Innholdsfortegnelse for Women in Ent. Special 40A December 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

“WE ARE LINKED, NOT RANKED.”GLORIA STEINEM In this issue, we are celebrating more than 100 women who defy expectations, shrug off limitations and harness their power without stripping it from others. As guest editor, I am exploring the phenomenon of feminine strength as it has been redefined by a new era in Hollywood, the era of the Sisterhood. Our links are stronger than ever before, and if we continue to see the value of our unity, I believe we will achieve the equality we have always deserved. We have become accustomed to the terms that strip us of our own strength as women. “Big dick energy,” “man up,” “have some balls,” “don’t be a pussy”—all not-so-subtle cues that power is inherently masculine. Even the word “feminine” has an unserious connotation…

PAOL A FRANCO CREATIVE ASSISTANT, DRAMA ORIGINAL SERIES, NETFLIX Franco had always wanted to work with Shonda Rhimes. So when she got an opportunity to interview for an internship at ABC during her sophomore year at Loyola Marymount University, she was ecstatic. Then she discovered that she’d need to drive to Glendale. “I didn’t know how to drive on the freeway,” Franco says, describing the trip from her home in Inglewood like “traveling to another planet.” She didn’t get the gig. But two years later, she landed a postgraduation job as a creative assistant in Netflix’s drama series department, where she now helps with the development of projects that result from the Scandal creator’s overall deal with the streamer. “It’s such a full-circle moment for me,” says the 23-year-old, who…

When Zoe Lister-Jones talks about her “crazy utopian dream,” the Life in Pieces star is not referring to the ideal of 50 percent female representation among film directors. The actor-filmmaker, who just wrapped a remake of The Craft, is referring to the lack of women on below-the-line crews — in lighting, sound, electrics or even transport — something that even a cursory glance at any closing credits makes abundantly clear. Lister-Jones made headlines in 2017 for her directorial debut, Band Aid, with a crew made up entirely of women. This year, she wrote and directed Woman Up, an ABC comedy pilot using “approximately 75 percent women department heads.” She also brought to The Craft several of Band Aid’s female department heads, including in cinematography, editing, production design and art direction.…

MAYE MUSK If people are unhappy about Keanu Reeves dating a woman with gray hair, that’s just sad for them. (It could also be that women would hate on anybody who’s on his arm.) But we need to let Alexandra know that teenagers are dyeing their hair the same color as us — so we must be cool. (Recently I was at a nightclub and a girl in her 20s asked me, “So what color did you use for your hair?” And I said, “It’s natural.” She was a bit taken aback. It was quite dark.) I look at photos of Alexandra, and she changes her hairstyle often and is always smiling. I think that Keanu decided he just wants a wonderful person at his side. She seems like a…

With work pressure often feeling crazier than ever, time management experts offer a range of solutions that focus on mind-set shifts. Author Laura Vanderkam (I Know How She Does It) is big on “Friday planning”: Set intentions for the week ahead on a Friday afternoon. “Thinking in terms of 168 hours, not 24 hours, gives us a more abundant perspective on time.” The motto of U.C. Berkeley professor Morten Hansen (Great at Work) is “Do less, then obsess.” Meaning, figure out what you’re good at and put that on turbo-drive. Essentialism author Greg McKeown suggests perfecting the art of saying no. One swamped agent put McKeown’s advice into action by creating a spreadsheet of criteria for prospective clients. “Instead of just randomly running after the next shiny object, he became…

A few months before Joana Vicente moved into her sleek office within the Toronto International Film Festival’s state-of-the-art Lightbox headquarters, she implemented a Marie Kondo-style wardrobe purge. Having assumed her role as TIFF’s co-head and executive director in November 2018, she jettisoned the J.Crew staples upon which she had long relied through her previous decade as executive director of the Independent Film Project. Vicente then “invested a little bit more” on her everyday pieces, acquiring staples from Helmut Lang and Theory, which she now wears to work. “TIFF is a bit more of a corporate environment than IFP,” reasons this high/low dresser whose wardrobe also includes red carpet-worthy investment pieces of the Balenciaga, Chanel, Gucci and Saint Laurent variety. Other forces that prompted Vicente to reconsider how she “wanted to…

Styling by Petra Flannery Oscar De La Renta dress, Diamond Foundry earrings, Cartier love ring, Tiffany ring, Saint Laurent shoes. “You ready for YOUR EYES TO ROLL BACK IN YOUR HEAD?” THE WARNING COMES AN HOUR OR SO INTO LUNCH AT L. A.’S MEMBERS-ONLY SAN VICENTE BUNGALOWS, ONCE REESE WITHERSPOON HAS FISHED HER PHONE FROM THE DEPTHS OF HER DESIGNER PURSE AND SLID IT ACROSS THE TABLE. THERE, ON HER SCREEN, IS AN ILLUSTRATION THAT RAN FOUR YEARS AGO IN TIME MAGAZINE, ACCOMPANYING A TREND PIECE HEADLINED “HOLLYWOOD’S NEW DOMESTIC DIVAS.” The Oscar-winning actress, who at the time had just launched her retail company Draper James, is in the center, outfitted pre-posterously with a vacuum, an apron and an evening gown. She’s flanked by Gwyneth Paltrow, holding a strawberry shortcake…

ELIZABETH BANKS Actor, Director, Producer DONNA LANGLEY Chair, Universal Pictures Langley and Banks first met at a 2007 dinner party thrown by producer Liza Chasin, then president of Working Title. At the time, Langley was Universal’s president of production and Banks was acting in the romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe. Each had wondered about the other from a distance. “I’d been an admirer from afar from her brilliant turn in The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Langley says. “I was struck by her forthrightness and of course her wicked sense of humor.” While Langley, 51, saw Banks’ moxie on a screen, Banks observed Langley’s acumen in navigating the industry. “I found her to be exceedingly sweet and slightly intimidating,” says Banks, 45. “She had tons of really interesting relationships in the business.” Ultimately, the…

Good Girls showrunner Jenna Bans was skeptical when NBC scripted programming copresidents Lisa Katz and Tracey Pakosta approached her to take on a first-time episodic director as part of the network’s new Female Forward initiative. “I admired what Lisa and Tracey were trying to do,” she says, “but a problematic director’s cut can set the showrunner back days, if not weeks. Time lost to a bad cut, a problem on set — all of it directly affects time with my family. I was deeply concerned that the episode would suffer because of her inexperience.” Katz and Pakosta admit that it was a big ask. To sweeten the pot, NBC pays for participants to shadow on up to three episodes before taking the reins. The network offers to hire a second,…

Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking elected woman in the history of the American government. This is the fact that I keep repeating in my head as I wait on hold while her press secretary connects us for this interview. I am, suffice it to say, shitting myself. I have cleared the house of all children and loud adults, switched off any electronic device within a 500-foot radius and settled into the most reliably non-squeaky chair I can find, taking deep Lamaze breaths and trying not to jump out of the window. I have prepared enough questions to generate a multivolume biography for the speaker, who has served in Congress as representative to California in three districts (covering San Francisco) since 1987, with this speakership her second following a first post…

I’ve been in this world long enough to know that power structures change slowly. Women have been making progress in the past few years, there are more opportunities, but we are nowhere near equity — 51 percent female in front of and behind the camera. The top jobs are held mostly by men and they stick to what they know, to the status quo. We’ve been talking about this problem, this power imbalance, for years now. One thing we don’t talk enough about are the people who make navigating this tricky, sticky business of Hollywood palatable — the good ones! I have made a lot of films with a lot of wonderful people, and a few jerks, but it is the people who uphold benevolent values, who are fair, kind…

Do you remember the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who? The story follows Horton the elephant, who discovers a speck of dust that contains an entire microscopic civilization called the Who. All the other animals want to destroy this speck because they’re assholes who don’t believe the Who exist. Horton, doing his best Elizabeth Warren, tells each little Who girl, boy and nonbinary to shout as loud as they can so the animals might hear them. The Who scream, “We are here! We are here!” at the top of their lungs, praying they’re heard, but unsure if they will be. For the past few months, I’ve invested time and energy into #PayUpHollywood, one of two movements I helped create this year to fight for inclusion in entertainment. #PayUpHollywood shines…

At a time when Instagram and HD are constant reminders and magnifiers of imperfections, even slight flaws can loom large. Rolling into awards season, beauty doctors and estheticians are at the ready with the latest knife-free solutions. PROBLEM Flushing and excess shine on TV FIX Microgold stamping ($250-$2,000) A gizmo fitted with gold-plated microneedles injects customized ampules into the superficial epidermis. The serums can contain low levels of Botox, filler or vitamins. “A lot of celebrities do it before they go on TV because adding Botox limits sweating and oil production,” explains Beverly Hills dermatologist Jason Emer. PROBLEM Fine lines on face FIX Plasma pen ($1,800-$2,500) “It’s our fun new toy,” says nurse practitioner Christine Nell, a partner at Ava MD Beverly Hills. The pen, which doesn’t touch the body,…

Looking back on the day in July 2016 when she signed her historic $20 million sexual harassment settlement with Fox News, there is one thing Gretchen Carlson says she would do differently. “I knew my own personal experience, and it was an incredibly lonely, isolated experience,” Carlson says. “I had no idea how pervasive this epidemic [of sexual harassment] was. I had no idea how it had been kept under wraps. Had I known what I know now, when I filed my case, I would have fought harder not to have an NDA.” Three and a half years later, Carlson is fighting against nondisclosure agreements — her own and anyone else’s — in a new initiative she’s launching with fellow Fox alumna Julie Roginsky. The duo are creating an organization,…

CINDY HOLLAND VP original content, Netflix Holland guides the TV side of Netflix’s $15 billion annual content spend with offerings as varied as the Marie Kondo folding tutorial Tidying Up and the summer blockbuster Stranger Things (a record 40 million viewers its debut weekend, says the streamer). Russian Doll and When They See Us, both 2019 arrivals under her remit, helped usher in a whopping 117 Emmy nominations for the platform — as Holland navigates a crowded streaming sphere. “We’ve always run our business with the belief that other companies would try to build similar services and then retain content for themselves,” says Holland, who’s armed with a market-setting roster of exclusive deals (Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, Peter Morgan). Daily media diet “KCRW and The Economist.” 2019 project envy “Gentleman Jack.”…

Scarlett has been in this game her entire life, but in the last decade she’s made more and more interesting choices. Marvel aside, she’s surprised us with movies like Under the Skin, Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit. I’ve always been interested in people who keep others guessing but also people who surprise themselves and work to keep themselves interested. And I’m definitely biased, but Scarlett’s performance in my film feels like that. She’s very caring and interested in people and has a very sharp sense of humor, and those are qualities she played up as Rosie in Jojo. I would love to see her in more smart comedies — not the broad stuff, but something with intelligence behind it. She has a great sense of irony and sarcasm that works…

For years, ICM partner Toni Howard has dined out on a line: “Sherry Lansing slept her way to the top, and I slept my way to the middle.” It’s the kind of cheeky comment the 4-foot-10, 75-year-old agent drops to disarm someone in the midst of a negotiation or to make a client chuckle. Lansing, one of Howard’s closest friends, has heard it umpteen times, as has Howard’s husband, producer David Yarnell. When pressed recently — does she really attribute any of her career success to well-chosen trysts? — Howard looks up from a framed photo of Yarnell she’s holding, one of about a dozen of him displayed around her Century City office. They sit beside pictures of her with some of her clients, like Samuel L. Jackson, the highest-grossing…

Ten years ago, editors at The Hollywood Reporter had an intriguing idea: What if we created a mentorship program to accompany our annual Women in Entertainment gala, making it not just a celebration but a tool for social change? A decade later, about 250 high school juniors from some of the most underserved schools in Los Angeles have been paired with top-level women in film, television and music through a partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters — and in many cases their lives have been transformed. They’ve been helped by the overwhelming generosity not just of individual mentors but also scholarship donors who’ve allowed these promising young women to go to the universities of their dreams, aided by Loyola Marymount University, which has given matching funds for 27 girls to…

The first time I saw Crazy Rich Asians, in April 2018, I wept with disbelief at the sheer marvel of seeing English-speaking Asians like myself fill every frame. Many reviews have commented on how the narrative explores the identity crisis of being Asian American, constantly having to justify your existence in both worlds. Others complained that the first all-Westernized Asian movie in a quarter century focused on an elite Chinese family and failed to capture the experiences of billions of individuals in a global diaspora. Still other takes simply praised the movie for its hilarious and swoonworthy qualities, including one of the most breathtaking wedding scenes ever committed to celluloid. To me, the film is indeed a wildly entertaining romp as well as a celebratory milestone for my people. But…

Thursday night. November 2017. I was tucked away in a rented house secretly writing a TV pilot based on Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn. Patty Jenkins had called that morning to ask if I’d like to direct two episodes of her and Sam Sheridan’s series One Day She’ll Darken after a fierce competition for the job. Between these two adventures, I genuinely didn’t want for anything. I was creatively filled to the brim. Then an email comes from a director I deeply respect, asking if we can chat. Around 8 a.m. the following morning, the phone rings. No assistant. No conduits. No fanfare. Just J.J. Abrams. Straightforward. At most, I predicted that he needed someone to shoot footage of a local high school play. My brain never once, not even for…

This town loves the best, hippest, youngest and newest, so the fact that my clients — most of them women in entertainment — have stayed with me for 10, 12, 14 years means I must be doing something right. I have tremendous boundaries — I’m known as “the vault.” It’s knowing how to be in someone’s presence and their space. Julia Roberts’ nanny once advised, “Never let Julia go, ‘Where’s Kirschen?’ and never let Julia go, ‘She’s always around.’” We do have these intimate relationships, but I never lose the fact that they hired me, and I am there to serve them. My clients make decisions all day long, so when they’re with me, they don’t want to make any. They surrender. I teach vinyasa flow, heavy on the inversions.…

Balancing long production days and stressful meetings with starting a family is no small feat. Thankfully for new parents, entertainment companies are stepping up their benefits. “To attract and retain great talent in a competitive market, we have to really understand what people want,” says Hulu senior vp talent & organization Shannon Sullivan. PARENTAL LEAVE Most of the industry offers far more than what is mandated by state and federal laws, which ensure job security and require an employer to give a new mother 12 weeks off, with a few exceptions, but don’t specify that it must be paid leave. Among the streamers, Hulu revamped its policy in June to make it gender inclusive, now offering 20 weeks parental leave. Netflix, famously, doesn’t cap parental leave (or vacation), and most…

JULIE K. BROWN Reporter, Miami Herald EMILY MICHOT Video journalist, Miami Herald In early December 2017, Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown hopped a flight to Nashville to conduct an on-camera interview with Michelle Licata, a young woman who had been sexually assaulted by financier Jeffrey Epstein when she was 14. Brown’s colleague, videographer Emily Michot, would follow a day later on a separate flight. Neither knew what to expect. The interview would mark the first of four that accompanied Brown’s blockbuster print series dubbed “Perversion of Justice,” which identified about 80 victims, many of whom had been underage when allegedly sexually abused or assaulted by Epstein, a banker who hobnobbed in Hollywood and media circles with the likes of Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, Donald Trump and Bill…

AVA DUVERNAY Director, producer, writer DuVernay is following on the success of Netflix limited series When They See Us (16 Emmy noms) with a host of new projects made under her eight-figure Warner Bros. TV deal, HBO Max’s DMZ and a TNT labor drama among them. She opened a theater at her Array headquarters in L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown earlier in 2019, recently tapped a production crew of more than 50 percent women for forthcoming OWN anthology Cherish the Day. Daily media diet “L.A. Times delivery. Yes, the actual paper one — and yes, I recycle.” JESSICA ELBAUM ♦ President, Gloria Sanchez Productions Elbaum, who launched the female-focused banner in 2014, is juggling two awards contenders this season: Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart and Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers. The producer, who started out as…

On Oct. 5, a group of 25 female writers converged at a lakeside retreat in the Catskills, ready to share their work, as well as stories of unenthusiastic agents and subtle exclusion. Although they hailed from diverse backgrounds, the women shared one characteristic that makes them radioactive by Hollywood standards: They all had eclipsed the 40 threshold. “We’re survivors,” said screenwriter Pamela Gray, sipping a glass of white wine. “If you’re over 40 and still pursuing a career …” she continued, as her thought trailed off. Everyone seemed to know where that sentence was headed, many having hit what is arguably the last remaining glass ceiling in the business. The conversation — by turns pragmatic and optimistic — took place at the fifth incarnation of The Writers Lab, the only…

In 2004, The L Word was an idea that arrived at the right place and time. While shows with gay themes were coming into the mainstream (NBC’s Will & Grace had debuted in 1998), there was a paucity of lesbian-themed programming. One 2006 study showed that when gender was specified during a reference to homosexuality on television shows, 82 percent of the time it was about gay men. The L Word did its part to even things out. The drama series revolved around the lives of a fictional group of sexually adventurous, lesbian and bisexual women living in West Hollywood. “I wanted to tell stories that reflected my life experience as part of a community that had not been well represented in popular entertainment,” says primary creator Ilene Chaiken. “Television…