Chicks behind the flicks

Ten of Hollywood's most powerful women sit down to discuss the state of the movie business -- why there aren't more female directors, why blowing things up is fun, and more.

By Rebecca Traister

Read more: Hollywood, Life Features, Women, Movies, Gender, Filmmaking, Arts & Entertainment, Arts & Entertainment Features, Life Features, Rebecca Traister, Life

Oct. 11, 2007 | On Friday of last week, movie business reporter Nikki Finke wrote on "Deadline Hollywood" that Warner Bros. president of production Jeff Robinov had issued a company edict: "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead." According to Finke's sources, Robinov's decree came in the wake of underperformance by two summer movies, "The Invasion" and "The Brave One," which featured Nicole Kidman and Jodie Foster, respectively, in starring roles. One of Finke's sources, an unnamed producer, asked, "What's next -- fire all the Warner Bros. women executives?" If so, it would be a bloody day: Three of Robinov's four executive vice presidents of production are women.

Whether or not Robinov made the remark -- a Warner Bros. spokesman told Salon, "Jeff Robinov did not make that statement, nor is it his philosophy" -- female film executives seemed to regard the sentiment as a distillation of a broader antipathy toward women in the film business. The sense that this antipathy has been building is so pervasive that few women (and these are powerful women who tend to get pissed about things like outright institutional misogyny) could even muster real shock at Finke's story.

Every female filmmaker and executive I spoke to -- all of whom declined to go on the record -- expressed surprise only that an executive would go public with what has long been accepted as an unspoken clubhouse policy. It's not, as Finke's source suggests, that the women are going to be kicked out of their studio offices, but it's no secret that Hollywood has always been a dicey industry for women, and that recent years have seen it grow increasingly inhospitable. "I don't think you can blame the Robinovs of the world," one female producer told me. "It's not something that every other studio head doesn't think."

More women than ever write, direct and produce movies. But we're in a period in which their on-screen stock is falling. This summer brought us "Knocked Up," about how a schlubby guy can land a hot successful woman and make audiences whoop in appreciation when he kicks her shrill (responsible, adult) sister from a delivery room. Hollywood has ushered in a mini-era of thinly veiled derision of women. "The Heartbreak Kid," the remake of a funny 1970s Elaine May movie, in 2007 features at its center a premise of assumed animosity toward the feminine.

But if Hollywood isn't doing much for female moviegoers, it's in part because female moviegoers have not, of late, been doing much for Hollywood. They haven't been showing up to multiplexes, at least not on the first weekend, which is all that counts. And in Hollywood, money has always been a bigger motivator than visions of equality. You can bet that the weekend on which audiences line up around the block to get into a Barbara Jordan biopic is the weekend studios all over Tinseltown green-light a slate of movies about black, wheelchair-bound lesbians. As soon as ladies put their asses in the seats at a movie about one of their own, studios will make a zillion more, or so goes conventional wisdom. But that hasn't happened in some time.

What propitious timing, then, for the arrival this week of Elle magazine's Women in Hollywood issue (a franchise the magazine inherited from Premiere magazine), featuring among other things an interview with Robinov whistle-blower Nikki Finke and a round-table conversation among 10 of the most powerful women in Hollywood. The discussion was held in August, around a conference table at the utterly glam Beverly Hills Hotel. I know it was glam because I got to attend, and I can attest that the conversation that took place two months ago was downright prophetic in its assessment of gender conditions in Hollywood.

The panel was moderated by one of Tinseltown's great brains, producer Lynda Obst ("Contact," "Sleepless in Seattle," "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days"). She nimbly guided panelists Nora Ephron (screenwriter, director, "When Harry Met Sally," "Sleepless in Seattle"), Laura Ziskin (writer, producer, "Hero," "To Die For," "Spider-Man"), Callie Khouri (screenwriter, director, "Thelma & Louise," "Something to Talk About"), Patty Jenkins (writer, director, "Monster"), Cathy Konrad (producer, "Walk the Line," "3:10 to Yuma"), Kimberly Piece (writer, director, producer, "Boys Don't Cry"), Andrea Berloff (writer, producer, "World Trade Center"), Margaret Nagle (writer, producer, "Warm Springs"), and that rarest of Hollywood breeds, a female studio head, Universal president of production Donna Langley, in a conversation that touched on issues that cut to the heart of the Robinov story. They spoke of the remaining handful of female movies stars as if they were the last hope of the Jedi order -- Luke ... Leia ... Julia ... Reese -- and maybe they are. If these female machers are to be believed, the business of making movies for women remains one of constant juggling between progress and regress, of compensation and compromise. Below, Salon presents an extended version of the conversation that appears in this month's Elle.

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