The weather is changing here in NYC, the kids are getting ready to go back to school and the fall film festivals are upon us, so before too much time passes let’s take a look at how women fared this summer at the box office.

We all know that in general there are still many fewer films that star women both at the multiplex and at the art house.  That still needs to change.

The big movies starring women this summer kicked off with Sex and the City 2 which got the shit kicked out of it by the critics.  But even though it was a disappointment creatively and everyone thinks assumes it was a flop, it has grossed $95 million in the US and $194 million overseas.  So the gross is now almost $300 million and it cost $100 million to make, so it will ultimately make money.

The Twilight Saga’s third film, Eclipse, has now grossed $298 million domestically and $356 million overseas.  That’s a total of almost $656 million and the budget for the film was $68 million.  A huge hit.  It will be in the top 10 of the year.  And it has beaten the domestic gross of New Moon which was doubtful when the film first opened because it did not beat the New Moon opening weekend.

Angelina Jolie topped Salt which has now grossed $115 million in the US and $130 overseas for a total of $245 million on a budget of $110 million.  And let’s not forget Eat Pray Love which opened last in mid August.  Its gross is now at $70 million in the US on a budget of $60 million.

None of the films listed above was directed by a woman.

But things are a bit different in the indie world which seems to let some women directors in the door.  According to IndieWIRE’s summer box office analysis Summer Box Office Report: Women Rule The Art Houses, Peter Knegt argues that the success of women directors this summer is unprecedented. Four of the top ten grossing films at the art house this summer were directed by women including:

Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give, (which opened in April)
Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone,
Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,
Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right.

And remember that Cholodenko’s film is the top grossing specialty film of the year at almost $20 million.

He notes:
Turning over to the summer’s top grossing specialty releases, women dominated: In audience seats, in the front of the camera and, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, behind it…One would be hard-pressed to find an example of such a dominance in specialty summers of yore.

And women starred in (but did not direct) some of the summer’s other big successes including: The Girl Who Played With Fire and I Am Love.

It’s great to see women centric film and women directors do so well and acknowledged for their success.

Summer Box Office Report: Women Rule The Art Houses (IndieWIRE)

Regina King

Rutina Wesley

Regina King kicked a little Emmy butt in a piece on the Huffington Post.  First, she talked about the lack of people of color nominated.  She cited stats from the NY Daily News the that only 53 people of color were nominated in nearly 1,000 categories.  Ouch.

People, especially those in the business, don’t usually bring up these issues so she gets major points for taking a stand.

Several other things pissed her off especially when they mixed her up with Rutina Wesley an actress from True Blood.  When Wesley entered the ceremony they said she was King.  I mean they both have a name that starts with the letter r.

Seriously.  That’s just bad form.  These women look nothing alike.

The Emmys: As White As Ever (Huffington Post)

In a surprise move, Lionsgate has pushed up the Tyler Perry directed For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf from January 2011 to November 5 right smack into the awards mix.

The film stars an amazing cast including Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington, Janet Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine and Tessa Thompson.

They must think (or hope) that they have another Precious on their hands.

It seems they have cut the title from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf to For Colored Girls.  The script is written by Nzingha Stewart based on the play by Ntozake Shange.

I am very interested in checking this one out. More info to come.

Here are some articles that came down the pike that you might want to check out:

Beauty meets brute force: Are tough screen heroines empowering, or do they send a dangerous message? (Denver Post)

The 12th Mumbai film festival has an all women’s jury.

Women In Horror Films (Forbes)

Nine Women In The Room: A Music Writers Roundtable (NPR)

Catherine Deneuve movie at the Venice Film Festival Potiche takes a look at sexism set in the 70s.

23 female African Filmmakers to gather at the Women of the Sun Film Festival September 2-9. (Variety)

Study Of “The New York Times Book Review” Finds More Men Get Novels Reviewed Than Women (The Frisky)

Single, and Singular, Women Become Her All about Cherry Jones. (NYT)

Franzen Reviews Stir Backlash From Women (Forbes)

I’m getting back up to speed and decided to wade in on some fall film festivals news.

The Telluride Film Festival kicked off today and there are 24 films listed in the main lineup called “the show.”  Of the 24 films announced guess how many are directed by women?

1.5.

One film – OKA! AMERIKEE is directed by Lavinia Currier and a second, THE TENTH INNING is directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

That’s 6.25%.

It’s just so fun to come back after almost two weeks off and know that nothing has changed.  Sigh.

Telluride Film Festival

Friends-

Women & Hollywood is going to take some downtime, will try to unplug (it will be hard) and maybe read a couple of actual books that are printed on paper (radical!)  I also need to watch about 25 films for the Athena Film Festival and spend time organizing the book on women directors.

I’ll be back after Labor Day.

Please send me anything you think I need to know that I might miss while I am unplugged.

See you soon.  When I return we will celebrate 3 years of Women & Hollywood’s work.

Thanks for reading.

Melissa

Had a chance last week to talk with Lindsay Doran producer of the Oscar winning Sense & Sensibility and the current Nanny McPhee Returns about a bunch of different topics.

As a person who does a lot of interviews, I found Lindsay’s answers and insights to be very, very interesting. Hope you do too. Her bio is at the end.

Women & Hollywood: You grew up a child of Hollywood. What was it like?

Lindsay Doran: I was born very late in my father’s life. He was 55. He was a studio executive for nearly 50 years working on films like Sunset Blvd. My mother typed scripts for Preston Sturgess. My brother was the publicist on 2001: A Space Odyssey. So it was all around me and what I saw was people who loved it and people who did not have to compromise who they were to be successful in the movie business. Filmmakers wanted to work with my father. He was an executive producer in the original sense of the word meaning he was an executive but also a producer. He was home every night at 6:45 and we all had dinner together. I grew up listening to people talk about story. There was always the sense that the story was the thing that mattered and that was always the thing I loved most.

There were no women though. There were no women executives. There were no women directors. There were no women producers. There were no women anything. There were no role models as far as that went.

W&H: What’s the difference between your dad’s time and your time?

LD: Firstly, they made a whole lot of movies because there was little else people could do with their entertainment dollars. There was a captive audience that would go to the movies every week. How much money they did certainly wasn’t in the public’s mind. You talked about whether a movie was good or not and that was the end of it. So the business of it is quite different.

W&H: You’ve been a studio executive, run a studio and been an independent producer. Talk about the differences in the jobs.

LD: The main difference is that when you are a studio executive you are responsible for a number of films at the same time. When I first got to Paramount I was supervising 5 go movies at the same time. I was looking at 5 sets of dailies every day. It was a 12 hour a day job. It was difficult to get involved on a line by line basis in a screenplay and I did it anyway because that’s what I love to do.

The other big difference is between being a buyer and a seller. When I was a studio exec my phone rang all day long. The minute I became a producer even though I was running Sydney Pollack’s production company the phone hardly ever rang. I had to initiate everything. But in the end that’s what I prefer because I can work closely on the script and be in the editing room if that’s what it requires. You can supervise every aspect of it.

W&H: You have worked a great deal with Emma Thompson. Can you talk about how that relationship?

LD: We’ve made 5 movies together over 20 years. I was an executive at Paramount and I developed a script called Dead Again. I became the producer and we sent it to Kenneth Branagh. He came in and said that I will play both male leads and my wife will play both female leads. He really knew what he wanted. I really didn’t know Emma so I went to see her here in LA while she was performing in Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear.

I had also been looking for someone to write Sense & Sensibility my whole life – someone who could be funny and emotional and make it accessible. I already knew she loved Jane Austen so I approached her and she had only written skits (for a show called Thompson) and she tried to talk me into doing Persuasion instead. She agreed to do it and I managed to get Amy Pascal who was then running Columbia Pictures to agree to pay for it for an unknown screenwriter. And then Emma did Howard’s End and became a huge movie star. Then she didn’t have a whole lot of time for writing.

It’s been a terrific partnership without ever being formalized as a partnership. We never bothered to have a company.

W&H: How do find the material you want to produce?

LD: In a way it finds me. When I was an exec at paramount I would hear lots of pitches and read lots of scripts and I kept bringing things to my boss and she would say no that’s not really good enough so I would say ok I’ll go find something else, and finally I realized that I had so much going on with the movies I supervised that I didn’t have time to look for new scripts. So I thought well I just wont bother anymore. And what I learned was certain things just found me. I’d hear a story or an idea and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and go oh wow that’s such a good idea. So I went after those things. If anything didn’t make me want to stop everybody on the street and tell them the story I just didn’t do it. There’s a project I am working on now that came from my doctor. She just told me a story and I thought what a great idea for a movie. Nanny McPhee was something Emma told me over lunch. She said she had read these books when she was little. I didn’t read the books until later. Stranger than Fiction was the same thing. I was working with a guy of something else and he said to me I want to write a movie about a guy who has a narrator.

W&H: So how did Nanny McPhee actually get made? How do you take the idea and make a movie?

LD: I was running United Artists (UA) when Emma told me the idea so I put it into development and by the time we got the rights which took a while I was no longer running the studio so I became the producer. MGM (which owned UA) essentially owned the script. She and I worked on the script for a good seven years. It was nine years before the movie came out. It took forever. And when the script was ready we went to MGM and said ok this script is ready to go. MGM didn’t want to make the movie and didn’t believe in it. A lot of people wanted to do it and Working Title came to us and were interested in working with Emma and with Kirk Jones who was attached as the director so they were willing to put up the money through Universal so we made the movie that way.

W&H: This time Susanna White directed the film. How did that come about?

LD: I looked at the work and met with many different directors. I was looking for someone who had poetry to the way they shot and somebody who really had a feel for the material in a very personal way. She really identified with Mrs. Green. She felt that the mothers of the world were going to recognize themselves in this incredibly harried woman. She suggested some changes in the script to underline that fact so not only to the children change over the course of it but Mrs. Green also changes. She seemed to have a grasp on it that was more interesting than anyone else I met.

W&H: I guess I don’t need to ask you the question of which is your favorite film?

LD: It’s hard to choose. It’s like choosing among your children. I love Stranger Than Fiction. But Sense & Sensibility is the only one I carried around with me from the time I was 23 years old. It is the work of my life and usually that story does not have a happy ending. Usually when people dedicate their whole life to making a film then it comes out and most people don’t know it. That’s what you have to get used to as a filmmaker where you can have this dream and it can turn out to be a really bad movie or you can get kicked off the movie. A lot of these stories are just terrible.

So to have this great director (Ang Lee). Talk about taking a chance. Ang didn’t speak a whole lot of English at that point and he had never read Jane Austen in his life, but when he read the script he said everything I wanted a director to say. He said I want this movie to break people’s hearts so badly that they will still be recovering weeks later. I wanted to film to be hilarious and heartbreaking and he was the only one who knew. As good as Emma’s script was and it deserved every award that it got, I thought that Ang brought something to it that made it better. He brought a visual poetry that I just thought was breathtaking. And he brought a subtlety and sensitivity and he knew how to hold back in a lot of ways. He underplayed a lot of things in a way that made it work better.

W&H: Where do you think women are now in the business?

LD: The very first time I was interviewed on this topic a very long time ago a journalist came to see me and said, do you want to run a studio? And I said no. And she said that’s interesting. I’ve been thinking isn’t that terrible that women are never offered that job and what I keep meeting are women who don’t want that job or women who have turned it down. I had turned it down at that point and I only took the job at United Artists because it was a very small studio and I was only responsible for six movies a year.

Power doesn’t seem to be something that a whole lot of women are interested in, and I think it’s not a sexist thing to say that. I think it is something that some women are interested in and it makes sense for those people to be running studios or directing movies or running big production companies. But a lot of women it is simply not what they gauge it on. Maybe they want it but are not willing to make the sacrifices to have it, the classic problem of the working mother with Maggie and Susanna and Emma have been talking about all week (in promoting Nanny McPhee Returns).

I think one of the most telling things was when I was at United Artists there was a female executive under me and she already had one child when I got there and she had her second child while we were working together. She took let’s say two months off when the baby was born and then came back to work. And we went to a preview right after she came back to work. And somebody came up to her and said “you’re here? Really, didn’t you just have a baby?” And she turned to me and said “you know my husband (who was also a studio executive at a different studio) is also at a preview tonight. Do you think one person is coming up to him and asking why are you here didn’t you just have a baby?” So you have to be able to look that in the eye. It’s not that the women don’t feel guilty all by themselves. It’s that the whole world conspires to make them feel guilty. I thought wow. This is what she has to go through and it’s murder. Î just don’t see men having that problem.

But I don’t think we should just look at the statistics and say isn’t it terrible that there aren’t more women directors. Isn’t it terrible that there aren’t more women running studios. Because the truth is even though there are a lot more who would like to do it and aren’t doing it – they don’t want to do it in the same numbers. I just really believe it. I know no one wants to say that out loud.

I think the more interesting thing is the something I heard on the street recently where you ask three questions…

W&H: The Bechdel test?

LD: Yes. I think it’s fascinating and why that happens is a very interesting phenomenon and why is it all still so boy oriented. It’s odd. Because nobody cares who writes a screenplay. In general if somebody is a great screenwriter they are going to get hired but there aren’t as many women writers. So what does that mean? And when there are women screenwriters they frequently want to write The Kids Are All Right, they don’t want to write movie like say “sound barrier.”

W&H: What advice do you have for people — especially women who want to be producers?

LD: Be independently wealthy. It used to be that the studios supported producers. They would give them an office and an assistant and some money that they could live on and more money to develop material and you could make a living as a producer between the actual jobs. That really doesn’t exist anymore. So the time that it takes to develop a story — and it takes years — you don’t get paid during that entire time. It’s a real problem for men and women who want to be producers. How do make a living in between movies? Then the second big thing is how do you avoid selling your movie down the river to the first entity that comes along that can get your movie made even though its completely wrong for the material.

The second thing is read as many screenplays as you can. Not books but wonderful screenplays of the movies that you admire going all the way back. Read any kind of screenplay you can get a hold of, any movie that you love that’s the kind of movie you want to make and see how they work. Really analyze what makes them work so you can work with writers and give them advice based on real world stuff which is really useful.

Beyond that you just need to have the courage of your convictions. You have to be able to stand up to the odds to be able to say I’m going to do this no matter what. It has to be about I can’t wait to get this story to the screen. I can’t live unless I do it. You’ve got to have that kind of drive, especially now.

Bio
Lindsay Doran began her career at Embassy Pictures, where she received her first credit as executive in charge of production on Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap. Later, she joined Paramount Pictures where the films she supervised included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Naked Gun and Ghost.

Doran then became the president of Sydney Pollack’s Mirage Enterprises, where she produced Dead Again, Leaving Normal and Sense and Sensibility, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture—Drama and the Academy Award® for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In 1996, Doran became president and chief operating officer of United Artists Pictures, where she presided over a number of films including the 18th and 19th installments of the James Bond franchise, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough, as well as Ronin and The Thomas Crown Affair.

She later resumed her career as a producer and started her own production company, Three Strange Angels. Through Three Strange Angels, she has produced Nanny McPhee and Stranger Than Fiction.

Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin

The Emmy folks like the Oscar folks give out their technical and “smaller” awards on a different night from their high profile TV event. The big Emmys are next weekend.

Betty White who killed on Hot in Cleveland all season won an Emmy for hosting Saturday Night Live and Ann-Margaret won for guest actress on Law & Order SVU.

But most importantly, another glass ceiling was broken by composers Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman who won for title theme music for Nurse Jackie. They are the first women to win on that category.

Congrats.

I’ve had Afghanistan on my mind since seeing The Tillman Story this weekend. Here’s a piece that movied me.

“Will the nations of the word allow the new found rights of girls and women to become a casualty of a brokered peace?

Good question Katie.

Here’s something that is making me angry this morning- sites are picking up on a story about how young women across Hollywood are auditioning to be Andrew Garfield’s love interest in the new Spiderman reboot.

Here’s the title from the Hollywood Reporter piece:

Will one of these women be Spiderman’s love interest?

There is just something inherently wrong with a process that talks about a female character in this way.  It’s setting her up to be nothing more than a piece of meat.  I just wish that people would understand the implications of creating this dynamic.

The guy is the superhero star, and the young woman is just the love interest with no name according to the story.  Yet every up and comer wants to play this part.

So glad we also have Lisbeth Salander to look forward to cause Spiderman and the girl who will have two lines and have to look like she is in peril just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Will one of these women be Spider-Man’s love interest? (exclusive) (Hollywood Reporter)

Susanna White took some time during the press junket for Nanny McPhee Returns to answer some questions for Women & Hollywood.  Nanny McPhee Returns opens nationwide today.

Women & Hollywood: How did you get the script for the film?

Susanna White: I was sent it. I was out in Africa. I can remember the day very clearly. I was researching the moment when the American Marines crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq. And I came in and washed the sand off me and was completely transported.  I fell in love with the writing. It’s such a departure from what I’ve done before. I really engaged, mainly with the character of Mrs. Green, a mom who’s desperately trying to hold it all together, do a job, run the house, look after her kids, and care for the old people in the village and not really coping and desperately in need of a nanny.  I thought, although loosely set in World War II, it felt like a contemporary story I wanted to tell.

W&H:  Why was it so attractive to you since this was such a big departure from what you are known for?

SW:  I’d been trying forever to break into making features, for as long as I can remember. I started making films when I was eight years old and it was a long journey for me. And here was an opportunity to make a big studio film with a really good script. And I knew we could attract a level of cast that was going to be fantastic. The other big thing for me was that it involved a lot of CGI, which is an area that I really love working in. So there was lots of boxes checked for me in terms of what I wanted to do and it felt like a very exciting opportunity.

W&H:  You’ve done documentaries. You’ve worked in television. Why did it take so long to break into directing features?

SW: I guess for a long time I thought it was my problem. That maybe there was some quality in myself that was holding me back in some way. And it was really making Generation Kill, because to me, whether I’m creating World War II London or the world of the marines in Iraq, it’s about creating a world. And then it’s different in some sense. But clearly other people saw it as incredibly significant that I directed a TV series about an all male world. And it made me realize that there actually was a whole level of sexism going on.  People in general didn’t think anything about a man directing something on what might be a female subject.  But people saw it as very significant that here was a woman doing a piece of work about an all male world. And that’s when I really woke up and thought people really do see me, not just as a director, but as a woman who is directing. And the same way that I thought it was very significant that Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for directing The Hurt Locker. But people saw that as some kind of major achievement. Where as to me it’s just as much of an achievement as The Piano.

W&H:  Can you talk about how you got the gig on Generation Kill?

SW:  It had been submitted to Kevin McDonald who is represented by the same agent as me in London. Kevin wasn’t available to do it and my agent called me and said these great David Simon scripts are coming and I really think you should take a look at it.  I read it and I was a big David Simon fan and met with him and we really connected.  And what interested him about me was that it was a brave movie about exploring characters under pressure. And I really enjoyed doing the action but that wasn’t the main thing that made me want to tell the story. We also connected in that we both were really interested in using a combination of actors and non-actors. With my documentary background and his background coming out of The Corner and The Wire, we had very similar philosophy about not wanting to see any acting — for it to feel very real. And finally, he was a big Bleak House fan.  He’s been compared to Dickens before and I think he really liked this idea in some strange way of the woman who directed Bleak House to direct Generation Kill. I have to say it was one of the most positive experiences of my career directing that series.

W&H: What was your biggest take-away from that?

SW:  I think to realize I could probably do anything. Not to be afraid anymore. I think it gave me a whole lot of confidence because I went in to that having never done action, having never done CGI, I’d never done a scene with 35 characters in it, and doing all that, way in the middle of Africa in really tough conditions in the desert. And it made me feel like if I can do this I can probably try my hand at anything.

W&H: Now that you’ve done your first feature. Have you lined up the second one?

SW:  I’m working on various things. I’m having a fantastic time at the moment working with Tom Stoppard on a series for HBO called Parades End. It’s basically one great big novel divided into various parts that tells the story of a marriage around the time of the First World War.  It’s a big saga. So, we’re working on that together and that’s about to cast at the moment. And then I’m also working on a thriller of John le Carre.

W&H: So you really didn’t get pigeonholed back in the girl world after Nanny McPhee.

SW: That was important to me. It was interesting doing the junkets because a lot of people were saying its great having a woman directing this movie and what was it like working with the children. And I absolutely loved doing Nanny McPhee on lots of levels, partially because I really wanted to make a movie for my kids and my family, but I was really conscious of not wanting to get pigeonholed in that way. It’s been great because I’ve been sent all kinds of things and it’s very exciting.

W&H:  Is there a difference between directing features and television?

SW:  I think it’s just better.  My whole career in television I’d been dreaming up ideas and people would say it’s a great idea but too expensive.  On this, Eric Fellner at Working Title was so encouraging to me and said just look at every scene and think how to make the best possible version of that scene. Look at the ideas in that script and think how to make them the greatest cinema moment you can. And so for instance, Emma had written a scene where a pig dives into a pond and comes out the other side. And I was in my bath and thought what if I did a whole Busby Berkeley set piece here with synchronized swimming and pigs. And I went back to Emma and asked what she thought of the idea here and Lindsay Doran the producer really liked it because she was an Esther Williams fan.  And suddenly I found this thing where I thought everyone was going to say no but people were saying wow that’s great. Can you think of more stuff? And then I dreamt up a magical harvest, and I dreamt up other big set pieces.

Also the opportunity to get real A-list cast. That was very exciting to me. The casting director had asked who I wanted to play Lord Gray and I said Ralph Fiennes and she said yeah, but who else. And I said I want Ralph Fiennes because he’s the right person for that role. And we offered to him and we got him. And similarly, I thought who would be the ideal father to come over the hill and I thought Ewan McGregor.  I know Ewan’s agent quite well and we floated it past her and we got Ewan McGregor.  It was thrilling. I think certainly with the HBO, television is a very exciting place and I think all the boundaries are shifting.  With people like Kate Winslet doing work for HBO at the moment, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about working on this Tom Stoppard project is because it’s a really great long-form drama. So that’s the right form for that piece of work.  I think we’re at a very exciting time in terms of the whole CGI world, and the 3D world and all the technology really excites me.

W&H: What advice do you have for someone who wants to break into directing?

SW:  It took me a really long time. The only thing that kept me going… I guess I just had it inside me very early on and I knew that is what I had to do. And it really was a long hard struggle for me, even though I was lucky because I got the Fulbright scholarship to go to film school at UCLA. After I finished at UCLA it was seven years before I got a break into production.  But I didn’t give up. I think my best advice to people who want to direct is not to give up. At the moment you can make things very cheaply.  So keep making things. That’s the best way to learn. By watching a lot of stuff and having a go. You don’t need to make things on a big budget.  The best ideas are free. I think it’s about just really having faith.

W&H: What has Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win meant to you?

SW: What I hope is that it’s going to make it easier for people coming up now. I feel very lucky. I had a long career in television and now I’ve made a big scale feature, but it wasn’t straightforward for me to get there when I look at my male contemporaries. And I really hope that for the young women coming through now, it’s going to be easier – it will be a more level playing field. It will be talent that comes through regardless of whether you’re male or female and I really hope that winning the Oscar put some big cracks in the glass ceiling.

W&H:  Why has the film The Piano influenced you above all other movies?

SW: I think there is a very female sensibility behind that film. It’s a very delicate, balanced, nuanced and emotional story.  And I can remember very clearly being at that movie with the man who became my husband and he did not get.  And still to this day he cannot get why I got so excited about it and why I remain so excited about it. It was a very female story brilliantly told. And I think everything about that movie worked. It’s incredibly visual. I can still remember the shots of the big dress under the water.  And the performances are so strong.  It’s unbelievably sexy and the score is just divine. It works on every level. I guess there are lots of movies that have influenced me but that one showed me a different way of making films. It’s like hearing lots of music being played but it’s not in the pitch your voice fits in with.  And suddenly it was like here was something in my register that resonated for me.

My sister, Rohi, and I have long fought against cultural norms — she, as the producer, and myself as a filmmaker. When I first started writing this film, it was because of Rohi’s friend, Rashi Shyam, whose father had shot himself.  No one within the South Asian community even knew how deeply he was struggling with depression.  No one acknowledged his depression even
after that, when he was hospitalized.  So we decided to make this film, hoping to de-stigmatize mental illness and bring awareness of the issue to all cultures.

We shot the film in 21 days in New York and New Jersey, using our old childhood home, my graduate student housing, the backyard of a family friend — you name it, we borrowed it.  We used a mix of digital and 16mm.  At the time, digital was still figuring itself out.  One of the early hardships was trying to get everyone on the same page on what digital was, and what it meant to the post-production process.  It was hard for me to watch new technologies come out and the field advance so quickly, fearing that our equipment would become obsolete overnight.  Luckily, we managed to get through the process with a beautiful product, that I feel can stand the test of time.

Photo credit: Michael Lew

One of the things that I think helps make it work is the story.  It is a family drama seen through the lens of these very strong, very dynamic women (Madhur Jaffrey, Pooja Kumar, and Madelaine Massey), and I think that their relationships overpower all else.  It’s a lesson to trust in the story, and the strength of making layered relationships.  As a first-time Asian American woman director, working with Madhur Jaffrey, who has been an icon to so many generations, was a bit nerve-wracking.  But once we all got on set, and realized we all needed to work together towards a singular vision, there was little time for worrying.

I think the most important thing I learned though was to keep the people you trust and respect close to you.  In trying to assemble the team for this project, I remember one of the gaffers took one look at me, and opted not to take the job.  It was later that I realized that he did me a big favor that day.  Those who judge by appearances, or can’t find the leadership in a woman, won’t do well by my side.  Those who do are the ones who understand that there will be less bass in my “CUT” but I still mean cut.  Without those who believed in me, such as my sister, this film would not be getting its release.  This film exists to create dialogue, and it cannot do that on a shelf somewhere.  So she fought particularly hard, even through the economy crash, which buried a lot of other independent films, to get a limited six-city release through Big Cinema.

Over the course of the film’s production until now, things have changed -- Rashi’s father -- who was the catalyst for the script itself — died after years of suffering in the hospital.  Her mother recently passed on, too, from hiding the stress of having to deal with the fact that her husband
suffered from an illness that no one understood or wanted to acknowledge.  And so the importance of the film has become even greater.  It has been a long journey with Hiding Divya, but we’re glad to be able to bring it to closure through its release.

Film opens in NY/NJ and SF today.  More info: Hiding Divya

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVT3wew1QgU

This looks so great.  Can’t wait.

Opens November 5.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SLn4a5W3lY

Mary Kay Place is nominated for an Emmy for her work as Adaleen Grant on the HBO show Big Love. The ceremony for her category — guest actress in a drama series — takes place this weekend on August 21st.

Women & Hollywood: Congrats on the Emmy nomination. I’ve loved your work for so long and I’m flattered that you like my site.

Mary Kay Place: It’s just very interesting. There’s a lot of good stuff on there.

W&H: What are you working on now?

MKP: We’re shooting the 5th season of Big Love.

W&H: You’ve been a writer, director and actor.

MKP: I wrote before I acted. I was studying acting when I moved from Oklahoma to LA. I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t even know the right acting classes to get into. I started out in production and before that I worked for Tim Conway. I also worked as a typist in music clearance and learned about publishing.

I really wanted to learn and when I started with Norman Lear’s company I typed about 4,000 versions of every episode of Maude so I learned structure for the half hour sitcom. Then I met Linda Bloodworth who was teaching high school English in Watts and asked her if she wanted to write a script with me because I had an idea for a Mary Tyler Moore show. We wrote a spec script and wound up getting assignments from MASH. It was pretty amazing.

W&H: I never knew you and Linda Bloodworth were a writing team.

MKP: We were at the very beginning. For three years she and I wrote together. Then Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman came along and I started acting full time because we were shooting 35 pages a day five days a week. It was insane.

W&H: Is writing your first love?

MKP: I think for me it the hardest of all the things. I don’t think it is my primary gift by a long shot.

W&H: How did you get into directing?

MKP: I have had this script which is like The Last Picture Show from the girls point of view that I’ve been trying to write for 150 years, and I haven’t had time to do another draft in recent years. I’ve not quite gotten it right and I’ve always wanted to direct that so I just started directing TV to practice and learn the craft of it.  I was lucky to get opportunities and I enjoy it.  It’s fun to be able to shape the rhythm and tone.  One of the hardest things about directing is the stamina required.  I think as an actress you approach everything differently after you have been on that side of the camera.

W&H: What ever happened to the 12 Miles of Bad Road (the HBO show from Linda Bloodworth Thomason and starring Mary Kay and Lily Tomlin)

MKP: That is such a good question and I think you would need to ask the powers that be about that. I have no idea. I guess it’s in TV heaven.

W&H: That’s so sad.

MKP: It’s a mystery to me. I have no idea what became of it.

W&H: Your character Adaleen on Big Love is really scary.

Laughter.

W&H: Every time I see her I recoil.  How do you get Adaleen to be such an interesting character? And what have you learned about the power dynamics of that culture?

MKP: It’s only possible to do Adaleen because the writing is so amazing. Will Sheffer and Mark Olsen and their amazing writing staff are brilliant writers and have such psychological understanding.  They really get the dynamics of family and manipulation.  The show is so rich with levels and layers that makes it really fun to act.

For Adaleen, this is a woman who has been in a closed situation for a long time and she has found a way to have her own power. Because she was with Roman, she’s got a lot of power on the compound.  Even with Roman she figured out a way to be in charge of her life a lot more than the other women have.  There is very little consciousness going on in the compound. Everything is in the dark and underground and secretive and buried.  In spite of all her denials she has strong emotional reactions to things which she then tried to clamp down or or divert but sometimes they just come out and she can’t help it and that surprises her.  The thing that cracks me up is how she and nicky can be furious with each other and then next week they are talking again.

W&H: Do you have a favorite character that you’ve played?

MKP: I’ve had a lot of favorite characters. Adaleen is one of my favorites because she is so unlike anything I have played. But I loved Loretta on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, I loved Meg in The Big Chill, I loved the nurse that I played in Manny and Lo and I even loved the little part I played in Being John Malkovich. I have had a lot of nice fun parts.

W&H: I was remembering your part as the Surgeon General on The West Wing. That show had such strong female characters. Do you have any comment on that?

MKP: It was a great gift to play that part. That woman had such integrity and because she was friends with the President she really had the courage and the faith in herself to speak her truth and to argue with him. I really appreciated that.

W&H: You’ve seen the ups and the downs for women in the business. Where are we as women now?

MKP: When I look at TV I am so excited because there are so many fabulous parts for women more so than in film. I’m really encouraged by that. The fact that these shows do well is encouraging. When I look at hard numbers and statistics it ain’t so great but I think that shouldn’t stop any of us. The fact that there are these shows such as Damages and there are many examples of women in strong positions making intelligent choices being leaders saying the one true thing in the room, I think that’s happening in spite of these statistics. And women are succeeding in spite of the obstacles and it will keep happeining because there are too many smart women out there writing good scripts, directing good episodes and acting in beautifully written roles. So I’m encouraged and whenever those statistics come out I don’t think about them twice. I get a moment of irritation and then I see a movie like Temple Grandin which was moving and inspiring.

W&H: HBO needs to have some more womencentric shows on the air.

MKP: It would be nice.

W&H: So what’s coming up for you?

MKP: I did a 4 episode arc on Bored to Death which was an absolute blast, and of course the new season of Big Love.

“I don’t know how to sell this movie.”   These were the words, said by my foreign sales agent, which threw me into a state of chaos and panic in early June.  I had just finished stumbling through version 1.0 of the pitch for my newest project and that was his reply.

At first the statement made me mad – wasn’t he listening?  I told him about the movie and it was pretty cool.  He clearly did not get it.  Plus, wasn’t figuring out how to sell movies his job as the foreign sales agent?  Why was I responsible for doing his job for him?

Then I just froze.  I walked around in a daze for days, hearing his voice in my head.  How would I sell this movie?  I started thinking about my (sales) pitch – “it has dance and fighting and all this cool stuff; it is sort of the same characters except we are paying attention to other people…” – and I realized that I was confused by my pitch, so no wonder that he was confused too.  While my sales agent articulated himself in terms of his job, he was really asking a larger, more fundamental question:

WHAT MOVIE ARE YOU MAKING?

My description had been all over the place (“it is sort of this and sort of that with a pinch of this other thing, maybe”) with no clear choices about the film.  And if I didn’t know what kind of movie I was making, how could I adequately describe it to someone else?

Imagine trying to invent and describe a new room – it is not easy because every time you describe something (the table, the walls, the floors, a painting), you have to make new choices and debate if those choices are right – so maybe you stay deliberately vague so nothing clashes, but then no one can be sure of what you just described.

But describe a specific room you love and it comes easily and exactly (the vase is tall and glass and mottled semi-opaque green with a white stripe going vertically down the side and it sits on top of the cabinet in the left corner) – MUCH more specific and easy to interpret.

A good movie, one that you really know and can see in your head (even if it is still only a script and a dream), has to be the same as that second room.  Knowing what kind of movie I am making means knowing what my movie looks like, what it feels like and what it sounds like.  I know the style, the color palette, the characters, the genre, the rhythm, and more.  When I know the details, I can share the vision and sharing the vision enables financing, casting, and everything else a movie requires.  When my sales agent says “I don’t know how to sell that movie,” he is really telling me, “I don’t know what that movie is” and I need to figure out the answer before I go any farther.

Knowing what kind of movie I am making does not mean I am making a movie that anyone has ever seen before.  I love movies that challenge the audience to see something new.  But I am clear that my movie feels like an action movie, not a drama.  It is more like a fight movie than a dance movie.  These are critical choices.  Excellence can only come from clear choices [MIYAGI QUOTE HERE] Clear choices allow me to decide what is best for my movie and eliminate the great ideas and great scenes that I love, but which don’t really fit or improve the overall film.

A clear vision of my film is critical to bringing in all a film’s partners.  I need to bring in financiers who will support my film and who believe in what I am doing.  Film is already an uncertain and chaotic system.  There will be bumps in the road and unexpected twists in the journey to get my movie made and seen.  But if the film’s backers believe in the film, they can support the project through those twists and bumps.  But if my partners think I am making “The Jonas Brothers Movie” and I am actually making “The Doors”, they will feel betrayed, whether or not “The Doors” is a great film, because I lied.  Even if I told them it starred a male singer and followed his exploits and women would love it and all of that is still technically true, I betrayed their trust and their vision.  My backers spent time thinking about a “Jonas Brothers” movie and how much their daughters love those guys and how many tweens would buy the DVD and generally convincing themselves that “Jonas Brothers” was the way to go.  They don’t know what (if any) success a drug-fueled 60s hippie story can have.  Alternately, if they had started out as fans of Mr. Morrison and my Doors biopic, they might be a lot more sanguine about extending post or using a different actor or that myriad of other bumps and twists, because they are on board with the whole vision.  They are excited to hear about the next project as well, because they believe what I say and trust that the movie they are sold is the movie we will make.

This is true all the way down the line.  At every point in the process of a film, a producer is asking people to join the dream and dedicate their time, resources, connections, and more to making that dream real.

So what does this all mean?  It means know your movie.  Be specific and clear and realistic about what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like.  Own your movie with all its quirky details and concrete choices – and then go pitch it to the world.
________________________________________________________________________________
Elizabeth Dell is an independent feature film producer in Los Angeles, CA. Her most recent film, B-GIRL, about a female breakdancer, is currently on Showtime and DVD.

Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis star as competing ballerinas.  This film looks at little like The Turning Point meets Single White Female.

Why do women always have to try and kill their competition?

Still, it looks good.  One of the better trailers I’ve seen in a long time.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaI1XOB-bs

There’s been a twitter conversation this morning about how few shows on HBO have women leads. While they might not be great with series about women, they have done a number of fantastic and interesting documentaries about women.

That continues tonight with the premiere of Woman Rebel which tells the story of Silu a woman who fought in the Army (which was 40% female and one of the focuses was women’s rights) and then once the revolution was over became a member of parliament.

Director Kiran Deol answered some questions about the film.

Women & Hollywood: You got on a plane the day after you graduated from Harvard to make this film.  Why was the story so important to you?

Kiran Deol: I heard the statistic ’40% women’ — that 40% of the women in this rebel army were women, and it had my jaw on the floor.  I’m of Indian descent. Nepal is very close in proximity and at the time I was really drawn to a story that featured women in the developing world not as victims of violence, or prostitution,  but as agents of their own destiny… essentially a story featuring women working to change their own circumstances for themselves.  This particular story did that through the incredibly controversial means of armed revolution.

W&H: How did you even find out about the story?

KD: When I was in college, I heard about the number of women in the army from a friend, and that was what made me want to go to Nepal.  It was almost an instant decision–like a no-brainer.  I did thesis research there in 2005, and then went back to start working on the documentary in 2006.  Once in the country, getting access to the actual stories, that of a woman rebel soldier that we could follow for a long period of time…that proved to be a great challenge, or adventure…depending on how you look at things!

W&H: How did you find Silu?

KD: Silu was recommended to us by one of the top women leaders in the rebel Maoist party after we had already made inroads with the rebels for several months.  The leader knew we were having some trouble–the first character that we had found and liked from a rebel training camp had backed out because there were some conspiratorial suspicions that we were spies and that sort of thing.  And it had already taken several months to get that initial access…getting calls at 10pm at night and then showing up at a bus stop the next morning at 5am to take a jeep to an undisclosed location and hike the rest of the way.  In those beginning phases we essentially had to pitch the project to commanders so that we could get initial access to women and find a character that we liked.

The suggestion of Silu—and then finding her to be someone who was comfortable to be followed for a longer period of time, really turned out to be our lucky break.

W&H: It is remarkable that 40% of the rebels were women and one of the issues they fought for was gender inequities.  That seems to be a unique piece of a revolution.  What did you notice about how the male and female rebels interacted and what did that teach you?

KD: I noticed that both men and women were employed with the same kinds of tasks—women were not relegated to cooking food or cleaning up any more than men were relegated to training or fighting.  It’s not that men and women were constantly interacting and socializing; it’s more that the division of labor was not defined along gender lines.  That’s what struck me.

W&H: Did the men and the women lead differently?

KD: Because our story really focused on one character, I don’t know how much I can speak knowledgeably on how men lead differently in comparison to women.

In Silu, I did notice an affection I would see sometimes when she was dealing with other soldiers; and a warmth when she was interacting with people no matter where she went–from the city, to the countryside, to her home village.  The way she would talk to other women, there was often this really nurturing quality to her that was a surprising contrast with the tough exterior.

W&H: How did they make the transition from guns to becoming leaders in the parliament.

KD: The politics in Nepal move incredibly quickly, so there were a number of factors.  A major one is that I think the rebels realized that the violence and death toll as a result of all of the fighting was quickly becoming unpopular and they were losing the good will of the common people.  So they needed to find a way to transition into non-violent struggle.

When the King took over in 2005 and dissolved Parliamentary democracy to become an autocratic dictator, he provided the perfect opening.  The Maoist rebels joined forces with the disenfranchised political parties.  Together the two groups orchestrated a huge, non-violent, massive people uprising, known as ‘People Power II’ in April of 2006.

This lead to the King being deposed, and was the beginning of   the Maoist rebels entering the mainstream politics.  The non-violent approach proved very popular…in November 2006 they signed a peace agreement; and after campaigning in UN monitored free and fair elections in 2008, they came out as the majority party in Parliament.

Now, the current climate has taken a different turn, with the rebel Maoist party leaving Parliament in 2009, over political infighting and disagreements on how to integrate the two armed forces (rebels and government) together.  There is a political stagnancy now that has taken hold—no return to violence, but hopefully everyone can come together and resolve their differences and compromise to get the government back on track to start working for its people.

W&H: What did you learn about women’s leadership from this experience?

I learned that people become empowered through the process of leadership.  That’s why the UN advocates female leadership; women might bring different ideas to the table because of different experiences and perspective; but ultimately, if everyone is listening to one another, that added voice should make a stronger whole.

W&H: What advice do you have for other women who want to tell these types of stories?

KD: Go for it.  Depending on the medium you’re using (ie film, print, etc) the going might get tough at times, but do the work, trust your instincts, and don’t give up.  And try to surround yourself with supportive, like-minded collaborators.  I’d love to see more stories like this one out there.

W&H: How did you get the HBO deal?

We were very lucky because our film was one of eight that was shortlisted for the 2010 Oscar. My Executive Producer Robert Richter is also an award winning veteran filmmaker who has worked with HBO in the past–so after the shortlist was announced HBO got in contact that way.

W&H: What’s next for you?

KD: I am currently working on pitching a series with a producer friend of mine about ‘Women Rebels’ –women who revolutionize social change in their respective societies around the world.  Ideally we’d really love to broaden out that definition of ‘rebel’ and focus on these really compelling narratives that focus women as agents of change in their own lives.  I’m also working on several fictional projects.  Fingers crossed!

Film airs tonight on HBO.  Details and trailer here.

I spent most of my childhood as a girl educated at a Jewish Day School inundated with Holocaust imagery.  We got it so much that after a while it became kind of rote.  Not a great way to educate.  The legacy of my education is that many Holocaust images are seered into my brain.

It’s now some 25 years later and the survivors of the Holocaust are disappearing and those first hand memories of this horrible atrocity is receding with their deaths.  One thing the Nazis were good at (well they were also good at killing lots of people, not just Jews) was documenting their work — because that’s what the mass extermination of an entire species of people was to them.

They recorded everything.

Yael Hersonski an Israeli filmmaker, unearthed a lost reel of the Warsaw Ghetto circa 1942 right before the ghetto was liquidated and everyone was sent to a death camp.  It’s virtually impossible not to be affected watching this film.  It’s black and white and there are people who look fine and healthy walking next to others lying on the street, emaciated and dying.

That’s the crazy part of the film.  And the brilliant part.  It totally messes with your sense of reality.

None of us really have a concept of what life was like in the Warsaw Ghetto except the people who lived there, and Hersonski shows the film to some ghetto survivors and they comment throughout on their vivid memories.

The final third of the film is the most disturbing because it goes into how the Nazis staged the making of the film.  No one knows exactly what the film was supposed to be used for and just thinking about what might have been done with it makes my skin crawl.

The folks at the MPAA have decided that this film is a R rated film.  That just boggles my mind.  You can blow up many people, rape and mutilate women, but if it is a high bidget studio film you will get a PG-13.

A genuine educational film that shows how horrible man can be towards man that’s rated R.

Don’t be fooled.  See this film.  I’m not saying it will be easy.  But it is important.

Opens today in NYC.

A Film Unfinished

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khut0kKn-c8

In case you missed it, Emma Thompson showed up at The Daily Show and she kicked some ass while promoting Nanny McPhee Returns which opens Friday.

I can’t embed the link so you need to watch it on The Daily Show site.

Emma Thompson on The Daily Show

I read this blog post yesterday What does this say about U.S. manhood: Male critics actually like ‘Eat Pray Love’ by Patrick Goldstein of the LA Times and it didn’t really get to me enough to blog about it.  But while I was tossing and turning in bed this morning Goldstein’s post came to my mind and it made me angry.

The point to me is not that male critics like the film — male and female critics both like and dislike the film — it’s that there is surprise in the fact that some male critics actually like the film.  Not mentioned is that some women dislike the film, but that doesn’t seem to be as big a sin than men actually liking a film about a woman.

I seriously can’t believe that this conversation still goes on.  The job of a reviewer is to look at a film and say whether they like the film, the characters, you know the whole package.  The fact that it stars a woman or is about a woman should not automatically let men off the hook because really, how are they supposed to like a film about, oh my god, A WOMAN.

Can you imagine the reverse sentence ever being written?

What Does it Say about US Womanhood: Female Critics Actually Like The Expendables? (or substitute any of the hundreds of movies that star men.)

Would never happen.

What does this say about U.S. manhood: Male critics actually like ‘Eat Pray Love’ (LA Times)