Tonight, the Makers documentary series continues with a look at women in Hollywood. There are some great interviews, including one with Jane Fonda, where she talks about how she was able to get her politics into her films and how 9 to 5 was made.
Featured prominently are Ava DuVernay’s discussions of the future and how women of her generation are no longer waiting for the folks with power to give them permission to make a film — they are now doing it their own way.
Yet there is no concealing that the statistics are abysmal, and many folks in the doc attest to that. It must have been quite a challenge for director Linda Goldstein Knowlton to provide optimism when the reality of life as a woman creative in Hollywood is so bleak.
The revelation for me was Linda Woolverton, the billion-dollar screenwriter of The Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, and Maleficent. She spoke about how she had to fight to keep Belle strong and not be a typical damsel in distress. That might not seem so difficult now, but this was the late 1980s, and she really went out on a limb to convince Disney suits to see things her way.
I asked Woolverton some questions about writing modern-minded heroines for Disney, whether Maleficent could have been made a decade ago, and her directing aspirations.
Women and Hollywood: Talk about your fight for Belle in The Beauty and the Beast.
