #oscarsowhite problem last year, not a single person of color nominated for an acting award. New members include actors Idris Elba, Brie Larson, John Boyega, America Ferrera, Michael B. Jordan, Emma Watson, Tina Fey, Oscar Isaac, Tom Hiddleston, Ice Cube, and directors Ryan Coogler, Julie Dash, Adam McKay and Patty Jenkins. and Chadwick Boseman. It is the Academy’s largest and most diverse new group of members, more than double the 322 invited last year. 41% of the new invitees are people of color. There are 283 new international members from 59 countries. Academy president Cheryl Boone has made good on her promise for prompt action. Here’s hoping we see this kind of improvement every year.

More Trouble for Women in Hollywood

Posted on May 4, 2016 at 8:00 am

It was bad enough when Marisa Tomei was cast as the elderly Aunt May in the next “Spider-Man.” But now the gorgeous Famke Janssen, who has played Jean Gray in the X-Men movies, says she will not be in the next one. As in the last time-spanning film, there will be older and younger actors playing the main characters, except for Gray, who will just be shown as her younger self, played by Game of Thrones actor Sophie Turner, who is 20.

“Women, it’s interesting because they’re replaced, and the older versions are never to be seen again,” Janssen told Entertainment Weekly. “Whereas the men are allowed to be both ages. Sexism. I think that I should be back along with my younger version and the way that we’ve seen it with Magneto and Professor X.”

Janssen, 51, said she had tried to discuss a return for the older Grey with producers but had not received a response.

“I have not heard any feedback on that, other than total radio silence,” she said.

And another beautiful actress, Amanda Peet, wrote an essay for Lena Dunham’s online magazine Lenny, about the pressures on actresses to look like they are under 25.

It’s painfully obvious, but I’m still ashamed to admit this: I care about my looks. How else can I explain my trainer, stylist, and Barney’s card? I’ve bleached my teeth, dyed my hair, peeled and lasered my face, and tried a slew of age-defying creams. More than once, I’ve asked the director of photography on a show to soften my laugh lines. Nothing about this suggests I’m aging gracefully.

It’s painfully obvious, but I’m still ashamed to admit this: I care about my looks.
Yet for me, it would be crossing the Rubicon to add Botox and fillers into the mix. I want to look younger (and better), trust me. The only reason I don’t do it is because I’m scared.

I’m afraid one visit to a cosmetic dermatologist would be my gateway drug. I’d go in for a tiny, circumscribed lift and come out looking like a blowfish. Or someone whose face is permanently pressed up against a glass window. Or like I’m standing in the jet stream of a 747. What’s the point of doing it if everyone can tell? I want the thing that makes me look younger, not the thing that makes me look like I did the thing.

As I’ve said before, these “treatments” too often make it impossible for actors to do the very thing we want them to do — show emotion.

It’s no better behind the camera. Variety reports that producer Heather Rae spoke about the problems she faced in getting support for her new film, “Tallulah,” starring Ellen Page.

“At the time this film was deemed not commercially viable, because it was a woman’s story, and it wasn’t about getting the guy,” Rae said at a private screening on “Tallulah” in New York, noting that executives said as much to her face.

20th Century Fox and Paramount have announced their new lists of films in production — without a single woman director.