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When Jean-Luc Godard famously said “All it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun,” he wasn’t saying anything Hollywood didn’t already know. Producers who make movies for the masses have been exploiting women, with or without weapons, from the beginning, and the formula has been wildly successful.
But using women to make movies successful and using women to make successful movies are two very different things. In the latter area, despite the many bright spots, the industry has failed miserably, and there’s no turnaround in sight. In fact, of the top-grossing films last year, only four percent had female directors, eight percent female writers and one percent female cinematographers, according to the 2002 “Celluloid Ceiling” study by Martha Lauzen, PhD at San Diego University (www.moviesbywomen.com/stats.html).
The dearth of women in the film business recently sparked the organization Guerrilla Girls to declare on an LA billboard: “Even the U.S. Senate is More Progressive than Hollywood. Female Senators: 14 percent. Female Directors: Four percent.” On their Website (www.guerillagirls.com) they’re even more provocative: “The stodgy Senate and hip Hollywood have something in common: they both lag behind the rest of U.S. society in numbers of women and people of color in top positions. And the Senate’s doing better than the film industry! “Even the interim government of Afghanistan is more progressive than Hollywood. Six percent of the interim cabinet members are women!”
Lest you think the problem is only Hollywood’s, independents don’t seem to be any more enlightened. Lauzen compared the top-grossing 50 films with the bottom-grossing 50 and found no significant difference in women’s numbers. More disheartening is that the numbers are actually decreasing. The percentage of women directors has dropped dramatically in recent years, from 11 percent in 2000 to six percent in 2001 to four percent in 2002.
“Unless this number begins to turn around just as dramatically,” says my friend, Michelle Meek, the founder and president of BuyIndies.com, (www.buyindies.com) women’s stories will likely remain untold cinematically. It’s appalling that an industry that started with powerful women directors like Alice Guy Blaché and writers like Mae West has basically failed to progress in the last century. It’s not surprising that men are the majority, since that is true of most positions of power in this country today. But the unusually paltry numbers in the film industry are startling and indicate a real problem—either of active or subtle discrimination. We need to take a stand collectively as an industry and actively seek out women directors, writers, producers, etc. Trust me, there’s plenty of female talent out there.”
Well said, Michelle. Here in the state of Maine, where I live much of the year, someone recently observed that if every small business hired just one person, unemployment would be wiped out overnight. Simplistic solution, maybe, but not wrong. Likewise, if every new independent film production hired just one woman in a “power position,” the industry would do overnight what fine organizations like Women in Film have in their long history been unable to get Hollywood to do. It could happen. Will it?
When you’re done ruminating on that subject, kick back with the more fun stuff in this issue, like Monty Mickelson’s piece on the resurgence of drive-in theaters and Kirsten Smith’s piece on great Girl Power movies. And when you’re ready to get back to making movies, don’t forget to read Jerry Kolber’s article on budgeting basics, and James Tocher’s “insider’s” piece on the finer points of the film-to-tape transfer. And please remember to tell our advertisers “you read about it in MovieMaker!” Hey, it just occurred to me that if only one of you told each one of them... Have a great summer—See you back here in September! MM
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Laptoper on 4/24/08 at 11:10 am
Good notebook! I’d take one.
This story was published in the Summer 2003 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
MM Notebook
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