Women Writers
Great Interview With Glenn Close
A really great homage to her whole career on the eve of the Oscar nominations. She willed Albert Nobbs into existence. She is the star, the producer, the co-writer and she also write the lyrics to...
Lynne Ramsay Scores BAFTA Directing Nomination
In a year when we will probably not see a female director nominated for any major awards here in the US, the Brits have been smart enough to recognize the Lynne Ramsay did do one of the best...
The Athena Film Festival Awardees and Lineup
Most of you dear loyal readers and friends know that I am the artistic director of the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College. It is something very near and dear to my heart and keeps me quite busy...
Diablo Cody, Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig Get Nominated for WGA Awards
It seems that women’s orginal work is being recognized this year by the WGA with two out of the five slots for original screenplay taken by women. Diablo Cody was nominated for Young Adult and...
The Year That Was
Happy new year everyone. Thanks so much for the great support over the last year. As we start the new year, I thought it would be interesting to look at the narratives that dominated the...
The Iron Lady
As a person who cares about women’s leadership, The Iron Lady should be a no-brainer. A film with an AMAZING tour-de-force performance by Meryl Streep playing a woman who was the longest serving...
Interview with Abi Morgan — writer of The Iron Lady
I was lucky enough to meet the multi-talented Abi Morgan who has had an amazingly successful year with The Hour, Shame and The Iron Lady on the day after the premiere of The Iron Lady in NYC. Women...
In the Land of Blood and Honey — Written and Directed by Angelina Jolie
A couple of months ago the description of Angelina Jolie’s writing and directing debut was that it was a love story set in the time of the Bosnian war. I walked out of the film realizing that no...
Twilight’s Melissa Rosenberg Becomes Highest Grossing Female Screenwriter
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Melissa Rosenberg, the writer of all five Twilight movies has now surpassed Linda Woolverton as the top grossing female screenwriter with her films grossing a...
Trailer Watch: What To Expect When You Are Expecting — Written by Shauna Cross and Heather Hach
Can one hope that this movie won’t suck if Shauna Cross the writer of Whip-It has written it? I will hope…
The 2011 Black List Arrives With Very Few Women on it
The anticipation for the Black List gets bigger each year. It was even hard getting on the site this morning and I read it was trending on twitter in LA. But one thing hasn’t changed, the number...
Young Adult
I heart Young Adult. I heart it because it is an awesome and original story. I heart it because Charlize Theron hits it out of the park as the horribly bitchy Mavis a woman stuck in her high school...
Interview with Diablo Cody
Diablo Cody was kindly able to take a few minutes to talk Young Adult and feminism in the film business on the eve of the opening of her new film. It’s good to know that we have a strong feminist...
New Trailer for The Iron Lady
Film opens December 30
Dirty Trailer for Young Adult — written by Diablo Cody
If you think you knew what Young Adult was about, this will throw a wrench in those thoughts. Just please don’t play this around the kids — it’s good and dirty.
Angelina Jolie on 60 Minutes
In case you missed it, Angelina was on 60 Minutes last night gearing up for the premiere of her directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Some interesting points: she feels more comfortable...
Trailer Watch: Gone
Amanda Seyfried goes all vigilante to save her sister from being the latest victim of a serial killer of young women. Film will open Feb 2012.
Breaking Dawn Scores 5th Highest Opening Weekend Ever
Women dominated the box office this weekend. Breaking Dawn grossed $139.5 million here in the US and another $144 million overseas making it the 5th highest opening domestic weekend EVER. It was...
Announcing the 2nd Annual Athena Film Festival: a Celebration of Women and Leadership
For those of you who don’t know, I am the artistic director and co-founder of the awesome (if I do say so myself) Athena Film Festival. We will launch year two on February 9. We will be announcing...
Meryl Streep: Political Biopic of an “Old Lady” Will be a Hard Sell at the Box Office
Evening Standard writer Liz Hoggard reports about a dinner she was invited to at the home of The Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd to talk about film with several other female writers along with...
First Reviews — The Iron Lady
The Iron Lady was unveiled for critics in London and clearly there was no embargo since the reviews have been coming in. Neither one of the reviews below is a rave except for Streep’s performance....
A Few Words on Fox Writer’s Intensive
I’ve gotten a couple of inquiries about Women and Hollywood’s involvement in the Fox Writer’s Intensive which is a reboot of their diversity program through a new entity which is called Fox...
Meet the Hottest Screenwriter Around — Abi Morgan
This is Abi Morgan’s year. She’s had an incredibly well reviewed show — The Hour — air in England and here in the States. To top that off she has not one, but two, films hitting the...
Cool Posters for Young Adult
These posters were used for sneak screenings in Austin, Chicago and SF. They give you a sense of how subversive this film is. h/t The Playlist “Assholes Don’t Actually Change”: Jason Reitman...
Diablo Cody Talks About the Buzz on Young Adult and Becoming a Director
This is via the LA Times at the Hollywood Awards Diablo Cody: ‘Young Adult’ hype ‘freaks me out’ [Video] (LA Times)
Trailer Watch: In the Land of Blood and Honey Written and Directed by Angelina Jolie
An impressive trailer from first time writer and director Angelina Jolie.
Oranges and Sunshine
I walked into Oranges and Sunshine (written by Rona Munro and directed by Jim Loach) not knowing much about the story except thinking how glad I was to see Emily Watson back on screen in a starring...
The Top 50 TV Showrunners: The Women
The Hollywood Reporter has compiled a list of the top 50 showrunners in comedy and drama. There are a total of 15 women on the list. 6 in comedy and 10 in dramas. Several women are responsible for...
Women Comedy Creators Soar This Season on TV
Something is happening on TV and we need to acknowledge it. First, all the new shows that are breaking out this season are comedies. That hasn’t happened for a long time. Second, those comedies...
Trailer Watch: Young Adult Written by Diablo Cody
Here’s the latest film from Diablo Cody starring Charlize Theron. Theron plays a woman who just is so full of herself that she goes back to her home town to “recue” her high school flame from...
Shonda Rhimes Is Still at the Top of Her Game
I know that at times Grey’s Anatomy seems like a tortured soap opera. But I also know that I would take that soap opera any day over some of the other crap on TV, and that is because Shonda Rhimes...
Where Do We Go Now? Wins Audience Award at Toronto Festival
Where Do We Go Now? written and directed by Nadine Labaki was the first film I saw in Toronto. As I wrote last week, it’s a strong symbol of women sick and tired of the men fighting over nothing...
Guest Post: Why I Write and the Top 10 Things Men Have Said in Pitch Meetings By Dani Faith Leonard
I write because I am a woman, and I am a woman because I write. Obviously, I write because I feel like I have stories that I must tell, but when I write, I discover my opinions about things. I form...
Winners of the 2011 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award
This is the 17th year that the Rona Jaffe Foundation has given awards to women writers at the early stage of their career. “This unique program offers grants to writers of fiction, creative...
Interview with Circumstance Writer and Director Maryam Keshavarz
Here’s a piece I wrote for this summer’s Human Right Campaign Magazine Equality on the film. You can tell from the piece how impressive a film it is. It is a change making film because it tells...
Love and Risk in Iran: Circumstance Written and Directed by Maryam Keshavarz
Here is a piece I wrote on Circumstance written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz for the Human Right Campaign’s Equality Magazine, for their Summer 2011 Issue. Making an independent film is always...
Guest Post: My Life as a Female TV Writer in the Sixties and Seventies by Rita Lakin
In the early 1960’s, even though I had an MA in English Lit, I was happy to get a job as a secretary at Universal studios. I had access to all scripts being shot on the lot. Using them, I taught...
The Hedgehog Written and Directed by Mona Achache
The Hedgehog is a very unexpectedly touching film. It starts off jarringly, with 11-year-old Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) sick and tired of watching her self possessed family decides she is going...
Film Independent Fellows for 2011 Screenwriters Lab: The Women
Sponsored by the Writer’s Guild of America West, the Lab is taking place now through September 18 in LA. The mentors include Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body), Mary Sweeney (Baraboo), and Meg...
Guest Post: How Jumping the Broom Made it to the Big Screen by Arlene Gibbs
Around seven years ago when I was a production company executive, producer Glendon Palmer and screenwriter Elizabeth Hunter pitched the idea of Jumping The Broom (JTB) to me. I loved it and told my...
The Whistleblower — directed by Larysa Kondracki and written by Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan
When I was growing up the thing that scared the crap out of me was nuclear war. For many years I was convinced that we were all going to radiated away. So when I saw Silkwood it resonated with me in...
Interview with Larysa Kondracki — Director of The Whistleblower
Women and Hollywood: How did you come up with the idea for the film? Larysa Kondracki: I am a Ukrainian Canadian, and the issue of sex-trafficking was very much being discussed in my community. My...
Sarah’s Key Author Tatiana de Rosnay Answers Questions As the Film Opens Today
There have been several generations of Holocaust films by now. Most of the films focus on the Nazis and the Germans. But Sarah’s Key the film, based on the best-selling novel by Tatiana de Rosnay...
Another Earth — Co-Written By Brit Marling
Another Earth is one of the coolest movies I’ve seen in a long time. One reason it’s cool is because there is a girl science geek at its center. Brit Marling — this year’s so-called...
Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Brit Marling
Brit Marling is the co-writer and star of Another Earth which opens on Friday. I really liked the film. It has a totally different female lead — an astrophysicist student. How cool. Aside from...
The Tree — Written and Directed by Julie Bertuccelli Opens Today
The Tree is a lament on love, loss and family. It’s a movie about trying to find a way through your grief to see some light on the other side. One of the stars of the film is this gigantic Moreton...
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a story of female friendship. The relationships are about dedication and life long commitment no matter what happens. Based on the novel by Lisa See, the film is...
The Bridesmaids Effect: Kristen Wiig Gets the Green Light for Imogene
Multiple sources are reporting that Bridesmaids star Kristin Wiig will next take on the dark comedy Imogene written by Michelle Morgan and to be directed by American Splendor directors Shari Springer...
Two Women Get Directing Gigs — Drew Barrymore and Jerusha Hess
Drew Barrymore and Jerusha Hess (the co-writer of Napoleon Dynamite) have both signed up for directing gigs. Barrymore will produce and direct Heist Society to be adapted by Shauna Cross (Whip It)....
Guest Post: Raven Symone Plays Georgia…Sticky Issue for Feminists? by Emilie Spiegel
Last week, the Raven Symone series created by chick-lit author Jennifer Weiner, State of Georgia, premiered on ABC Family. Symone plays Georgia, a young woman who’s recently moved to NYC to pursue...
Diablo Cody to Make Her Directing Debut
Academy Award winning writer Diablo Cody will make her directing debut on her own script Lamb of God. Her longtime collaborator Mason Novick will produce. It seems that the movie is being fast...