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maryann johanson | #BlackLivesMatter

the magic bullet for improving the number of women directors working in Hollywood

Thu Jul 24 2014, 02:00pm | 27 comments

womandirector

And just because I’m on an angry roll today over the deplorable position of women in the film industry…

Last week, Indiewire blog Women and Hollywood ran this headline:

Universal Chief Donna Langley: There is No “Magic Bullet” to Improve Number of Women Directors Working on Studio Films

It refers to a DGA Quarterly magazine interview with Langley, in which she says this:

There’s no reason whatsoever why [women] can’t direct [tentpole and male-oriented action films]. In my own experience, when we have an open directing assignment of any kind, not just the big films, I would say it is the exception, not the rule, that there is a woman in the group of directors that we are interviewing.

Translation: “Sure, women are capable of directing the sorts of movies my studio makes. It’s just that I never think to ask any women if they’d like to do so.”

Langley appears not to realize how full of shit she is when she says, “I don’t think there is a magic bullet answer” to the lack of women directors. Because it’s pretty goddamn clear that the “magic bullet” is this: Hire more women.

This applies to all the studios, not just Universal. Like, maybe, the next time a studio is thinking about giving a $150 million tentpole film to a man with no directing experience — as Paramount has done with Star Trek 3, which will be directed by Roberto Orci, who has never directed a film before, a fact that Variety didn’t even deem worthy of mention in its announcement of this news — give it to a woman with directing experience.

Magic. Fucking. Bullet.


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