Features
The Big O: The Oscar Season Kicks Off
Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Big O, Women & Hollywood’s new Oscar column. Not that there is any lack of web outlets that engage in prognostication and updates on the status of...
Cross Post: Meet The Butler’s Powerhouse Producer
Sheila Johnson is a highly successful businesswoman, entrepreneur, producer, and philanthropist, with achievements and accolades far too numerous to list. I have the honor of serving on the...
Listless Women and Life Realizations in The Lifeguard and Afternoon Delight
Entering into the late twenties–one becomes increasingly accustomed to seeing life’s so-called major plot points swelling around them–high school reunions, careers,...
Guest Post: For Life
In my country, a female director is a rare exception (but fortunately not for long). In the Middle-East, some consider that a miracle and others a heresy. On the set of Inch’Allah,...
Cross Post: Legendary Passed On Red Reaper Because It Has a Female Action Hero
When Tara Cardinal’s labor of love and sweat and tears, the fantasy/action feature Legend of the Red Reaper, was written, it was shopped at various distributors and production...
How Pop Culture Can Enhance Our View of Hillary Clinton
It’s no real surprise that the moment NBC announced that it had ordered a fictionalized mini-series about Hillary Clinton written by Courtney Hunt and starring Diane Lane, and CNN...
Cross Post: In ‘Planes’ Males Soar, Females Get Grounded
I’ve blogged twice about the sexist preview for “Planes,” and after seeing the movie today, I’m afraid I’ve got to blog about this awful scene once more. The sexist...
Rebel Wilson’s Super Fun Night: When Self-Deprecating Heroines Tear Themselves Too Far Down
“I want to defend you, and then I find out you’re the person who wrote it which is brilliant,” Conan O’Brien told Australian comedienne Rebel Wilson at the ...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: 15 Female Directors Who Made Their First Feature After Turning 40
Two weeks ago, this column profiled ten female directors aged 40 or younger . My reasons for imposing an age limit were clearly stated, but it had the unfortunate side...
Karen Black: Perfectly Misunderstood
Karen Black died last week and she was my unlikely friend. I say so because all the conventional markers could not have predicted it. I am an atheist, a feminist and a film director and Karen...
Lake Bell’s Directorial Debut, In A World…, Smartly Examines Industry Sexism
Lake Bell’s directorial debut, In A World…, is a hilarious and uncomfortable look into how deeply sexism can plague an industry. She stars as Carol Solomon, a struggling...
An Appreciation of Summer Roberts: The O.C.’s Greatest Character
It’s eerie to think that 10 years ago this week, I watched The O.C. huddled around a TV in my friend’s parents basement. It was a show I had been anticipating all summer...
Guest Post: Gender Disparity and the Problem of Marketability
A couple years ago, I wrote a script that was made into a movie, and this summer it came out on DVD and VOD. It’s called Red Line, and it’s about the survivors of a subway crash who...
Guest Post: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Gender Equality?
This piece is in response to a piece published on FilmInk that listed the 20 Most Powerful People in Australian Film As an Australian I’ve long believed that my home country’s industry...
Guest Post: How I Accidentally Became a Feminist Animator
Two years ago, I walked into a dimly lit garage on a severely potholed street in Hollywood. The linoleum floors were covered in waves of styrofoam powder interrupted only by piles of broken...
Questioning the Canon
When I arrived at graduate school for theatre we were told to have read books entitled “Famous American Plays” of the 20s, 30s, 40s etc. before we arrived. I did as I was told and really...
Alysia Reiner Talks About Being a Part of Orange is the New Black
In Orange is the New Black – the new Netflix sensation that takes place in a women’s prison, Alysia Reiner’s character is incredibly callous. She plays Natalie...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: The 10 Most Exciting Young Female Directors in the World Today
This week, the British Film Institute released statistics revealing that a mere 14 feature films were directed by women in the UK last year, compared to 164 by men....
Maggie Carey’s The To Do List Reinvents the Teen Sex Comedy
The teen sex comedy is a staple subgenre of teen films. Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds and American Pie are just some of the films that have brought sex puns and now grossly iconic...
Guest Post: A Rising Tide: Women in Independent Documentary Production
As a documentary director and producer, I am surrounded by women working and thriving in the entertainment industry. The documentary realm has long had a reputation for being more open to...
Guest Post: The Women of Comic Con: How the Internet Killed the Studio Star
During the lead up to this year’s Comic Con International, a Networked Insights analysis of social media conversation showed that 54% of people talking about the conference were women....
Being Miranda Hobbes: Why Women Really Love Sex And The City
In her fantastic reclamation of the much-maligned HBO sitcom Sex and the City as part of television’s golden age, New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum argues this week that Carrie...
Guest Post: The Growing Influence of Women at Comic-Con
This year marked my 8th Comic-Con and my, has this event changed over the years. It is bigger than ever, covering everything from the largest movie franchises, popular TV shows, top video games,...
Sticking Together
Having recently completed my first feature film, Arcadia, I’m occasionally asked in q&a’s what my experience has been directing a feature as a woman. In truth, I don’t often...
Outfest Review Roundup: Road Trips, True Love and Iconic Queer Memoirs
This year’s Outfest Los Angeles has yet again proven why they are one of the best LGBT film festivals in the country. They’ve had a spectacular line up of LGBT films including a few we...
Guest Post: There She Is: From Festival Rejections To Online Success
In film school you learn that there is an established process once you’re done with your film. After hours slaving away in an edit room, you start applying to festivals and hope for the...
Cross Post: In Praise of Difficult Women
Fuck off, Don Draper, Walter White, Tony Soprano, et al. The age of the male antihero is over. Sure, you’ve had a good run. And, fuck, look at all those shiny, shiny Emmys. But I’m...
The Women’s Guide to Comic-Con
Comic-Con has long been a boys club — I mean, it is called “fanboy” culture for a reason. However, in recent years there’s been more and more female-skewing programming,...
Guest Post: The Evolution of Women in Comedy: From Mary Tyler Moore to Amy and Mindy
Treva Silverman had spent most of her 30 years wanting to be funny and female — and allowed to do so in public, maybe even collect a buck or two for her trouble. Growing up in the 1950s in...
Cross Post: Why Women Should Get The Jobs
In a recent episode of the television series Mad Men, two advertising agencies merge. Each agency has a single woman on their creative team and one woman is told she’s...
On the Importance of Talking About “Lady Quotas”
I saw this blog post on Jezebel from the editor in chief Jessica Coen who doesn’t have a lot of time to write as she spends most of her day keeping everything moving and flowing on the ladyblog...
When Women and Hollywood Came to London
I work in script development in the UK, and am increasingly frustrated, infuriated and worried by the portrayal – or lack thereof – of women in film and TV. Readers of this site are...
Cross Post: Dear Hollywood: Hiring Women Directors Could Rescue the Superhero Movie. Love, Half the Human Race
The superhero picture is suffering from female trouble, and not just because a franchise based on Wonder Woman keeps going in and out of development limbo. Any creature on screen minus a...
Guest Post: Who Says There Are No Women Onscreen This Summer? Susan Seidelman’s The Hot Flashes Hits Theatres This Weekend
The best surprise of this summer is Susan Seidelman’s new film The Hot Flashes, opening in selected theaters on July 12 and starring Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Wanda...
Guest Post: What Women (and Men) Want: And Why That’s the Secret to Getting Back Together With the All-But-Dead Genre of Romantic Comedy
Dr. Mindy Lahiri has spent her whole life dreaming of a romantic-comedy ending to her love life: Sometime around 30, she’ll be swept off her feet by a Ken Doll of a hunk, he will make a...
Why You Need To Go See The Heat This Weekend!
Remember two years ago when Bridesmaids came out and women went to the movies and Hollywood (except for every woman who worked there) was shocked that women and men went to see a movie about a bunch...
Cross-Post: We are the 40%!
Last week, a chart appeared on the popular screenwriting website Go Into the Story analyzing gender inequity among spec script sales in the American entertainment business. The figures not only show...
Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose: We Stand With Wendy Davis
While there’s much discussion about the lack of female superhero movies in Hollywood, a real life one emerged yesterday. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis was set to go through a 13 hour long...
Guest Post: Wrap Up from the Human Rights Film Festival
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival just ended, exhibiting some beautiful and undeniably poignant tales that are not always told, nor heard. Bringing together stories from across the globe,...
Women Directors and Why Language Matters
A couple of weeks ago I read that the two male directors — Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg — of Kon-Tiki which was nominated for best foreign language film got the gig of...
Cross Post: On Gender Parity
The issue of gender parity in the theater, and celebrating more female writers, has been on my mind for a while now. Part of that is just out of a sense of fairness....
Guest Post: Here Comes Superman…Again
This weekend marked the release of Man of Steel, the sixth Superman movie to be released since Christopher Reeve donned that iconic costume in 1978. You read that right — SIX Superman...
A Next Step Towards Gender Parity for Women Directors
A couple of months ago there was a big meeting at the DGA addressing the issue of the lack of opportunities for women directors. It took about a year to organize and was met with a positive...
Today’s Disconnect – Do Actresses Have Clout or Not?
Last week when I was in LA I read the following two articles on the same day. NY Times: On Newsstands, Allure of the Film Actress Fades and the Hollywood Reporter: Revenge...
Guest Post Rerun: American Mary Sets Out to Modify the Way You Think About Women in Horror
Originally published on October 30th. American Mary opens in limited release today and is available on VOD. In short, our film American Mary proclaims that she is the story of medical student Mary...
Book Excerpt: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted
Treva Silverman is an Emmy winning television writer known for her work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. You can find more information on Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted here and here. Excerpt from MARY...
The Importance of Changing Perspective
Since I write on the web, I spend a lot of time, as you can imagine, in front of my computer. Most days all day (except for a couple of dog walking breaks.) But this spring due to the...
A Feminist Analysis of Rodham – the Feature Film About Young Hillary Clinton
The script Rodham by Young Il Kim has been one of the scripts on the recent Blacklist — it came in 4th — that has made significant buzz before it even starts production. While...
Why Society Needs Feminism
I found this through my twitter feed today and think it is appropriate and is a good thought for the weekend. I think this should answer all the naysayers who think young women aren’t...
Odes to Female Friendships Rule The Weekend with Katie Aselton’s Black Rock and Frances Ha
This weekend, two very different films that explore the intricacies of female friendships are hitting theaters (and VOD) near you: Katie Aselton’s thriller Black Rock and Noah Baumbach’s...
Guest Post: Screaming With Your Body
Hysteria is the way to express with your body desires that the society does not accept. It’s like screaming with your body. Augustine (the lead character in my film) really existed. She was...