Thank you for joining us on media and monuments. I'm your host, Sandra Abrams. And this episode, we'll discuss the academy awards. However, since this is women in film and video,
we're putting our
own spin on the topic. the focus will be on Oscar's history with the ladies in particular nominations of women in the non-acting categories. Our guests today.
are Dr. Roseanne Welsh, executive director of the MFA and
TV and screen writing program, at Stevens college and the author
of when women wrote
Hollywood essays on female screenwriters in the early film industry. Leslie cumbermill, she's a syndicated film critic known as cinema siren and The
creator and host of women
rocking Hollywood in annual panel at comic con in San Diego that seeks to highlight female filmmakers.
Leslie is also the lead contributor for the Alliance of women, film journalists, a w F j.org. ladies, Thank you for being here it's women's history month. Hopefully women can make some history in the Oscars.
did women rock Hollywood, Did they rock the nomination?
They didn't rock it any more than they did last year.
And so in that respect, We did. Okay. And I would say that there are lots of people missing and still a lot of work to do it's for me that wasn't racking Hollywood is more about making noise and trying to redefine and redesign how people are judging and seeing films that are being released through Hollywood and outside of Hollywood.
And unfortunately the Oscars have a few blind spots that they've always had and that they continue to have. And so we did. Okay. I'm grateful that we have a cinematographer and a composer to places where you almost never see women. And of course Jane Campion, who is in the tiny little list of names for female oh, tours that are accepted across the board, even at can.
Unheard of because they really, don't see women as our tours, which is a big problem, but all in all, it could be worse.
be the
You've mentioned.
the Oscars can have some blind spots. Do You want to talk about one of those blind spots? There's probably several, but maybe talk about one of those blind spots,
I think there've always been places where women are acceptable in terms of hiring and recognition. And one of them is film editing, So there are female editors or have always been great female editors. That's one place where women have always been there.
And then obviously we've always been allowed to be the costumer or the hair and makeup. And but there are other places like screenplays, as I'm sure you'll hear more about from the professor. but to me, I think cinematography is a place where when a woman is the cinematographer, she does not get recognized the way male cinematographers are recognized.
And I would, to some degree, point to the narrative kind of direction that female filmmakers in general and female cinematographers tend to Direct themselves and also get hired really because it's a lot of times female filmmakers that are hiring female cinematographers, but that is one of the lowest numbers in terms of percentages.
And we have the director of photography for Spencer and petite memo, which was completely neglected at the Oscars this year and I thought it was the best film of the year. And so that's unclear methyl. And then Luva, which is she's the cinematographer of some lost daughter and Alice Brooks who did in the Heights.
So those are all women who could have been recognized. I spoke to Ari Wegner about her work on the power of the dog. And I think she should win, although it is a very strong category this year. I think drive my car and west side story are strong contenders and deserving, but I think that there is a lot to be said about the work that was done in, in the Heights.
In terms of the cinematography. There was a lot of, there were a lot of moving parts. It's a miracle that it looked as beautiful as it did. And petite my Mo has this kind of lyrical quality. That is a really beautiful partnership or collaboration between the director and the cinematographer.
And I think that's something people should celebrate more than they maybe do. And especially when there are women I don't think that there's necessarily a female look in terms of cinematography, I think it's very individual just like all of it, I'm not a big believer in the the female lens or, all of that.
I think it's always very individual. That being said, there's a documentary that came out at Sundance this year called brainwashed that is about the visual language of cinema and how it's very skewed and mystic. And that there are a lot of issues around the way that we see the way we're watching the subject and the object and all of that.
It's an amazing film, very highly recommended and really opens people's eyes to some of the issues that we continue to deal with as women. Both as professionals in the film industry and as yours and the internalized misogyny that sometimes leads women in film to do the same thing that all the guys are doing, which is too bad because sometimes you have to get a job.
So I would say that, that's a roundabout way of explaining what I see as a big blind spot in of course we, we completely ignored passing, which is a crime because that was a
Oh, love patch numb.
Yeah. And,
And that was Rebecca Hall. She wrote and directed that and her backstory is also very
interesting. as to why, she could direct that film and
Tessa Thompson, right?
Yeah, it's absolutely something that is informed by her own experience. And and she loved that book, she loved the story and she was inspired by it. And I don't really think we're in an age, especially not as women, we're not an age where a white woman is necessarily going to do a movie like that.
And Rebecca is not, she's a woman of color herself. So she has a unique perspective her mother was, I think, half black. I don't remember how all that went, but anyway, she's definitely has the experience. And it's just visually beautiful film and beautifully acted.
And there are lots of below the line artists that could have been rewarded at least with a nomination and it was completely ignored basically. So that was a trap. And put team memo, which everyone should see that film as Cillian Shama who was portrait of a lady on fire. And I love all of her work and it tends to be my favorite film of the year if she does one.
But this film in particular, it's very about the female experience. And so as such, it was highly unlikely that anyone was going to recognize it.
Professor
Leslie said
we did. Okay. But When you look at
the best adapted screenplay category, there was three women. So it was Jane Campion, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Sean hater for Coda
Three women in that
category. So it sounds like We did better than.
okay. But.
no,
The joke of that is I'm always reminded of what Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. When somebody said, now there are two women on the Supreme court. When do you think you'll feel balanced?
And she said, when there are nine for about 200 years, And the sad part is we will never quite get to where we were because as we know, women pretty much ran early Hollywood and people like Francis Marion, Jeannie MacPherson, even Emmy to loose who we think of as a novelist, they were writing movies like crazy.
And of course, some of that was not nominated because there was no academy yet, but then they founded the academy.
didn't Francis Marion, didn't she did win the Oscar for the pig house.
She's the first woman to get to. Yes, but the problem is when people categorize these things in those days, there was an Oscar for best story and one for best script. And so she doesn't show up in lists of best screenplay because she formally won best.
four.
And that was a change that happened in the academy a few years later.
So it mixes up the way people see where women's names do show up, but it's true that we had many more women at a point where they could be nominated. And I will say, it's funny. I don't think it's fair that Jane Campion is not considered an all tour. And yet I'm also not so fond of giving directors the or tour title, especially when they have it also written the piece, which more often is what we see happening because that's how writers get lost.
And my personal quote or mantra is until the writer puts words on a page 200 people don't have a job. It doesn't matter what a director can do. They can't direct, there's a famous apocryphal story from Robert Riskin who wrote several Frank Capra films
At one point, they say, Riskin handed in 200 blank pieces of paper and said, put your touch on that. And he used a phrase, I won't use the recording. And it bothers me.
me because
Frank Capra off, obviously best-known even for it's a wonderful life, which was written by Francis Hackett and her husband, Albert and Francis, and Albert has a Pulitzer prize for writing the diary of Anne Frank, but you don't call wonderful life, a Hackett film.
You call it a Capra film. And as much as he's a lovely director, he does not have a few good surprise. So who is, who should be the odd tour in that discussion of that film? So when we come to Jane Campion, I will quickly say, I don't mind that she didn't win the best directing award for the piano because she won for best screenplay.
I was just going to say, I'm curious about your take about the fact that there are so many women that write and direct because, they want to see their stories shown. And so to me, I know tour is only someone who writes and directs, and so many more women are doing that.
So it's so interesting to me that moniker is so rarely placed on the title of a woman's work. When, so often they're creating the story and, or doing the adaptation fearlessly as Maggie did with the lost daughter, because that was such a fearless interpretation.
And yet they still are not embraced in that kind of, men's club that has remained.
Oh, exactly. Exactly. That's wrong. There's no way around that, but we know that comes from a lot of different things having to do with now taking women seriously and Meggie Glen Hall's situation. We don't tend to take actresses seriously because they're meant to be looked at, look at the different actresses who begun directing, certainly gone right over the head of even directors and become the producers.
And that's more often than television, both with mini series and with regular series, the idea that now I'm the one who hires you. So now the buck stops here and I have complete control. And again, this is what they had back in the day. When you wrote a script, you had to say in the casting, you had a say in who was chosen to direct it.
These things were all. This sort of amorphous way the job worked. And then as we moved into the studio system, it started to be pockets of compartmentalization and this person does this. And then the producer chose those people and it started to, took away the power that writers had to make sure what they envisioned is what happened.
And that's where these women, and of course, any other writer who becomes a director, that's become the way to get your power back. But I don't really care where cameras go. I don't find that interesting at all. And it's annoying that in order to empower your own work, you have to go learn a job that doesn't interest you.
I find that very sad, but that is what these women are definitely doing.
So that was
With women taking control and talking about writing and directing. And I think that's also true with
Greta Gerwig she did with lady bird and then also with Emerald for now, she did with a promising young. woman, boats and real for Now I think one,
for best original screenplay.
Exactly again, to me, the more important when, because there was nothing until she put that down on paper.
and she was a writer first, right? She's a writer. She's also director now, but she started out a writer and she'll always be a writer and she has books.
So clearly that's one of her, internal passions
one of the things that you had talked about, was Jermaine Franco
who was nominated for the original score and not very
many women have done that. And I was reading that there was a woman who in 1996 who won for Emma and someone said she's a woman
She could have scored, the female kind of thing, And that's what you were saying, Leslie, about being.
I don't see the woman behind the lens type of thing,
So what is that, yes. Rachel Feldman. So I thought why isn't there more women doing the film score?
On that?
because I write a lot for the credits, which is the motion picture associations website, and I pretty much, I try to pitch as many women as I can, and I especially specifically try to pitch female cinematographers and composers and before joker was a thing, which wasn't a huge fan of the movie, but loved the score. The score was incredible. And actually it increased my appreciation of the director because when I spoke to Huertas, I think it is who directed that, who composed that, that score. She said that she was brought in.
A year before they started the film and that the director allowed her to just be there while they were rehearsing. And she created some attempt tracks that then watching Phoenix listened to, and it inspired his part of his, the way that he took his direction in terms of his performance. So sometimes the composer can have a really strong influence on the finished film.
And one of the reasons why there are not more female composers, for one. as with everything else, it's a history of people thinking that women don't write music, which is crazy. And there's a wonder, there's a wonderful documentary about electronic music and women and the importance of women in electronic music that takes you through the entire history and shows you how important they have been in the entire time.
There are women that have been working as composers and working in film and television from the beginning. But part of the problem is that the way that you get a score, the way you get hired for a score is you're working under other composers who are more well-known and they hire people that they know.
And a lot of times they're hiring men. So it's a matter of, that's really hard to break into composing films, unless you're working under one of those. Like five guys that are working and getting hired all the time. And it's starting to change, there is a an Alliance of female composers that try to do as much difference as they can.
And there are PR companies that do represent a lot of female filmmakers. White bear is great about that because they definitely have a number of female composers that they work with. But I think it's just a question of them getting more recognition in the smaller projects that they're working on and build themselves up to getting hired for things like, wonder woman or, a Marvel film or something that's big enough that they can make the really big bombastic or whatever kind of alternative version of that they want to do for that score like a James Bond movie or whatever thing it is that everyone's going to listen to and hear.
And we need more women getting hired to do those scores. Before there will be more women recognized.
what you said about working under, in, in an apprenticeship, if you will very important. And we know, again, that was something that happened in early Hollywood, women trained other women to move up.
But when you pull women out of those positions, where's your mentor, right? You need someone to bring them in. So I think that's a really important thing.
We talked about how important the film editing person was. We talked about the musical score. These are two awards that are actually
There's a change to this year's Oscar broadcast. they will not be part of the live broadcast So in Leslie, you just mentioned the well-known, there's only five
When they're men they're well-known well how do women get recognition?
If they're doing something like changing some of these awards that are going to be before the actual broadcast, and yet these words seem just as important to the film itself.
They are, they don't seem, they are they're essential. They're absolutely essential. And I think it's bizarre because I realize, and it does go back to Roseanne's point, which is early on, it was about women and it wasn't about money. It was about art, right? So then when it became about commerce, the dudes took over and this is still about commerce.
And the truth is, you really have to, if you watch some of the, like the spirit awards is so entertaining and they let everyone get up and do their speech, and it's so much more fun than the Oscars, it really is such a hoot and everybody's so entertaining and they just need to trust that we, as an audience, you're going to keep a core audience and find a way to make that interesting, because this is what we're interested in.
We're interested in hearing the people who've created the movies. We love take recognition and celebrate themselves for too damn. We're not talking about a long time here, so yeah, I was incense done, it's nothing surprises me when it comes to the Oscars. They are trying to make a difference.
I appreciate that. They've made these, sweeping changes There's this thing that the academy is doing in establishes it's establishing representation, inclusion standards, and it's not enough, but it helps. It makes a difference. That those kinds of things, when you re when you're forced to do it, that's the only way, especially when it comes down to money, you have to be forced to do it.
That's, what's changed Hollywood and even the Indians for the better is people suing studios and, title seven and the, these reports that come out from From various, variety did one that made a difference where FX got called out. And in two years, he's the head of effects said, all right, I'm changing everything.
It's not going to be 88% white men anymore. It's going to be at least 50%. And he's being, apparently he's true to his word. So when you get called out and when you're forced to do it, that's when change happens.
Very true. I will add in, yes, it's lousy. And in a funny way, it seems like a massive miscalculation. The problem is the askers wants to sell the show to television and they think they need to make this streamline show to draw more people in. But the truth is the people who watch the Oscars are the people who want to see these people just as Leslie said, I was the kid who sat there and watched, and it was great when it went a half hour late and I got to stay up late.
Mom, you got to let me see if I got to see what movie one, I got to see my favorite person, et cetera, et cetera. That's your audience. And the problem is that might not be a Superbowl audience and that the network expects that certainly in this era where between streaming and everything else, there is never going to be.
Lucy has a baby and there's 79% of the audience watching her. They won't give up on that and they need to, because you're insulting the people who actually care about the show and if they don't watch, you've got nobody. And on top of that,
of that,
If you work on a film TV show, if we're talking about the Emmy's, there is an equality on the set.
Obviously there were people in hierarchy. If you want to say it that way, but when you're on set, you're all working together for the same thing. You're hanging out at the craft table with the people who are grips, the people who are costuming, the people who are doing all the other work, you feel the crash, they're all bringing to your idea.
So it's insulting to everyone. It's not oh, the writers and actors think they're better. You're going to see the actors having coffee with a guy who just put their chair in place. And they're having a conversation. They know each other, you live together on a set practically. So it is an insult all the way across the boards.
And I do not understand how they were dumb enough to make that mistake
they seem to make some kind of mistake like that every year, some overreach overstep under, under appreciation something. And I they're trying, I'm going to give them, I'm always, I'm an eternal optimist or I wouldn't be a film critic. I wouldn't watch so many movies a year thinking they're all going to be good or start watching movies thinking, oh my God, this is horrible.
So we critics tend to be an optimistic lot. So I am going to expect for the Oscars at some point to get a clue, whether it's about diversity or inclusion or women or what their governing body is or what their voting body is and what the makeup of the body is, because that also makes a huge difference in who gets nominated.
Oh, of course.
But it does seem like it was a lot of money and campaigning. and that's a professor. You had talked about the studio system, what was different. back then? And then why did the studio system come into play there? What, from a historical perspective, because I was thinking of these different, when You were talking about Anita Luce, but also I read about there's a Dorothy Asner and here is she's somebody who came up with the Boone mic,
And. then I also red sheet trained Francis Ford Coppola. So you know what happened back,
Wasn't, just a studio system. What else happened? What was different before.
Oh, there's a lot of concepts here. Obviously we start with the studio system because once it became profitable and we get men in middle-management because men manage factories, women don't and they weren't all craftspeople somewhere. They started to do really crazy things, take women, like best Meredith.
Who'd done a ton of films. And instead of her new contract, being a writer, she was given a contract as a junior writer. And he was a man. You were going to work with who he was going to help you. She had done 50 films. What does she need his help for? So she quit. Why take the insult? And she could walk away.
And then we lose these women in history because she was married to Michael cruelties, whoever writes about because of Casablanca. But if you look into that more deeply, there's some great stories from Jacob Epstein. One of the writers, Jacob, and Phillip's team, they talk about being on the set and asking questions of of Michael and you'd be like, I don't know, I've got to go figure this out and he'd come back and give an explanation and then they'd ask more questions and he'd say, I don't remember what best told me.
He was calling her to say, how do I fix this problem in the scene? So she was still intrinsic to the story, but she just wasn't working officially anymore. Francis Marion quit and became a sculptor and need to lose when to Broadway because writers have more control in New York and Broadway. And in of course, novels and they do so they all didn't lose their creativity or their ability to be artists, but they sometimes willingly faded away to avoid the insult.
And then when you didn't see them again, they weren't there to bring someone else up. They didn't perhaps realize that the ripple effect of what they were choosing to do for their own reputations was going to create that effect. Then you could also talk about censorship. It's important as you talked about, when men are in charge,
in charge
Yeah of cinematography and what the view is, of course, they were also in charge of what counts as acceptable and not, I often used to tell, as a joke and I was being silly, if we can see women naked to this point, how come I never see dudes naked to a higher point, right?
Because men didn't want to see men naked on screen. They weren't, they were cutting that back. So it was never a fair playing field. And that's another reason the stories women wanted to tell, if you wanted to talk about divorce, couldn't talk about it anymore. Lot of these early filmmakers Dorothy, Lois Weber, people like that, who did all things writing and directing, they were in it for using the S the art for their social justice points.
And if you couldn't do that any more than really what was the point? So you lost their love of it. And then we lost them. And then we lost the women who should have come after them.
And then, with with censorship, that's very based in Christianity and Christianity is, misogyny personified, right? It's all about a hierarchy.
Topped by men and women are at the bottom. We're not even allowed to be priests. All of these kind of like women are the sinners, they're the ones bringing in. And so there's so much in that. And the Hays code that's around a
Breen is the guy who was writing it. Yeah. And he's an
Exactly. And you can't have a woman do something bad and not get her just desserts.
Because she was sh it's always, the woman was the temperatures. I love watching movies, pre Hays code, and then skip to five years later and watch the same story. And then the woman dies at the, always the woman dies at the end or she, oh, I'm so sorry. Ooh, what was I thinking? Mia culpa.
Let me just cringe and hide in the corner. It's such a change when the Hays code took over and really shifted how women were perceived on screen and how they were allowed to be written. So if I were a woman back then writing, why would I wouldn't want to write anymore because I don't want my women to be one dimensional and only be about, motherhood and, Virgin mother whore, that's it.
Those are the three.
True. And you know what you're speaking to there also is that when we have the power of certain female performers, let's say Greta, Garbo, pre censorship, the kind of character she could play soccer retell was one of her writers.
And once garble left, then she left because that was the person she wrote for. And the kinds of women she wrote couldn't be portrayed on screen anymore. So it lost its power and its interest. But again, those women who often did other artistic things where they can, they continued to gain their own control, which was the key.
I think
You're also pointing to the whole thing around queerness. There was a lot more overt, less less coded less, layered storytelling before the Hays code that allowed for queerness in a way that was beautiful and fascinating and layered and interesting. And then the Hays code cam, and you couldn't even, there were so many ways that you had to hide and then it became just cliche and stereotype and it's taken so long for that to be stripped away, and it's still really not where we should be, not in feature film, so to me, that's one of the saddest things about the Hays code is what they, how they damaged, self perception, the queer people, being able to see themselves on screen in any way that wasn't a cliche or a stereotype.
Exactly. Your best example, there is literally in helmets children's hour, which right, which is about two women and two lesbians to women accused of lesbian ism. And in the movie, it had to be a trio with a guy. It had to be on cheating on you with another man, because that was acceptable. And of course destroyed the whole point of the piece.
And every time you look at stories like that, it did it watered down the real intent of it. It gave away any chance to see any kind of representation for a long time. And that was entirely the Catholic. This can't be allowed, right? This cannot be seen by children or will work their minds or whatever that nonsense was.
And it's taken us a long time to pull out of that. You probably know how much fun had side of Mickey Rooney breakfast at Tiffany's can be, but in the novel he's a gay man in the film. The sexual perversion is that he's the gigolo to a rich white woman. Because he couldn't be gay. And then they ended up together in the end.
I remember I remember Truman Capote. He was quoted as saying, what'd you think about the film? It's a lovely film if it has nothing to do with my book except the title.
There's thinking of how
these women left the business in the early days, because of how they were treated. I was also thinking about diversity and how then, there was a. Chinese American woman,
that I was thinking of. I think it was Mary mom and she had wrote directed.
did her own films. And now
just last year
we had, fine from there
to finally last year Chloe, John, winning a for no man's land and another Asian director, I'm thinking of although she did wasn't nominated for an Oscar, but I'm thinking of Lulu Wang for the farewell so finally there seems to be, there
was diversity back then and then it went away. And now the diversity seems to be back in some respect,
In fairness. The diversity never existed in this existed in the studio system, those were independence raising their own money and creating their films. And the problem was it was all about distribution. And if you couldn't Marion Wong, sadly considered herself a failure for many years because she couldn't sell the movie to people.
And so she wrapped it up and went back and ran a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant with her family, which I think is terribly sad. You could say similar things about Alice, Michelle. We know more these days about Oscar Micheaux right. We understand that he was a filmmaker again, independent distributing his movies on his own because he couldn't get funding from other sources.
However, we're just beginning to see that his wife was equally involved in the production in being a producer in probably some rewriting. There are some interviews about that. But this is another interesting thing with women. If you worked with a man who happened to be your husband, the credit tended to fall to him, and sometimes you will allow that because it was deferring to him or it was what society expected.
Don't overshadow the man. And we're now just pulling through that in ways that it's going to take a while to pile out of it's someone like any, the loose could overshadow her husband because she was the writer first, Dorothy Parker could overshare or her husband because who's ever heard of Alan Campbell, but she was already Dorothy Parker when she wrote for Hitchcock.
So you had to be that famous to not be lost in the story of the man you work with.
And there are so many wonderful black female filmmakers early in history. And one of them was James van der Zee, his sister down and she, look, he was famous even then.
Yeah, exactly. Louise welcome. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. To me, I think I'm S I'm always so fascinated to see the women who and, probably they had the luck that they had as talented as they were, because they had some kind of connection through a man even back then, but it disappeared completely in the studio system.
There are no black filmmakers in the studio system all outside the system and. We're still having, they're still struggling to get recognition. There's the film on the harder they fall, which is great and
Oh my God. I love that movie.
And it's so beautiful. It's so beautiful to look at the performances are wonderful and yet it got really no recognition at all.
And I have to think that.
that.
It is a very black movie, it is a very kind of subjective film, beautifully subjective, in a way that was such a lovely thing to see, because there were so many black Cowboys and actors and all the different roles that existed in Western world of the United States.
And yet you never see that. So it was a really interesting film that was, speaking to that entire kind of history and, it was genre, busting and all of that, but got no love it. And, I'm part of the voting body for the black real award. I already am about amplifying black female filmmakers because it's really important for everyone to we want to see that we want to see that on screen.
We want black writers, black female writers, black female directors. We want all of that because it's boring to see yourself all the time. And it's beautiful if you never see yourself to finally see yourself either on screen or as a character or whatever. So that's really important.
What's going to be interesting to see where we go with the world of streaming, because my 24 year old son has no interest in going to the theater anymore, but he watches everything he'll come in and tell me about this movie and that movie.
So there's more, and he's more interested in diverse and interesting things, which I think is fascinating and streaming opens that up for him. So I do believe that the voters, as they move into the academy and all that stuff, we're going to get
to get
wider lens to look at. We're just like in the mid point on the way there
I guess that was one of my questions I was wondering about, how did these alternative platforms change, a, for voting or change for watching or change for who got nominated
for Oscar nominations? This year, because power the dog is on Netflix and passing is on Netflix and there's other ones on there.
I think it's very interesting. I've heard a couple of filmmakers say.
her say,
If you think about it, it's better on streaming because if you only show up in certain theaters as an art film or whatever, and you get 4 million people to see what you did, something on streaming is going to get 17 million people to see what you did, but you can have a style of voter.
That's not going to feel like it's the grandness of having seen it to theater. And so they might not rank it in the same way. And I think that's probably where, again, we're in the middle space where it's who uses fax and who uses the texting or whatever you want to say. We're in that middle place.
But I do see us moving forward and it is going to be streaming there's. There's just a bigger audience and artists in the end want people to see their stories. They want them to see their themes. They want them to learn the lessons of what they've written and directed and performed it. So I think we're getting there.
I personally had a great time watching all this stuff easily on streaming and of course in the pandemic, wasn't going to go anywhere anyway.
As a film critic, I can say that there were certain movies that they really wanted us. It was this weird time where Delta was going down and Omicron wasn't up yet. And so they were like, oh, it's time to go back to the movie theater.
And there were a couple of movies where they required us to go to the theater to see them. And if we didn't go to the theater, we weren't going to be able to see them. And so a west side story was one of those films where I was, because I had seen. Writing for the credits and working with the Alliance of women from journalists, I have access to films that other people might not have as easily or it's I have to actually have to see them because I'm interviewing.
I interviewed somebody who was working on the music for a west side story. And and then with Cyrano, I interviewed Aaron duster. So I saw those movies before, I saw them big, which is what they wanted. And so I was able to have an opinion about it and vote for them and nominate them as a member of these voting bodies.
And there were people who did not see west side story and had no chance to vote for them. So for the, for. West side story. I think maybe one thing, if that I'm not even sure. I don't remember who won what, but I do remember that there were movies that people did not have access to that were major movies because they required us to go into the theater to see them.
That's true. And I, in terms of a regular attendee, I will say, I grew up going to the movies like three nights a week with my mom. She was a divorced woman and that was what we did. And then we talked about the movies. I still relish sitting in a theater, but I can see that it's going to become again.
My son doesn't care. He, his friends don't do that. They watch stuff on discord. One guy has Disney plus and they will watch on discord and then talk about the movie. But I can see it turning into what we do with the theater, which is, oh, let's buy tickets to Hamilton because you have to see that in person.
And, oh, we're going to see the next we saw the token movies in the theater. We made sure to do that. We saw all the Harry Potter movies in the theater. Is it going to be that we only go see if essentially the ethics, if they become Avenger, epics or whatever that is in the future, it may be that's going to be what theaters are about.
I'm not sure, but I see that in the next generation, it doesn't, they don't have the same sparkle that I had with let's go to the movie theater.
well, that would be sad because women historically and up until now, very rarely are hired to do epic films. And for example, the film that Gina prince five were, did oh gosh, the old guard.
you're going. Yes. Oh yes. That
Which was a wonderful movie. And I would have loved to have gone to the movie theater, see that movie.
I love that movie. And it's just such a great popcorn flick. Gina's at the top of her game, she has one of the best filmmakers out there. And it's great that she got, she was able to make that film, but that's a great example of, I would have liked to have been able to see I'm really hoping, even though as I'm sure Roseanne will, can talk about there, it used to be that studios owned movie theaters.
And so it would be nice if I'm hoping actually that Netflix and Amazon and apple will buy some movie theaters so that we can see their movies big. If we want to,
Netflix has bought the Egyptian theater here in Los Angeles because they know to get nominations, they have to distribute in a theater. So they did by the Egyptian. And that's been fun. I do see that as a possibility. It's so interesting. Cause it's, that's what we stopped letting them do, because that was, had a stranglehold on distribution, which is why, even if you were a person of color, trying to make films in the studio era, it didn't matter.
Cause you couldn't get it shown anywhere because paramount owned these theaters and MGM owned these theaters. So we broke them of that. And now you're right. It's becoming maybe, and of course Disney owns the El Capitan and Los Angeles. So they're slowly going there. It's can we get it in that balance where it doesn't destroy other people, but it makes these openings.
I think it's the very interesting possibility
I wanted to ask you both. When talking about
Women gaining ground in the Oscar nominations, women being in the room. I know a professor, you had a Ted talk a few years ago, and that's what you talked about, women being in the room and your Ted talk. But how has the different social media such as Oscar. so Y me too times up black lives matter? How has
those movements impacted what
we're seeing now in terms of nominations or women being in the room and getting a seat at the table, getting these big budget films how any thoughts,
feedback, comments,
It's a double edged sword, terrible cliche, but for instance, it's been wonderful because all of the different fellowships we have in town to try to get people, whether they're women or people of color into the room, which is the job they fund those people. And so there's been an issue with, okay, this is your first year as a staff writer on this show and your salary is being paid for by.
Fellowship, whatever it was when that season's up, what's supposed to happen is they thought you were great and they promote you to be a story editor, and then they pay you. But instead they're like, oh, Hey, thanks. It was nice knowing you let's see who the next free person is, we can get. And what do you do that?
So it's, there are some people who don't want to come in that way because they're afraid it's going to brand them as, oh, you're just a contest winner. You're not a serious writer. Of course other people are much better about that and are moving people forward. So sometimes you have to get in the door, however you get in, but obviously.
Every different perspective that gets in a room makes a piece better because they're going to ask questions about things that might never occur to you. I had an experience, we were in a room writing a story once, but a young black girl and she was lost in the city. And someone in the room said, okay, so the first thing you do, if you're nine, your parents told you to go find a cop to help you.
And an African-American woman in the room said, oh no, my parents told me to never go to a policeman at that moment. And half the room was like, what, how is that possible? Suddenly they would've written the wrong thing. Had they not had that perspective in the room? So the more we expand who the perspectives are, the better the work gets, the more real it gets.
So I do think it's important. How we make it happen is up for grabs in terms of, without ruining someone's reputation or making them feel, making other people treat them like they're less than that's the trick to get.
I think social media has, I'm on Twitter. I have a fairly muscular following and I do get called the C-word on a daily basis because I'm a girl and I'm on Twitter. So that's a given it truly, if you talk to anyone who is a woman in film on Twitter, especially critics, we are not treated well by.
Particular little group of dudes but there's a great fellowship, a great a strong film, Twitter following and group of people that like the blacklist and reports like the Annenberg foundation and the variety reports and things and reframe part of women in film LA, all of those are on Twitter and on social media and they're releasing information about the studies and we're all sharing it.
We're all talking about it. And so it's making the conversation get a lot bigger. We can actually, there are people who are the subject of those reports that come in and say, I had no idea. I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to change this. And they actually hold to it that 4%, even though granted it should have been 50%, but the 4% challenge those kinds of things really make a big difference in the longterm and reframe, which created a a checklist for.
For a film and TV of what was required in order for them to get the reframe badge. They released that information on social media. And then and now when they first started the reframe badge, not that many people, not that many studios and production companies were that interested in now, everybody wants it.
Everyone wants that badge. And that requires them to hire a certain number of women, a certain number of women, of color, of queer folk. All of the diversity and inclusion is part and parcel of those of those getting that stamp. And that makes a really huge difference because if you're on social media and even fans are on there, when it comes to my women in film panel.
A lot of the people who come to the panel, tweet about it, talk about it. And then they know about these filmmakers after they've been to the panel, those kinds of things really have a huge, positive impact and influence over women getting hired and, things like glass elevator, or a reframe or any of the ones.
And now array who's doing the array. She Ava DuVernay's started and an array. Her company started doing array sourcing or array. I forget what it's called. It's a way to hire below the line artists of color women. And there's a whole long list of all of the different people who have had work.
There are a lot of people who are writers on Twitter, who are in writers' rooms, who are saying, Hey, you know what we're trying to hire another writer and we want writers of color. Today I'm keeping my items open or, I'm going to I'm going to talk about what we're looking for.
You can send your information to this other place. So there's definitely calls on social media and ways that are allowing for more people to potentially get hired and also greater awareness of the problem and a call by fans to, for there to be a change. And that I think has a big impact. So I think that, yes, it's a double-edged sword.
I don't want to be insulted every day, but at the same time,
No,
know that's part of it. And so did all of the women who ever worked in film and in society really anywhere, until that changes. So if you're willing to take that side of it, then you're also going to get a lot more of a sisterhood, a lot more of a of a group of allies of male queer men, straight men, white dudes, people of color we're people who want to make a change and they're going to be on your team and they're going to do what they can to help.
But you're exactly right. And it's all about people, basically putting their money where their mouth is. One of my favorite things I have students watch is an episode of abstract on Netflix.
It's about artists every week of different artists. And one of them is about Ruth Carter who won the Oscar for costuming for black Panther a couple of years ago. And she, her first job came on, do the right thing, right? Spike Lee made sure that he was hiring people of color. Look at how long the trajectory of that career was.
You have to get started, you have to have the practice. You have to have the constant job show up. And then you're somebody who gets nominated and wins the Oscar because you've hit that stage in your career, but you can't get to that stage unless somebody lets you in the door. So those things definitely are very important and we have to adjust how some people are treating them.
And those are the people that aren't allies and those people have to go away. I always say, that's our job right now. We get rid of that, but
And, Ruth when I talked to her and she talked about the, each one teach one and she has taught a number of very few black costume designers out there. And as a matter of fact at to Annette , who is the costume designer for the harder they fall should have been nominated.
Just want to put that out there. And Ruth Carter did coming to America. Horrible did not like the movie. The costumes were amazing, so a great example of two women of color who are doing beautiful work that should have been recognized. And a lot of women who are costume designers now are women of color will point to Ruth as someone who paved the way for them, not just as an inspiration, but actively made a difference to them getting hired.
So that philosophy of each one teach one, it cannot be overvalued it's
speaking of black women, the first black woman to be nominated for film editing was a joy McMillan. She did Moonlight
few years ago, but I also was thinking Regina king, she did one night in Miami and I think it was he mentioned she directed that
and she talked about how she wanted to have 50% diversity On her
set. and that's what, should be the goal, going
forward or that's the goal that, she wanted going forward. how was that impacting the hiring and having women in these non-acting categories?
That's the way that's the way to make it happen is that you have to do that when I, and it goes across the board as a film critic and somebody writing for the lens, women, film journalists, and for the credits, they don't care who I pitch. I can pitch whoever I want. Which I love, I pitch them.
They're not telling me what to write. I pitched them. So I only pitched them as much as possible. I only pitched them women. Sometimes I'll extend it to gay men of color or whatever it is, but I try to have that be, you know what I'm focusing on. And if a movie has no women below the line, I will not only not write about it.
I won't even watch it.
I don't care. Sorry, buddy. You know what? You can do better. You can do better and we should not be promoting at this point.
time.
You need to do better than that. There's no excuse to have no women, no queer people, no people of color. What the hell at this point, it's just unacceptable. So I think when you're talking about putting your money where your mouth is, if you're not promoting them and they need, I can tell you by the number of pitches I get a day, even from big movies to, to write about them, that it makes a big difference.
Whether or not the critics are writing about. W, reviewing your films doing interviews with people. And so if I'm doing an interview with someone and with Regina king, she was on my women rocking Hollywood panel that year when she did when night in Miami and the reason she did it, just because I wanted her to be on there because of that movie, because she was about to put out that movie.
But at that year I had her on my panel and the people from women who kick ass, which is the big hall H panel that has 7,000 people who watch it. But it's always bad-ass chicks who are, they're onscreen. And she was in Watchman. So I'm the one, my people. And what pad who was my sponsor and women and film, they sponsor my panel.
I got, I paid for Gina to come and stay and be on the panel and then entertainment weekly. I said has her manager came to me and he said, Hey, I love that we're doing this. She's so excited. But the women who kick ass have come to us and they asked us if she could be on that panel, I'm like, oh my God, that's awesome.
Of course I want her to be on. That would be amazing, but get them to pay for her. And he was like, yeah, they don't pay for anyone. It's only if they're already coming to the convention that they're having them. I'm like what is that? So then if I had not had her come for my panel, she couldn't have been on that other P that's crazy.
So that's what it takes. It takes actually standing and getting the people that need to be seen and amplifying them.
Exactly. It's quite true. And it's about training people up, which is what we're talking about with Ruth Carter and all these people. That's why we do an MFA. The idea is get women's whose work is so good. They can't be said no to and then get them to agents.
And then the agents get them out there. You've got to be ready to be as good as you need to be, which is twice as good as people expect you to be. But we do it all the time. Women do it in every business. I mentioned Ruth Bader Ginsburg before. Look at how hard it is to get women to get through that gauntlet on the way to Supreme court, but we've done it.
So when he said on my are Elena Kagan, we're getting there.
there,
We'll get there in film. We will get back to where we started in film. That's all we really need to do. Cause it was a nice blend. We don't want to kick everybody out. We want to balance. It's all about balance and that's just better for art.
Ladies, this has been great
But I'm
going to wrap it up with one last question.
So I'm going to ask you for
your Oscar prediction, but I'm going to frame it this way. So Kathryn Bigelow won best director for the hurt locker, and then the film won best.
film one best
that
The same thing
happened with nomad land.
They want.
in both categories. So is Jane Campion going to win best picture and power? the dog?
Best director
I think she's going to win best picture and best writer. I'm 80% sure she'll get best director 80%.
I think she's going to get.
get
Best director and not best writer isn't a Maggie up again. She's up against Maggie there. And Maggie got
first nomination.
got nothing. And that film is, I, there, there is. And Coda didn't even get nominated for best film. So I think she's, I think she's going to win best director and then either the lost daughter or coder will win for best adapted screenplay.
I think I'm making my prediction bank based on the fact that we tend to repeat things in the awards. And so they're safe here and they're making a leap over here, so we'll have to see where that goes, but it is true if they look at it in a balanced way and I'm a huge Atlanta Ferrante fan.
So yeah, last thought it was brilliant and I've loved all the novel. So seeing that adaptation of her work was quite brilliant.
Thank you both. For taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us. And Thank you for joining us on media. And monuments. The 94th academy awards will be broadcast
on Sunday, March 27th.
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Published: Mar. 20, 2022 @ 3AM Edit
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