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]