This Changes Everything (2018) - full transcript

An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.

[light dramatic music]

[light music]

[static crackling]

- The basis of your

thinking is determined

by the first images you see;

whose values are important and

whose stories are important,

and that's what we're teaching

little girls and little boys.

[light music]

- The power of what

you see in childhood

really gets into the DNA

of what becomes possible

for you growing up.

- Media has the

power to educate,

to shape people's thoughts.

It also has an incredible power

when you get to see someone

who's like you on screen.

- The images that all of us see

influence how we

treat each other,

and how policy is formed,

and how ideas are built.

- Filmmaking has told us no.

Women shouldn't be focused

on or learned about;

their desires, their wants,

their needs, their fears.

- We're not just shaping the

perspectives in this country,

we're shaping perspectives

around the world.

- We've had such a tiny slice

of what's evocative to

the world on the screen.

[gun firing]

[glass shattering]

- 80% of the media

consumed worldwide

is created in the United States.

We are responsible for exporting

a pretty negative view of women.

- [Man] Pete, I told you,

don't play sports with women.

- [Boy] You play

ball like a girl.

- Most of television,

most of film,

is men making stuff

for other men.

- Women are virtually excluded

from the directing profession,

we are disappeared.

- We have to all decide

together that it's enough.

- The door has to be opened,

we just want inclusion.

[thoughtful music]

[traffic passing]

- Remember the kids books in

the 50s, See Dick, See Jane?

And I just felt like we

see Dick all the time.

[audience laughing]

[audience applauding]

And I just wanted

to see more Jane.

When I was a teen, my parents

subscribed to Reader's Digest,

and I remember

reading some article

about why feminists

are ruining the world.

I didn't know what a

feminist was, but I said,

whatever that is, I'm sure

I don't wanna be that,

because they're

ruining the world.

- Oh, do you feel the

breeze from the subway?

- [Geena] I was obsessed

with becoming a movie star.

I watched TV a lot.

- Hi, Ginger!

- Hi, Gilligan!

- [Geena] So I'm thinking,

Ginger, movie star.

- I'm from Hollywood, I've

been chased by the best.

- My first job, Lynn

Stalmaster's office

called model agencies.

The character had to look

good in their underwear.

I had been in Victoria's

Secret catalogue.

Airbrushed, perfectly lit.

They were like, let's get her!

- Oh, I'm sorry!

- Okay, that's okay.

So the very first thing I shot

was in my underwear,

with Dustin.

- I have to kiss Dr. Brewster.

- Oh, yeah, he kisses all

the women on the show.

We call him the tongue.

- Movies and television have

always driven me insane.

The misogyny is just so,

it's almost unremarkable.

♪ Girls, girls, girls ♪

Back when I was

doing music videos,

I just saw that women were

absolutely inconsequential

as anything other

than ornamentation.

I was learning to just shut

up and get the job done.

Just driving home one night,

I just saw the whole

thing in one flash.

And I had never written

anything before.

- Of all the movies I

did, Thelma & Louise

changed the course of my life.

- Well, darlin', look out,

'cause my hair is comin' down.

- All right.

- [Callie] All of us were

- Smile.

- stunned the movie had the

kind of impact that it did.

- You are disturbed!

- Yeah, I believe I am.

The reaction that

it got from women,

[gun firing]

it was completely different.

- You gonna apologize or what?

- They'd say things like,

my friend and I

acted out your trip.

And I'd be like, what part?

[gun firing]

[exploding]

- When they blow up that truck,

it's just like, oh,

you get such a rush.

- There was something

I think freeing

in every woman that watched it.

- It showed me like, wow,

you can have power as a woman

and not have to be in

completely of service

of submitting 1,000%.

- My husband wasn't sweet to

me, look how I turned out.

- [Lesli] It's

unusual seeing woman

- Shit!

- as complicated,

able to make mistakes,

able to be funny and

sexual, and troubled.

- I had been

awakened to how women

are portrayed in the media.

I realized we give them

so few opportunities

to feel inspired by

the female characters.

- [Man] Pops it out of bounds.

- The next movie was

A League Of Their Own.

Now it was girls

coming up and saying,

I play sports because

of that movie.

- I can't do that.

- Who can?

- A League Of Their Own was

a very influential

movie for me as a kid.

It was one of the first movies

that really affected me,

I watched it every day

for a whole summer.

- I hadn't thought about the

girls in the audience before.

I realized we need to

make sure girls can see

female characters doing this.

We don't have enough

real life role models.

- Okay, I gotta get

tough with you guys!

- We all grew up where

it was perfectly okay

to have TV shows that

had no female characters.

[phone ringing]

- Call precinct, Jumana.

- If there is a

female character,

they're usually the one

with a group of males.

- [Chris] Whereas

the male characters,

they might have four or

five lead characters.

- We want something else!

- So that you could

have the one who is this

and the one who is this,

and the funny one

and the smart one.

- I'm the brains, you're the

looks, Charlie's the wildcard,

and Frank is the muscle.

- [Charlie] Well, what's Dee?

- She's the useless chick.

- [Both] Oh!

- Yeah!

- Guys get to see themselves

get to become a writer,

get to become an astronaut.

And women get to be the

girlfriend that gets ditched.

- Is everything okay, baby?

- Mostly we're being saved.

- [Spiderman] You have a

knack for getting in trouble.

- You have a knack

for saving my life.

- The woman in the story has

to be the most beautiful woman

so that the man is

attracted to her.

- What's wrong, daddy?

- The reason we have

much less complexity,

it very much reflects on

what's the point of view

that you take to a film?

- How do you write

women so well?

- I think of a man,

and I take away reason

and accountability.

- White straight

men who come from

a certain class background

have had their hands

on the narrative

for as long as this

country has been around.

- Our anger, our frustration,

our rage is the thing

that stories have

been told about

for generations and generations.

- All the way back

into the 1800s,

you've had a type

of American hero,

which I would say is the same

as the American antihero.

- From now on, you

stay out of this.

All of ya, I don't

want you with me.

- It's the western myth

extrapolated into any story.

There is one man,

usually middle aged,

he's a veteran,

retired gunslinger.

They need to pick

up their guns again

[gun firing]

[screaming]

to eliminate any challenge

to their manhood.

[grunting]

This concept, it's

inherently sexist.

[gun firing]

Because the women are

in orbit around the men.

- [Woman] Oh it looks so good.

- As a writer, I've

been in many situations

where a studio

calls me and says,

we want you to do a couple days

of a pass on a movie with

the female characters.

I'm like, guys, that's

not how it works.

- Bringing a female writer

to punch up the girlfriend

character, that isn't enough.

- I call that spackling,

and I have come to realize

that my job is really

just to show up

and spackle those cracks in.

- Early in my career, I would

take the girlfriend role

and say, I'm gonna fuck this up

and turn this inside out

like a leech on a barbed wire

and try and make something

different out of it.

- Nine times out of 10, I'm

gonna give you something

so multidimensional, because

I know what I'm bringing in

is much deeper than the

words they put on that page.

- Please, come on now.

What about Billy?

- I'm not taking him with me.

In Kramer vs. Kramer, I

was representing a woman

who had left a child

because she was undergoing

psychological problems.

The writer and the

director and my costar

all were putting their

heads to what would she say,

what would she say, what

could she possibly say?

I anticipated this whole thing.

- Okay, look, I don't

wanna get into this.

You're gonna have to do what

you're gonna have to do,

and I'm gonna have to

do what I'm gonna--

- All right, I'm very

sorry about this.

We all went into our rooms.

Each of us wrote our version

of how she would

defend this decision.

And it was easy for

me to write that

because I could empathize.

I had to believe that it was

the only thing I could do.

And that it was the

best thing for him.

I was incapable of

functioning in that home.

But where the story was located,

- How does it feel?

- was in the head and in the

heart of its male protagonist.

And what she thought was,

oh, we'll ask the actress.

- Imagine you're a woman in

the theater and this movie,

that even though there are

50% of you occupy the world,

this movie's not made for you.

[suspenseful music]

One of the reasons I don't

watch a lot of films of mine

is because you see

yourself through the eyes

of the male camera operator,

and you see yourself through

the eyes of the male director.

When I think I'm acting, it's

really panning across my ass.

Weather advisory, if

you're gonna go outside,

bring a paddle.

[water dripping]

- I don't know what my

life would have been like

if you guys hadn't moved here.

I came out to L.A. and

I met a woman agent

who said to me, this business

is about tits and ass,

which you have neither of.

[light music]

- Imagine, as a man,

people really wanting

to look at your body

when they see you,

and look at your clothes,

and look at your

hair and your eyes.

Just the thought exercise of

going through your whole life

knowing that the way your

body is shaped matters more

to the world than what

you're thinking about.

- We definitely internalize

the representations of women

on screen when

we're young girls.

It's important

first and foremost

to have men see you

in a certain way.

I definitely felt

from a very young age

that you're being

turned into an object,

as opposed to how do

I look at the world,

what do you desire,

what do you want?

That's the big mental shift

that I wish I had

when I was a kid.

[light music]

- I created my own production

company, Freckle Films,

and one thing I've realized

that I'm eliminating

is the description

of female characters.

- Dr. Jones, 35, bitchy,

she's pretty but

she doesn't know it,

or she's slightly over the hill.

- When you are working with

writers of a lesser ability,

the lesser

intelligence, actually,

then they're gonna define

women by their hair color.

- Here I go again, feisty,

sexy, hot, hot tempered.

- We have been otherized by men,

really to be able to allow men

to give birth to their

own subjectivity.

- It's a system and a structure

that has long stacked

the odds against us,

so we've been written

out of a lot of spaces.

- Growing up, I never saw

anyone that represented me

or looked like me, or

wow, I wanna be like her.

This is a day in the

life for the people.

When I tried to get an agent,

they didn't know

where to place me.

They're like, okay,

you're Latina,

but you don't look Mexican.

And I'm not like,

I'm not though.

- Give me my change,

get the food!

After I did Baby Boy,

every role I got was hood.

This girl, waa,

waa, waa, waa, waa.

I'm a trained

actress, and here I am

getting offered ghetto roles.

[laughing]

Whatever, okay.

So I never judged it, but I

wasn't gonna stereotype myself

and continue to

take those roles.

And yes, I had to work,

but I had to be strategic,

because I saw a bigger

picture for myself.

[light music]

- 90% of the content that I

would digest through media

puts me as a sidekick

or as the girl next door

because of the color

of my skin or my sex.

- I felt for a while

that I had to fit myself

into some sort of conception

of what it meant to

be a black woman,

instead of realizing

that there is

so much diversity

within that identity.

- If you don't drop

these macho attitudes,

you are never gonna have

anybody bringing you anything

anywhere, any place,

anytime, ever.

- Cosby and The Jeffersons

♪ Movin' on up ♪

♪ Movin' on up ♪

was the only ones where they

was doin' all right in life.

♪ Good times ♪

Good Times, they sufferin'.

I don't wanna live that life.

What's Happening,

they were strugglin'.

Dang, is it all bad?

[Dynasty theme song]

And then I remember

watchin' Dynasty

and a black woman shows up,

and it's Diahann Carroll.

- What do you want?

- It's the first time I see

a black woman with money,

wearin' diamonds, she's

havin' conversations

with white women like

she not even black.

- Retract this or I'll

cram it down your throat.

- Will ya?

- She slapped this

white woman so hard.

And they was wrestling,

and I was like, what?

And she didn't even go to jail.

[suspenseful music]

That's when I started thinkin',

oh, I could be anything.

[laughing]

- The Joy Luck Club

was the first time

I saw myself and my

mother on screen.

- You don't know the

power you have over me.

- It impacted me so

deeply emotionally,

way beyond what the

content of the film was.

- Four years old, I could

cry myself to sleep.

- Seeing and experiencing

for the first time

all that storytelling that I

thought was mine, was not mine.

- It's devastating

when a little girl

doesn't see herself on screen.

I've been one of those little

girls looking for myself.

You start to believe that there

is something wrong with you.

- It just sort of

fucks with your psyche.

You're like, I think I exist,

why aren't I reflected

back at what I see?

- There's also a shame

that starts to come in.

I must not be worthy to be

seen or I don't feel that way,

so what I'm feeling

must be wrong.

- If we only show

one perspective,

it means that we

don't take seriously

every human being's right

to understand the world

from their perspective.

If you imagine

this as the mirror

and you reflect life

from this perspective,

it will be really different

if you put the mirror

from this angle instead.

[gasping]

- There is the

need for more films

to come out of the voices

of women and what they want,

and what they value,

and what excites them,

and what terrifies them,

and makes them move

through the world.

- There is a different way to

look at stories about women

or stories from the

point of view of a woman.

Our camera placement

is different

because our gaze is different.

- You wanna try to

imagine narratives

in which women don't

need to be rescued,

to try to figure out

how to tell new stories.

[crowd cheering]

- What more incredible,

specific, passionate filmmaking

would we be getting if all of

kinds of people were doing it?

- Like people with disabilities,

or people who are

sexual minorities.

- Everybody has a

nuanced experience,

whether that's a

young black woman

who is dealing with being

a part of generation Z,

being in a certain

socioeconomic class,

or being alive in

the 21st century

in which the culture

that we're consuming

is such an amalgamation

of other cultures.

[light dramatic music]

- Women have been

paving this path,

pushing up against

the status quo,

changing how we see ourselves

so that there's an expanded

idea of what you can choose

and how you can have

agency in your own life

so that your path is not

laid out by the structure

that was put in place

way before you got here.

- Imagine having the kind

of protagonism as a woman.

- [Girl] I'm the princess.

[scoffing]

I'm the example.

[apple crunching]

- When I had the

opportunity to create Brave

and the character of Merida,

I purposely went for a princess

just so that I could

throw the princess thing

on its head and not the typical.

[horse running]

- Get back, that's my mother!

[man grunting]

- Images are so powerful that

it will impact real life.

In 2012, my archery coach

noticed that when both Brave

and The Hunger Games came out,

suddenly the percentage

of girls taking up archery

shot up 105%, higher

than adult men.

[CSI theme song]

- After you saw

CSI, after you saw

female forensic

pathologists on screen,

you saw the field of

forensic pathology

grow intensely,

especially among women.

- She shot back.

I just kept seeing again and

again girls who loved this show

and it made my heart sing.

And they are now

half the workforce.

[light music]

- When half of the filmmakers

and the writers are allowed in,

our cultural life will change.

It won't until that happens.

- Since I was a

little kid, for me,

immortality came

from what you create.

When I saw Lina

Wertmuller's Swept Away,

I thought, I can do that.

The passion caught hold of me

in an absolutely complete way.

I wanted to be a

director because I

wanted to have a voice.

I had a great experience

in film school.

There was about 50/50

male and female students.

And then within a year

of having graduated,

I was shooting my first

feature film in the UK.

[crowd cheering]

I came back to

L.A. and was signed

with a huge agent,

William Morris.

[cheering]

- [Man] Absolutely Marvelous.

- I was tied to screenplays,

I signed contracts,

I was in development on feature

films, and then nothing.

I started watching my male peers

being celebrated and

beloved filmmakers.

- 10 Oscar nominations.

- Yes.

- You've had a great

[laughing]

- I didn't see that happening

for any of my women

friends at all.

- I did 265 episodes

of CSI alone.

I can count on one hand how

many female directors we had.

- Out of 30 or 40 directors

that I worked with,

I've probably worked with

three female directors.

- Before Grey's, I didn't work

with any female directors.

- I've worked with two

female directors on features,

and one is myself.

[chuckling]

- As an assistant director

from '78 until 2006,

I don't think I ever worked

with a woman director.

- We haven't been able to

imagine women as artists

across the board,

and in Hollywood,

that reflects in the writing

and directing numbers.

[light music]

- From among the five

gifted nominees tonight,

the winner could be, for

the first time, a woman.

- Inclusion of women

might change policy.

They might change

what's called great.

- What does good mean?

Good means it resonates

in the body of a man.

When people are

saying, I like this,

they're saying, I see myself.

So men are gonna feel that way

when they see a

myriad of male heroes.

Most of the people writing

the checks are men.

Most of the people making

distribution decisions are men,

and most of the

reviewers are men.

[mystical music]

- I need to know that I can come

and hold onto where I come from.

- With Daughters Of The

Dust, I didn't wanna tell

the same old story that's

been told over and over again,

especially about

African-American

women and our legacy.

At the height of

our distribution, we

only had 13 prints.

Among the filmmakers

coming out that decade,

I was pushed to the side.

The curators of culture decided

that Daughters Of The Dust

did not fit their understanding

of what an African

American film should be.

- [Man] In South Central L.A.,

it's tough to beat the streets.

- Because they pick and choose

who they wanna focus on.

♪ New Jack City ♪

- This is big business.

- It's been shown,

study after study,

that the male directed movies

get bigger distribution,

get on more screens, more

advertising dollars spent.

And then they get their

second film easier,

and then they get

their third one,

and their fourth one.

- I have to admit to

being radically naive.

I said, well, I

guess there's not

sexism in Hollywood

because look at me.

Action!

[light music]

- One of the reasons

I went to film school

was because of Kimberly

Peirce's Boys Don't Cry.

That was such an

incredibly powerful film.

[uplifting music]

- [Man] Hillary Swank

in Boys Don't Cry.

[audience applauding]

- I wanna thank Kimberly Peirce

for her fierce

tenacity and vision.

- Then I got the difficulty

of getting the next project.

- Women directors are hitting

up against this ceiling

at a point, at a critical point

where they could jump from

smaller stuff to

really big stuff.

- There's an assumption

that men are gonna have

an authoritative approach

and women won't have

the wherewithal and the

stamina to push through.

- What we have is

a culture that says

what directors

should be is militant

and loud and aggressive,

but directing doesn't require

a specific temperament,

it takes every single

kind of person.

- [Man] After count,

we'll go again right away.

- I've never seen a

female camera operator.

We're touching them like,

oh my god, you really exist.

Something's very

wrong with that.

- I started when I was 14 and

there would be 150 men on set

and I'd be the only woman.

No women sometimes in wardrobe,

in the art department,

in anything.

- That's a lot of male energy.

I've had directors who have said

that I need to sit on their

laps to get direction.

Who call me to the set and

if I won't sit on their lap,

I was sent back to my trailer.

And I said, does Tom

Hanks sit on your lap?

[light music]

- People in power for years

have tried to divide and conquer

actresses in order to victimize

and manipulate and abuse them.

- To protect yourself on

set is not an easy thing

because no one else is

gonna come to your aid,

no one else is gonna defend you.

There is no recourse, there's

no human resources department,

there's nobody there.

- Not everybody has

the safety net to say,

hey, I can speak out

about this and know

that I can still get work

in the field that I love.

- There's often a lot

of distance between us

because we're all navigating

a very treacherous industry.

We don't learn to

call each other

and lean upon each other

and create community.

- A lot of my energy is spent on

when can I ask this question,

how am I going to ask for what

I need in order to feel safe?

- Part of sexism and racism

is like stay in your place,

stay in your lane, shut up,

be happy with what you've got,

and so we're all siloed off.

And you don't tell people

what your fears are

because then they know where

your vulnerable spaces are.

- What happens to

female directors

is they walk into a

completely male environment,

and so they have to

make those jokes,

and so they have to do that

[sucking air]

little thing every morning,

which means you cannot

truly operate from

your own perspective

and see things through

a different lens.

- She has to be

[sucking air]

a gymnast and a diplomat

and somebody's mother.

- I've seen female directors

treated really

badly, really badly.

[fire crackling]

[ominous music]

- When I was 15, I did Carrie.

That movie was

directed by Kim Peirce,

who was my first

female director.

But it was a

massively male crew.

- I was being talked

to and treated

and questioned constantly

and differently.

- The biggest part of the movie

is when she gets her period for

the first time in the shower

and she doesn't

know it's her period

because she had never been

taught that from her mother.

To have these conversations

with men who were saying,

well, I don't think you

should depict that way,

and I think you should

depict it this way,

and Kim and I sitting there

going, well, respectfully,

I don't think you know

what you're talking about.

That was just the first

time where I was ever like,

I guess men don't see us

women equal in this industry.

[light music]

- When you have a huge success

and then your career doesn't

go where it ought to go

and you see the

men failing upward

and you're succeeding downward,

don't you think that

everyday you wake up

and say this is my life,

maybe this isn't good enough,

maybe I should go do something

where there aren't all

these obstacles against me

because I'm a really

talented creative human being

and I love working and you're

stopping my right to work.

I may not have the energy

to do this every single

day, to fight this fight.

- It is appalling in terms

of how much women's work

and also women's roles

and women's films

actually are contributing

to the box office,

just sheerly on a

commercial level.

[ominous music]

- Whenever the press announces:

this changes everything,

I'm a little skeptical.

That was supposed to happen

after Thelma & Louise came out.

- Things have changed,

everything's changed.

- Thelma & Louise

you went, that's it,

the whole industry's

gonna change.

Oh my god, of course

we're gonna make

all these female

empowerment films.

- It didn't change anything.

♪ Ba ba ba ba ♪

- The First Wives Club beat

the biggest action movie,

but Twilight series comes out,

or Mean Girls, or Clueless,

- Uh, as if!

- So you go, well of course,

this is the new paradigm.

- Even when I started directing,

there was this sense that

it was getting better.

- Occasionally there's a bump,

but that's not systemic change.

- Frozen changes everything.

Hidden Figures, come on, it

made so much money, and nothing.

- And then we go back,

so I don't understand it.

- We need to look at the history

to see what kinds of

things have continued

and thus been perpetuated

without any thought.

- The contrast with what

it was like for women

when movies were beginning

is extraordinary.

[uplifting music]

- The silent era is full of

women writing, directing,

producing, owning

their own companies.

Film when it was born

was not gender specific.

- They really promote the

industry as a business

that's really wide open to

ambitious pioneering women.

There were more

women directing films

then is still the case.

- Lois Weber was one of

the three great directors

of early Hollywood.

She was considered a peer

of D.W. Griffith and

Cecil B. DeMille.

By 1916, Lois Weber

is Universal's

highest paid director.

And when she forms her own

independent production company

in 1917, she signs a

deal with Paramount,

which is the most

lucrative in the industry.

- The vast majority of

the writers were female,

writing in ways that played into

the feminist sensibility

of the period.

Women were entering

the workforce

in greater numbers

than every before.

- [Woman] No!

- [Man] Did he tell

you that he loved you?

- [Woman] No, yes,

of course he did.

- I want you to tell me

exactly what happened.

- When sound technology arrives,

the industry is transformed.

- You had to shoot inside.

- [Man] Here are several

of the big stages

to take of capacity production.

- [Woman] You're now

going to have a system.

- Hollywood needs financial

support to invest in technology,

to redo theaters, so banks

invest heavily in Hollywood.

- Now you're linking yourself

to a male moneyed hierarchy.

[light solemn music]

- The studios begin controlling

the exhibition market.

They shut out a lot of women

who had independent companies,

African-American filmmakers,

and they really

consolidated power.

They stop hiring

women as directors,

so women's voices

are no longer valued.

[background chattering]

- As soon as the job

becomes really important

and moneymaking, it suddenly

becomes a man's job.

[horn blaring]

- The identity of

a director as male,

or of a cinematographer as male,

doesn't get set until the

unions really come in.

Unions fought very rigorously

to keep women members out.

To be fair to them,

what that often meant

was lower pay, lower respect.

- The work that so many women

did was erased for decades.

The only woman directing

for a major studio

in the 1930s is Dorothy Arzner.

The Director's Guild of

America was formed in 1936.

- The DGA was

founded by all men.

- [Woman] And Dorothy Arzner,

she's the only female director

in the DGA for

well over a decade,

until Ida Lupino

joins in the late 40s.

[rain falling]

- For us to accomplish gender

equity in our storytelling,

we need to look at all of the

various systemic mechanisms

that have been

holding women back.

I started to do a

great deal of research

into the history of workplace

discrimination in Hollywood.

- Hollywood has

never had a mechanism

to regulate discrimination,

and Hollywood has actually

always tried to maintain

self regulation.

- That really does open the door

for all kinds of discrimination.

- The Civil Rights Act

of '64 had many parts.

The part that I was most

involved with was Title VII.

[dramatic music]

That is the title that created

the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission.

The EEOC was created to look

out for the rights of people

in the field of employment.

In 1969, we would send our

investigators into the studios.

We found a pattern of

practice of discrimination.

We referred to the

Justice Department

to do an investigation.

Congress didn't

take kindly to it.

- We've gotten to the point now

where either this punitive

harassment is gonna stop

or I'm going to the

highest authority

in this government to

get somebody fired.

- The Nixon administration

was ready to put the ax to me.

I beat them by resigning.

Nixon got his way, he got

this loudmouth black boy out.

The whole issue of

discrimination against women

was hurt by the permissiveness

of federal government

allowing the movie industry

to do what that hell

it wanted to do.

- There's a direct connection

between the number of

women behind the scenes

and the number of people

of color behind the scenes,

and how that translates

into gender and race biases

on the big screen

and little screen.

- We're sending

really wrong messages,

not only to girls,

but to boys as well.

- [Man] That was beautiful!

[puppets chattering]

- [Geena] When my

daughter was about two,

I started watching little

kid stuff with her.

- See, I'm thinking of

becoming a doctor, Burt.

- Really?

- Mm-hm.

- I immediately noticed there

were far fewer characters

that were female than male.

- Really?

- I was stunned.

[screaming]

- What are you shrieking about?

- [Smurf] Whoa, take it down

a notch, my blues brothers.

- I realized girls are being

seriously shortchanged.

They're not doing half of

the interesting or

important things.

- May I get you

absolutely anything

in the world you

could possibly want?

- [Geena] They don't

have occupations.

- He loves me, I knew it!

- Or, they're not there at all.

We're saying that they are less

valuable than men and boys.

- Why hello, ladies,

you ready to lose?

- You pillow fight like

a bunch of little girls.

- [Geena] We're teaching

them that girls and women

don't take up half of

the space in the world.

We're teaching boys that

girls are less important.

- You wouldn't hit a woman.

- That's a woman?

- To see girls as

second class citizens.

[screaming]

We're like, oh, how come

Congress isn't half women?

CEOs and all this,

how are we gonna get

more women on boards?

Progress for women stalls

out between like 15 and 20%

in so many different sectors.

Could it be that

we're training people

to see groups of people with

only 17% women as normal?

Whenever I had a meeting

in Hollywood, I'd say,

have you ever noticed

how few female characters

there are in movies

made for kids?

Every single person

said, oh, no, no, no,

that's not true anymore,

that's been fixed.

Nobody I talked to was seeing

the problem that I was seeing.

So that's when I decided,

if I'm gonna change

this, I need the data.

[light music]

- Geena commissioned one

of the largest studies

on children's media

that had ever been done.

- It took two years.

- It was the first

study of its kind.

- It's amazing that she

went and did that homework

and then served it all up,

and then it's

irrefutable evidence.

- The data driven case of

this has really take away

that question of

is there a problem?

- You can't say, she's

just being hysterical,

or god, she's just a

bitch whining about this,

if you have numbers.

- [Geena] My scheme was to go

to the people

creating the media.

I had no idea how

they were gonna react.

- She came when I was

an executive at Disney

and said in something

like Finding Nemo,

they're all fish but

most of them are men.

- He looks funny.

[slapping effect]

Ow!

- It was a huge eye opener

and nobody had

pointed it out before.

The work that she's done has

had an enormous impact on me.

- Without further

ado, please welcome

our commander in

chief, Geena Davis.

[audience applauding]

- There's one area of inequality

that can be changed overnight,

and that's on screen.

Data turns out to be the

magic bullet in this case

because the bias is unconscious.

- The first time that

I saw the numbers,

I have to say they

were shocking,

and I'm someone who knows that

we're not doing a great job.

Being passive on this issue

is not good enough anymore.

At the script stage,

I go through and look,

do I now have enough women?

You have to actively

get to the place

where you put that as

a part of your system.

- You have to instill

the writing team,

the producers, everybody,

with an awareness of it.

- The ratio of male to

female characters in film

has been exactly

the same since 1946.

We cannot wait around

for change to happen

when all the evidence shows us

that we're going nowhere slowly.

[light music]

We thought if we

could invent software

that could do the

research for us,

it would be a huge benefit.

- Geena Davis came to

Google with a proposal

to automate this

kind of analysis.

- One of our first

goals was to discern

screen and speaking time

almost humanly impossible

with the naked eye.

- If you see a green box,

it means it's figuring out

not only there's a face

there, but it's a female.

- We can actually quantify

the amount of screen time,

the amount of speaking time

and get data at that level.

- It takes maybe a minute

to process one film.

- I'm gonna share with you

just quick slides

of what we found.

[ominous music]

- We have to be incredibly

proactive and we have to realize

this is not happening

naturally on its own.

- I read a lot about

Geena Davis Institute

and finding out all the data

regarding how bad the gender

equality is in Hollywood.

I was shocked and I

also really wanted

to do something to change it.

We've been building up

this amazing art house

cinema in Stockholm together.

We found out about the

Bechdel-Wallace test.

[speaking in a foreign language]

- It's a very simple

test to figure out

how women are treated on screen.

You need two named

characters who are women.

They need to have

a conversation,

and that conversation

needs to be

about something

that is not a man.

[speaking in a foreign language]

- I just came back to my cinema

and checked out how

many of the films

that I do program that pass it.

Where we did it, no film passed.

And I was so embarrassed

because we have this feeling

that you're actually

good in something,

but then you,

[grunting]

you're not.

[door dinging]

We decided after one year

of research to do a logo

of the Bechdel-Wallace test.

A simple logo with

an A saying approved.

- I look for pleasure

in the details.

[bell dinging]

- He's sweet, isn't he?

[buzzer sounding]

- Hey!

- Zip it, Sinead.

[buzzer sounding]

- The point of the

Bechdel test for me,

was always that it was a joke.

But if you actually investigate,

you'll find that it's true.

- Half the movies fail it.

It's films that are still

coming out to this day.

American Hustle, passed.

[bell dinging]

There's one conversation

that's about nail polish.

- The top coat,

it's like perfumey,

but there's also

something rotten.

- It's not perfect.

- My name is Shelly and I'm

here to be your house mother.

[bell dinging]

[camera shuttering]

- One week after

we launched A Rate,

I had 80 interviews

from the whole world.

[light dramatic music]

Even though I was so unprepared,

I of course felt like

I need to do this.

So this is what Geena

Davis is saying,

if she can see

it, she can be it.

Girls and boys, until

they are five years old,

have the same kind of idea

what they will like to

do when they grow up.

After five years old,

it changed radically,

and the reason is film and TV.

[blowing]

- Isn't he amazing?

- Ah ha!

- There was a study that showed

now girls as young

as six years old

have learned to self sexualize.

- [Woman] This is Paisley as

Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

- To view themselves through

the male gaze at six years old.

- These are wet, could

you blow on them for me?

[stammering]

- I think that

entertainment culture's

promotion of the objectification

of girls and women

literally leads women

to hate their bodies.

- When I was 16, I

show up to my trailer

for the first day of

set, I'm getting dressed

and I see my bra

there and I'm like,

oh, that's weird,

it's a pushup bra.

In front of the pushup bra,

I saw two chicken cutlets.

I had never seen a chicken

cutlet, I was a kid.

And I asked the wardrobe

girl and she's like,

oh, yeah, I was told to

put these in your trailer.

One of the producers comes in

and I immediately was

like, why is that here?

He or she looked at me and

said, it was a studio note.

You're telling me

that a group of people

looked at a 16 year old

girl in the screen tests

and they said her breasts

didn't look big enough?

It was the first time

I really felt insecure.

I looked at myself in the

mirror and I was like,

well, is it not right?

That's when I

started to realize,

oh, I'm not just an actor,

I'm viewed as an actress.

[background chattering]

[reflective music]

- A big part of why I

wanted to change Hollywood

was because if my little girl

dreamed of being a storyteller

in this world, I did not

want the circumstances

that kept me from being

able to achieve success

to keep her from being

able to achieve success.

That was not okay with me.

What I really wanted

to do was make sure

that all girls didn't

have to face that.

[traffic passing]

- It's one thing to say

out loud, I want parity,

it's another thing to

then figure out day to day

what the costs of that are,

what that actually means.

- Just by doing you

will achieve something

that will push the limit,

but be prepared that that's

what you're starting.

- I joined the

Director's Guild in 1999.

I was called to

an events meeting

for the Women's

Steering Committee

and it was in those meetings

that I discovered

it wasn't just me.

Melanie Wagor had this

great idea for a summit

to try to figure out

how to get more work

for women DGA members.

She said, well, we've been

trying to get it going

for two years, it was

not getting approved.

- That is a tiny little example

of how obstructionist

our own guild was

in terms of us just trying

to organize ourselves.

- It wasn't an officially

sanctioned thing.

We had to fight really

hard to have it.

It was a way of shining a light

and putting a mirror to them,

and I don't think they

wanted to see what was there.

- I was invited

to sit on a panel,

and here were these

powerful women.

I was surprised at how

powerless they felt.

- Our purpose as organizers

was also to create a list

of women director members

of the Director's Guild.

At the end of the afternoon,

an executive at the DGA said,

could I please take your list

and bring it

upstairs and copy it?

We never got it back.

They said, we've determined

that this is our property.

That's unconscionable, that's

gagging, that's red flagging.

[traffic passing]

- Instinctively I

knew that something

was fundamentally really

wrong on a legal level,

not just on a

moral/ethical level.

And then somebody

mentioned to me

that there had already been

a legal action in the 1980s

by a group of six

female directors.

[light upbeat music]

- The first time the six

women of the DGA got together

was in '78 and '79, and

was actually an event

run by, I think, my

memory says Women In Film.

- Hi, nice to meet

you, what do you do?

[chuckling]

I'm an out of work director.

- It was really a

tough conversation,

'cause in the

entertainment industry,

the last thing you wanna

do is say, I'm not working.

- Are you working?

No.

Are you working?

No.

- None of us were working.

- It was preposterous,

It was preposterous.

- These were accomplished women.

- We had one Oscar, a Fulbright,

two AFI Filmmaker

Grants, two Emmys,

and what we figured out we

really needed was a penis.

- I remember getting up and

saying we are all doomed

to stunted careers if

we don't do something.

[light music]

- We needed to find out why.

One of the amazing

resources we had was

the Academy of Motion Pictures

Arts and Sciences Library.

Nell Cox and I were there

weeks on end pulling magazines.

We studied a period

between 1949 and 1979

with little pencil

and paper chit sheets,

looking for the number

of films per year

and looking for women's names.

- We started going

back into DGA records,

which they were

reluctant to fork over.

- We met almost every

Saturday for a year.

We worked very, very hard

at covering all the bases.

- What we came up with was

this astonishing statistic

that between 1949 and 1979,

one half of one percent

of all assignments

went to women.

It's like, do you have

a plate of cookies?

There were 100

cookies on the plate,

all the guys come and

they take 99.5 cookies.

[cookie snapping]

And all the women

directors in the guild

have to fight over that

one half of a cookie.

- We've all had our eyes opened,

and once opened, you

realize how shut they were.

- We went to the

Director's Guild

to try to get them to

do something about it.

[somber music]

- Did the men understand

there was discrimination

in the entertainment industry?

Not really, there was

a lot of resistance.

- All of the sudden we

were holding up a mirror

to husbands and fathers

and we were saying,

you want this for your daughter?

Maybe your daughters

wanna be directors.

- Mel Brooks was on

the national board.

He was the loose

cannon, you never knew

what Mel Brooks was

gonna come up with.

He got up from his seat,

that was like the first

uh oh, uh oh, what

is he going to do?

And he leaned on the

table and he said,

you guys are nitpicking

and petty fogging the

women into the shit house.

He started yelling, this is

their time, this is their time!

[light music]

- The Director's

Guild chose to have

voluntary cooperation,

voluntary compliance.

Things like learn to be a

better director classes,

coaching, oh, and to observe

the director at a show.

I can't tell you how many of

our women director members

observed, observed,

observed, observed, observed.

By the time all this

voluntary compliance

was another year,

a year and a half.

By then we had the proof that

it was just smoke and mirrors.

Executive director Mike Franklin

called a big giant

meeting to review

and he invited all the same

people, and nobody showed up.

Nobody from the

studios, networks,

production companies

came at all.

This was the first time

those men were ever treated

with a slap in the face, they

were treated like a woman,

and it was their

first taste of it.

- Well, Michael

Franklin got angry

and he said, we're suing them.

[typing]

[light upbeat music]

- Law is very important

to making change.

You can't change

hearts and minds,

but there can be consequences.

And laws establish

consequences for behavior,

and I think that's

very important.

- There has never been any

union that filed a lawsuit

against any studio, any network,

about an issue such as

equal hiring equity.

- We came to the conclusion

that voluntary compliance

was ridiculous.

People are not

gonna take jobs away

from people they've hired.

- Title seven is

the law of the land.

But unless there are specific

mandates, compliance is fluid.

- We were assigned

to the federal court

of Judge Pamela Rymer.

We thought, oh,

well, a woman judge,

maybe she'll understand what

it's like to be shut out.

She threw the case out.

- It's like the wind

is knocked out of you.

She said the guild was

not a proper litigant

because members of the guild

discriminate themselves.

Directors discriminate

when they don't hire women

and minority

assistant directors.

Assistant directors discriminate

when they don't hire

second assistant directors

who are women and minorities.

It was a legitimate turn down,

we weren't prepared for it

and I was surprised by that.

[somber music]

- [Woman] I discovered this

community four years ago

when I began an

anthropological study

of aging in an ethnic group.

- [Lynne] I wanna get good

at what I care about doing,

and that's what we've

been deprived of.

- And the award goes to Number

Our Days, Lynne Littman.

[audience applauding]

- Misogyny is an

invisible sport.

It prevented us from

creating careers.

It prevented us from

creating bodies of work.

- [Woman] If we

had won the case,

it would have been a mandate.

You have to hire a

certain number of women

or you're breaking federal law.

The film industry

dodged a bullet.

They got away with it.

- It was a terrible loss,

so much effort by

these women directors,

but you really saw an

incredibly radical shift

among female director

hires in Hollywood

because of a legal action.

In the following 10 years, the

numbers skyrocketed to 16%.

- But then, after

1995, no more progress.

- For the next 20 years, the

number of women directors

was going to go in decline,

and women of color, off the map.

I realized that we

were not gonna be able

to solve this

problem from within.

We had to get this out of

the DGA and into the world.

[keyboard clicking]

The most obvious solution

that we could come up with

was to take this to the ACLU.

[somber music]

- The American Civil

Liberties Union

works to protect people's

constitutional rights

and defend the Bill of Rights

that's guaranteed to everyone

in the United States.

- Watchdog groups like the ACLU,

all they're asking is

that the law be respected.

We don't so much need

to change the laws

as enforce the laws.

- [Maria] My friends

were reluctant

to go outside the industry,

they were worried.

- The film business is

a who you know business.

You cannot go out there

and start yelling,

because you'll never

get hired again.

- Maria Giese is very brave.

She's on the frontline

takin' the hits

and not making a lot

of friends, I suppose.

- [Maria] The whole

thing is about fear,

and the one thing you cannot do

if you're trying to make

change is respond to fear.

- She has the passion and

the energy that I remember.

- I was full-time on this.

For me to be able to get the

point across to the ACLU,

it was essential to

be able to define this

as a national problem,

a global problem,

a civil rights problem.

Hollywood is our

storytelling machine.

- I've been appointed

to defend Tom Robinson.

- It creates, in large

part, our cultural narrative

and informs the voice of

our very civilization.

- These three words written

larger then the rest,

we the people, they

must apply to everyone,

[whip cracking]

or they mean nothing.

- [Maria] We

American people rely

on our entertainment

industry largely

for it to communicate

our stories.

- All right, let's go to work.

- [Maria] And to

represent us to each other

and to the rest of the world.

- That's correct.

- And women's creative

input is not making it

into our nation's storytelling,

into our cultural narrative.

- Maria reached out

to Melissa Goodman

because Melissa's expertise

is in gender issues.

- There are federal laws that

very clearly and specifically

prohibit sex discrimination

in employment.

California has their own set

of very strong and protective

gender discrimination

laws as well.

- Over the course of

the next six weeks,

I met in their offices

and I told my story.

- If there are nearly zero

members of a protected group

in a workplace, something

is keeping them out.

- I think if you were Starbucks

and 93% of your employees

were male, that

would be a problem.

- Unless it can be

justified as necessary

to the functioning

of these companies,

it's illegal under Title Seven.

That's the story that

I think gets us places.

[light somber music]

- We strongly believe and

the data strongly suggests

that bias behind the

camera in Hollywood

is directly related to all

the other discrimination

and bias that we

fight at the ACLU

in all other facets of

life, it's all connected.

- Over the next several months,

my colleagues gathered

stories from around 50 women.

- I had been in

conversation with the ACLU

and was letting them know

about some of my experiences.

- In an industry like

film and television

where the process for

hiring is a spiderweb,

all of these organizations

play a different role

in navigating the process

for making film and

making television.

- The networks blame

the showrunners.

The showrunners blame the

agencies and the studios.

The studios are blamin' the

showrunners and the networks.

So they all have a safe

zone in which they can say,

I'm not racist or sexist.

- What it results in

is a wild irrationality

in who gets to

make TV and movies.

- People would say

the biggest problem is

women never make it on

agency lists to the studios.

- You call all the

major agencies and say

we need 12 directors for

this order, who do you have?

Most of them are men.

- If the list that we get

are all men on the list,

we are overloaded

with a lot of work,

and sometimes we don't

look beyond our lists.

- When I reached out to agencies

to send me other writers,

they said, we don't have any.

And someone actually

said, I understand,

you're covering your

ass for some reason,

we're gonna send you

some more white men.

- [Man] They actually

said white men?

- Yes.

- If a woman is paid

less than a man,

an agent is going

to make more money

pushing a male writer

or a male director.

- Starting out as an agent,

I was encouraged to

spend most of my time

representing male clients

because it was the view

that male clients

made more money.

- If you can't get in the

door to be even on the list

of people considered, you're

clearly never gonna get a job.

[woman screaming]

- The movies that

we make are huge,

and we don't wanna have people

making these movies and fail.

So you wanna make

sure that they have

some sort of experience

to get it done.

- It's hard to say,

well, this woman

who made a five million

dollar horror movie,

let's give her a 150

million dollar action movie.

Well, you have to

let people do it

so that they have experience

to change the pool.

- None of our directors

before they came to us

had made a 100

million dollar movie.

None of our male directors.

[somber music]

- The idea that we have a

lack of qualified women,

all of that is bullshit.

We have a lack of people who

are comfortable hiring people

who exist outside of

their comfort zone.

- There's plenty of us.

You could hire women

for every feature film

in this country and you would

not run out of women to hire.

- Our job is to help and demand

the studios and producers

and networks and

streamers make decisions

that favor gender equality.

- You just hire women,

it's not that hard.

It's not that hard, I have

not had a hard time doing it,

so I don't understand

why that's difficult.

[light music]

- We came to the conclusion

that it was a really

serious civil rights problem

that deserved the

attention of the EEOC,

which is the agency tasked

with enforcing Title Seven.

- When I saw that

letter, I was shocked.

It was like, wow,

that's incredible.

[somber music]

- On October 6th, I received

one of the first letters

from the EEOC asking

to interview me.

This meant the

investigation was on.

- The EEOC says they're

gonna investigate Hollywood.

This is a massive

accomplishment for us.

- I went down to

the EEOC and did,

I believe it was about four

hours worth of interviews,

and so did many

other people too.

- In terms of outcomes,

the EEOC is always focused

on a variety of remedies.

That could range from

instituting certain percentages

of women considered

and hired for jobs.

They can impose

reporting requirements.

Here are the number of

women we considered,

we are the number of women

we hired, here's why.

- I would hope it would

be a wake up call.

We're all of us doing something

really wrong and it's time.

- Every form of

pressure is important.

If it comes from a need

to settle a lawsuit,

it will happen faster

then if it comes from,

gee, this is something

we should do,

but we don't have to do it.

- I think the EEOC

thing is great,

because you either gotta

shame people legally

and say you may get sued

if you don't do this,

or you just have to

shame them publicly

and go like, hey

everybody, look,

look what they haven't been

doing, this is ridiculous.

- As it stands right

now, if you are a person

with hiring power and you

are not actively, actively

trying to hire more women,

you are part of the problem.

- I'll be interested in seeing

in this very documentary

how many men in

positions of power

will sit here and explain

why they don't hire women.

It's an easy question.

- At the same time,

I started noticing

the scripts are really bad

for women in Hollywood.

I decided I was gonna go on

a tour of all the studios

and meet with every

studio head and say,

what are you developing

for me, for other women?

And they literally looked at

me blank, they had nothing.

One studio said, we think

we might have one movie

where we can flip the gender

from a guy to a women.

And I thought, what?

This is crazy.

I felt like I could

either admire that problem

or do something about it.

- You sound like a feminist.

- I am.

- That's excellent, that's

fantastic, I love feminists.

- So I put up my own money

and I had two employees

and just started

developing these projects

with smart, articulate,

capable women.

It's actually kind of annoying

that you look like

that and you're smart.

- Reese has a very

vital production company

and they're creating

female centric stories

that are really successful.

- Big Little Lies.

[audience applauding]

- It's time for our

business to wake up

and realize that

it's good economics

as well as the

right thing to do.

- People in senior leadership

can really change

an organization.

Having a specific plan

in their talent strategy

about diversity and inclusion

and being very persistent

to make sure that

you're getting access

to the best pool of

talent that you can.

- When I was president

of entertainment at ABC,

it was just after

Sex And The City

was announced to be going away.

- Stop, really, you're

gonna make me cry.

- That became a real trigger.

We need to find the

next show for women.

- I may be dead, but

I'm still pretty.

- I would watch TV and the women

on network television

all felt cute.

- [Both] I'm sexy, I'm cute.

- It's so girly and stupid.

- [Shonda] They all felt

like somebody's fantasy

of what a woman would be.

- God, look at her.

- I was like, I don't really

wanna watch these shows.

What I wanted to

watch was a show

about competitive women

who loved their jobs,

who are happy to stand up

to the guys and be big dogs.

- We were rolling

some ideas around

and the idea of doing

an medical show came up,

and so we started talking about

what a medical show

would look like

if it was coming

from Shonda's brain.

[typing]

- She wrote Grey's Anatomy.

The way that she wanted to do it

with the diversity of the cast

and the diversity of

the points of view,

it was totally unique.

- Betsy and I were

brought into a room

full of older white men.

- Pilot screenings

were dominantly male.

- This one gentlemen said,

the pilot is appalling,

you have this women

who the night before

her first day in her

new job goes out,

gets drunk, picks up a

guy, sleeps with him,

and then goes into work,

who would ever do that?

And I remember looking

at him and saying,

well actually, I did it.

- It was fascinating

watching them

trying to shape Meredith Grey

into one of their fantasy girls

who's perfect and wholesome.

We just didn't do it.

- [Man] Dr. Grey, you need

to tell us what you wanna do.

- All the parts that I

had been auditioning for

were the girlfriend or the wife,

so I did notice

immediately that,

oh, I get to be the lead

role, I get to be a doctor,

I get to have opinions,

I get to be smart.

- Shonda was able to make

half of her cast not white.

- Everyone, listen up, please.

- I was very lucky because

Grey's Anatomy was developed

under the network

presidency of Susan Lyne.

She had to fight really hard

to get them to

put it on the air.

- When I called to say we

were gonna green light it,

the male executive on

the other end of the line

literally hung up on me.

[light music]

- Because of the show's success,

what Shonda has done with that

power has been remarkable.

- Moments like this give

every woman an opportunity

to decide what kind of

person she wants to be.

- She created Scandal,

where the lead character

is an African-American woman.

Later on, she was

also able to hire

a African-American lead actress

who is older and

who has darker skin.

These are all building blocks

to being able to

show ourselves fully.

- When you have diverse

creators making diverse content,

you get representations

of experience

that you never would

have gotten otherwise.

That scene with Viola Davis

taking off her wig

was revolutionary.

We often, as black women,

have to put on this armor

when we enter the world.

- It was like she took

the weight off of our

shoulders in public.

[somber music]

That moment

represented black women

comin' out of these shadows

of I have to look like this.

- Shonda Rhimes is the

most powerful

showrunner in Hollywood.

People look at her and say,

isn't the problem solved?

[keyboard clicking]

- I was following the

EEOC case very closely.

The women who brought that

suit and who documented

all those exclusions

and abuses are heroic.

I began digging around

and I wanted to see

what I could find out about

directors in the world of TV.

All the data was there,

but it wasn't all that easy

to see the numbers by network.

I don't like math, but even

a non-math person like me

can add up a row of zeroes.

I constructed a chart

for every network,

and there were four categories:

white men, white women, men

of color, women of color.

And the network with the

worst track record...

was FX.

- I was very disappointed.

I thought of myself as

an enlightened person.

I would have described

myself as a feminist.

So I started to inquire

much more deeply

into the kinds of

unique challenges

faced by women, by

African-Americans,

by people who are

not gender normative.

We gotta put our

finger on the scale

and try to do something

to change the situation.

- People will hire the same

type of people every time

if you don't have that

meeting to tell them not to.

[light upbeat music]

[keyboard clicking]

- I wrote a letter to all

the showrunners of our shows

asking them to

help us do better,

but also telling them

that we would provide them

with all the resources necessary

to make that successful.

- In July, their staff

approached me and said,

we've gone from 89% white men

directing our shows to 49%.

And I just said, no you didn't.

- I had this unconscious

bias that we would have to

be making sacrifices to hire

people with less experience.

- They don't care

that I'm black.

- [John] And maybe that the

talent wouldn't be there.

- I just think that

they just don't like me.

- Oh, they care plenty.

- And I'm here to

say it's there.

[light dramatic music]

- There's nothing funny here!

- [John] The minute we

open our door and we say,

come express it here,

- Welcome.

- the work got better.

- Hello, Daddy.

- Feud is so, so good.

You directed an episode of it.

- I did, it'll be on

[audience applauding]

- It's one of the best things

that's ever happened in

my professional career.

Anyone who then told me,

or told any other journalist

in the future, it's too hard,

no, it's not, look

at what FX did.

- It can only be done if

the CEO is totally

invested in this.

It doesn't work if

it's just lip service.

- Progress will happen

when men take a stand.

It's the chivalry

of the 21st century.

- I'm doing a better job

for having changed the

way I think about this.

I'm doing a better

job of funneling

the most talented people

into this business,

and I think that makes

people uncomfortable.

I've been increasingly

open as I've gotten older

to seeing my white, male,

heterosexual identity

as an unearned

advantage in the world.

I think it's difficult

sometimes for men to see that

because I think they

feel like it diminishes

the nature of their

achievement or their life,

but I just think it's a fact.

- When you try to

move from where we are

towards something which looks

more nearly like equality,

there are people who are

doing quite nicely now

who feel like something is

being taken away from them.

I have a friend, he came

back from a job interview

that hadn't

particularly gone well

and we were having

coffee and he said,

all they're looking

for is black women.

And I said, did

they tell you that?

And he said, no, but

everybody knows that.

And then I didn't

know what to do.

I didn't know whether I should

get up and leave the table,

whether I should pull the

statistics up on my telephone.

But it's simply not true.

- We're hearing a

lot of people saying,

when we fact in gender we're

not selecting for excellence.

And I find that it's

the other way around.

We are factoring in

gender, the male gender,

and that is what is constraining

the selection of excellence.

- The countervailing forces

against change must be enormous.

They're enormous, they're

powerful, and they're silent.

- As women, we are not

allowed to be angry.

Our anger is not appropriate.

- I can point to the change.

I can point to when the

forest went up in fire.

- [Trump] I moved on her like

a bitch, and she was married.

She is a disgusting pig, right?

When you're a star,

they let you do it.

You can do anything,

grab 'em by the pussy.

- [Man] The 45th president

of the United States.

- It is truly, unequivocally,

a breaking point for women.

- Oh my god, this was

the gasoline on the spark

that awakened the country.

[Quiet by MILCK]

- In the last couple of decades,

a majority of women felt

that there was nothing

more to fight for.

Now we see that there's

a lot to fight for.

♪ Shut up and smile ♪

♪ Don't spread your legs ♪

Oh my god.

[background chattering]

- People didn't

just get discouraged

and say, wow, that sucks.

Right there on

inauguration day going,

we're here and we're

not going away!

♪ But no one knows me ♪

♪ No one ever will ♪

♪ If don't say something

if I just lie still ♪

♪ But I'll beat that monster ♪

♪ Scare them all away ♪

- Older women that have

been through these battles

are gratified to see it

revived and it feels right.

♪ I can't keep quiet ♪

♪ No, no, no ♪

♪ I can't keep quiet ♪

- I want to thank

our new president.

You just started the revolution.

[crowd cheering]

- Women's right

are human rights.

- [Crowd] Women's

rights are human rights.

[crowd cheering]

- All of a sudden,

the dam broke open.

♪ I can't keep quiet ♪

- I could never have

envisioned something

that would change the world.

I was tryin' to

change my community.

♪ Oh, I'm breaking quiet ♪

♪ Let it out, let it

out, let it out now ♪

♪ Must be someone

who understands ♪

♪ Let it out, let it

out, let it out now ♪

- [Woman] New York

Times reporting

- [Man] A growing community

of women speaking out

- [Woman] Harvey Weinstein

sexually harassed

- [Woman] Including Rose

McGowan and Ashley Judd

- Hollywood has built

itself on that casting couch

and on keeping people silent.

- When it's one, you

can say she's crazy

and ruin her career, and when

it's 100, it's undeniable.

- Guilty, guilty, guilty.

- Sexual harassment and abuse

are a symptom of

employment discrimination.

They expose the way that

business works in Hollywood.

- [Man] The me too movement

is morphing into Time's Up.

- [Man] The movement has

raised over $16 million

to help victims of

workplace harassment.

- It's action, and that was

what really pulled me in.

♪ Let it out, let it

out, let it out now ♪

- We have to create momentum

based on this moment.

You can't just say, well, we

won't sexually harass the women

but we're not gonna

give them bigger roles

and more to say and more

important things to do.

- In order for true

systemic change to happen,

it has to be inclusive, everyone

has to come along with it.

And change needs to

happen immediately.

[light upbeat music]

- We need more female content.

We need more female filmmakers

and better roles for actresses.

And at a certain point, some

people have to take some risks

or everything just

stays the same, right?

[exploding]

- This is no man's land, Diana.

This is not something you

can cross, it's not possible.

[somber music]

- This was the make

it or break it moment.

It's a moment of confidence and

decision of what you can do.

It's not about

the wall of people

that you're going up against.

She's just going to go across

and be the one that

makes a difference.

I've seen a ton of

women really go up

in the face of things

and take things head on.

- If you grew up free from

unconscious gender bias,

I think it would have

an enormous impact.

It could change our culture,

it could change the world.

- To be able to have

authentic representation,

we really need 50/50 on

screen, behind the scenes.

It's the responsibility

of industry executives

to obey the law.

[light dramatic music]

- She's takin' all

the fire, let's go.

- We as consumers lose sight

of the power that we do have.

- When audiences decide

I'm not gonna see movies

where women are belittled and

I'm not gonna let my daughter

see movies like that,

things are gonna change.

[grunting]

[metal crashing]

- It's your daughters,

it's your granddaughters,

it's your children, it's

your stories, it's your job.

[uplifting music]

- If I could go back and

talk to my teenage self,

I would say, actually,

you'll learn a feminist

is exactly what you wanna be

and people will come to realize

that what's good for women

is good for everybody.

[Side by Side by Andra Day]

♪ Infiltrate, trouble

make, innovate, detonate ♪

♪ This changes everything ♪

♪ What you expect of me ♪

♪ Keep it sweet ♪

♪ Keep it low ♪

♪ Sugar don't rock the boat ♪

♪ Why are you uncomfortable

with beautiful ♪

♪ I can see you afraid ♪

♪ Tell me what of ♪

♪ Stuck in a rut ♪

♪ Only because you

clipping my wings ♪

♪ Holding me down ♪

♪ Caging me in ♪

♪ And locking me out ♪

♪ Scared of the tears ♪

♪ Sweat or the blood ♪

♪ Standing on me to

hold yourself up ♪

♪ Only a few feet

off the ground ♪

♪ But why hover

when you could fly ♪

♪ What will guide you ♪

♪ With no stars in the sky ♪

♪ Your flag, half mast, ♪

♪ Let these old habits die ♪

♪ Used to saving you

just to be crucified ♪

♪ But you just half a man ♪

♪ Until we side by side ♪

♪ Stalemate, elevate,

equal parts, co-create ♪

♪ How you gon know the way ♪

♪ With only half the truth? ♪

♪ But it's alright ♪

♪ We gon' be great ♪

♪ Fear just gets in the way ♪

♪ Don't think, participate ♪

♪ Saying I got a bad attitude ♪

♪ According to what ♪

♪ According to who? ♪

♪ Word of advice,

I'm being polite ♪

♪ And I'm only nice 'cause

that's what I like ♪

♪ Talk like I'm not ♪

♪ A part of the plan ♪

♪ Stay in my place but

that's where I am ♪

♪ God don't just speak to man ♪

♪ Why hover when you could fly ♪

♪ What will guide you ♪

♪ With no stars in the sky ♪

♪ Your flag, half mast, ♪

♪ Let these old habits die ♪

♪ Used to saving you

just to be crucified ♪

♪ But you just half a man ♪

♪ Until we side by side ♪

♪ Why hover when you ♪

♪ Could fly ♪

♪ I will guide you ♪

♪ We can talk of all

the stars in the sky ♪

♪ Your flag, half mast, ♪

♪ Let these old habits die ♪

♪ Used to saving you

just to be crucified ♪

♪ But you just half a man ♪

♪ Until we side by side ♪

♪ Used to being crucified ♪

♪ We taking so much fire ♪

♪ Until we side by side ♪

♪ Until we side by side ♪

[light music]