![]() So I sat down with her, and the very first show I turned on and watched with her, I pretty much immediately noticed something, and I thought, wait a minute - how many female characters are in this show? And I was counting on my hands as I held her in my lap, and it was horrifying, and I was absolutely stunned. I - my daughter was a toddler, and I decided she was old enough to start watching preschool shows. GROSS: How did you decide to create your institute?ĭAVIS: It was very specific, actually. I felt very unhappy with having that sort of imposed on me by other people. I thought, this is incredibly unfair, and I don't want other people deciding that I have to work less, you know, and taking away opportunities. I was very upset and angry at that happening to me. Or did you think, oh, it's me - no one wants me anymore?ĭAVIS: Oh, no. GROSS: Did you think of it as discrimination against older women? Did you think of it as there not being enough roles for women in their 40s? Which really isn't very old. ![]() I very much expected that that would not be the case. And I also expected it to be not true anymore by the time I would get to that age. It was once there was a four in front of my age, and.ĭAVIS: You know, I had heard about that for a long time, that people said that things change when you turn 40 or when you're in your 40s, but I didn't expect it to be literal. GEENA DAVIS: Well, it was pretty dramatic. When did things start to slow down in your acting career? Geena Davis and Maria Giese, welcome to FRESH AIR. Her work led to an ongoing EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, investigation into systemic discrimination against women directors, as well as an ACLU campaign against discrimination. After feeling that she was shut out of directing because she's a woman, she became an activist. Also with us is director Maria Giese, who's featured in the film, too. She's receiving an honorary Oscar this year, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, at a special ceremony in October. She is an executive producer of and is featured in the new documentary "This Changes Everything," about how women in Hollywood are pushing for more representation in front of and behind the camera. In 2004, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to get the actual data comparing the number and types of male and female roles and to use that data to convince the industry of the need for change. My guest Geena Davis starred in two movies about female empowerment - "Thelma & Louise" and "A League Of Their Own." But when she got older and roles started to dry up, she realized how unempowered women were in Hollywood. This Changes Everything is not meant as just a showcase of the issues but as a call to action to further the cause of the radical social and institutional change that is necessary if we are to move forward as a culture and as a country.This is FRESH AIR. There are reasons for this that the film explores. The film's title comes out of my second interview with Geena when she talks about how everyone thought that the success of a female-driven film would finally make things change. There is growing consensus that the time for talk is over but that consensus is not necessarily new. The movement has galvanized the women of Hollywood (and some men) to take real concrete steps toward change. We had the additional fortune of witnessing a new wave feminist movement explode onto the scene while we were shooting. We, the filmmakers, were fortunate to have many female and male power players in Hollywood sit before our cameras. From small micro-aggressions to criminal abuses of power, the mistreatment and underrepresentation of women in Hollywood is becoming increasingly known, though little real change has actually occurred in a system in need of a critical reset. Produced with New Plot Films in association with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, David Yurman, and the Artemis Rising Foundation, this documentary asks: What is behind the film industry's blatant gender bias? What has been tried in the past and what initiatives are being tried today (and around the world) to confront gender discrimination? What does this discrimination look like on a more personal level? And most importantly, what must be done to create real and lasting change. This Changes Everything takes an incisive look into the male-dominated film industry to examine those forces - both conscious and unconscious - that continue to foster the systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women.
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