“I’m here to take responsibility for my actions and restate a call to action,” said Frances McDormand as she took the stage at Women in Film’s Crystal + Lucy Awards. “I have this feeling in my gut that times are changing.” The recent Academy Award winner was part of a segment dedicated to “45 Years of Advocacy,” honoring activists who have fought for gender equality in the industry, including Dr. Stacy L Smith, who helped create the inclusion rider and accepted the honor on behalf of the 22 leaders in attendance at the event on Wednesday.
McDormand famously introduced “inclusion riders” to the masses when she mentioned the term at this year’s Oscars in her acceptance speech for Best Actress. The “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” star explained, “I have been vaguely aware of and completely intrigued by the series of USC Annenberg studies on gender parity in film and television, which were commissioned by Women in Film and the Sundance Institute, but I didn’t know that the author of the studies had taken the next step and created an actual working legal tool.” She joked, “If I may use a sporting metaphor: If you want to go fast, go it alone, if you want to go far, do it together. … Can we successfully legislate morality? Perhaps not. But we can ask our better selves to go forward together, to take us farther than we have gone before.”
#CrystalLucys #InclusionRider @Inclusionists pic.twitter.com/O0555RWzzE
— WIF (@WomenInFilm) June 14, 2018
Since the Oscars, Brie Larson, Michael B. Jordan, and Paul Feig, among others, have committed to inclusion riders, which are contract clauses that ensure projects have diverse casts and crews.
“It’s because of women that we’re in this transformative moment,” Smith said. She emphasized, “Support women. Champion women. And unequivocally, tomorrow, start hiring women.”
Larson was present to accept the Crystal Award for Excellence in Film. She used her time at the podium to draw attention to USC’s Annenberg Inclusivity Initiative’s latest report, an examination of gender and race in film criticism that concluded film reviewers are “overwhelmingly white and male.”
Larson: Associated Press/YouTube
“I’d like to bring to light an aspect of our industry that has risen to the surface in the last week,” the “Room” star announced. “This issue has a solution that each one of us in this room can participate in.”
Larson cited some of the study’s findings, and drew attention to the “huge disconnect” between the U.S. population vs. film reviewers. “Why does that matter?” she asked. “Why am I up here talking about statistics when I could be up here talking about my publicist?” Larson emphasized that she doesn’t “hate white dudes,” but considers their overwhelming prevalence in film criticism a problem.
“What I am saying is that if you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have the chance to see your movie and review your movie,” she explained. “We need to be conscious of our bias and make sure that everyone is in the room.” She added, “I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him out of ‘A Wrinkle in Time.’ It wasn’t made for him. I want to know what that film meant to women of color, to biracial women, to teen women of color, to teens that are biracial. These are just facts these are not my emotions,” she clarified. “I want to know what my work means to the world, not a narrow view.”
“On that note, Larson announced that both the Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals have committed to bolstering its credentialing ranks to include 20 percent of underrepresented critics in Park City and Toronto at the next installments of each festival,” The Hollywood Reporter confirms.
“First,” Larson outlined, “female and underrepresented critics can’t review what they don’t see and many are denied accreditation and access to press screenings. If you are in this room, or if you know someone who is a gate keeper, please make sure these invites and credentials find their way to more underrepresented journalists and critics, many of whom are freelancers,” she specified. “Artists, agents, publicists, and marketing execs, you can do your part by committing to an inclusive press plan and junket strategy on your end. This includes asking for a wider array of magazine photographers in addition to writers. Disney has been a brilliant partner on this on ‘Captain Marvel.'”
“Second: Feed the pipeline,” she stated. “I know you’re thinking, ‘Brie, we’d love to have a balanced pool but there’s not enough underrepresented critics to make this realistic.’ I’m super happy to tell you that 41 percent of Bachelor’s degrees in journalism and communication go to white women and 22 percent to women of color, so the talent is there, the access and opportunity is not.”
“To find talent, Larson also announced ‘an opt-in tool’ that will launch late summer that is designed to allow studios and artist representatives to more easily find and contact entertainment journalists and critics from underrepresented groups,” writes THR. “It’s unclear which organization is behind the tool.”
McDormand voices a character in “Isle of Dogs,” in theaters now. Larson toplines “Captain Marvel,” set to bow March 8, 2019. She made her feature directorial debut with “Unicorn Store,” a whimsical coming-of-age comedy that made its world premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
