Who you gonna call to direct?
The new Ghostbusters, led by four all-star actresses, is not the most significant step toward gender equality that will happen this month – Philadelphia has a lock on that. But if you’ve been waiting your whole life for a summer blockbuster that focuses on women in the workplace, Ghostbusters is a big deal.
For decades, ghostbusting was considered a male profession. Not anymore. The reboot proves women can do anything … except maybe direct a Ghostbusters film. That job went first to Ivan Reitman and now to Paul Feig, who also directed Bridesmaids and Spy. “I have guilt that I’m a man doing these movies,” Feig said in an interview in March. “Women should be doing them, too!”
Feig’s words inspired me, and since I’m a member of the Directors Guild of America, I decided it might be time to reboot my own career. I dusted off a stack of spec scripts and called one of my mentors – an extremely successful movie and commercial director – and asked him if we could meet. I had a plan.
I drove to my mentor’s home in the Hollywood Hills. It was the day after Easter and there was still a faint whiff of miracle in the air. I jumped right in:
Me: (enthusiastic) I want to find a producing partner to help me set up one of these six scripts. There’s so much talk about hiring female directors and making films that focus on women’s voices that I really think there’s an opportunity here – a window – that wasn’t there before. A beat. Mentor: OK, that’s all in your head. The moment he said it, I knew he was right. And I laughed out loud at my own naiveté. I had confused an industry acknowledging the problem with an industry willing to fix the problem.
In an ideal world, awareness would lead to change. But in the real world, awareness leads to excuses and sometimes even stalling tactics. This is true of every social movement. We’ve been aware of climate change for decades, and the response has been denial. We’ve been aware of gun violence, and the response is thoughts and prayers. We’ve been aware of racial tensions, so we add police body cameras so we can be even more aware. Compared with these issues, getting more female directors is a low priority. Still, it’s a small, specific problem that could be fixed easily. So why is nothing happening?
In 1979, five years before the original “Ghostbusters” came out, six female directors formed a Women’s Steering Committee within the Directors Guild to document the lack of opportunity in films and TV. A lawsuit against the studios was initiated, and the pressure seemed to work at first. Then the numbers stalled. From 2009 to 2015, only 18 percent of all first-time directors of TV episodes were women. Then in May 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a 15-page letter, beginning an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into possible discrimination in hiring practices.
In television, most studio executives and showrunners claim they are looking for female directors, but I suspect it’s the same way that I sometimes look for the sunglasses on my head: They’re right there, but I can’t see them.
People insist it’s a pipeline problem when it’s really a broken doorbell problem. Competent and talented women are right there on the doorstep, hitting the buzzer, but no one is answering the door. Last year, even with constant calls for more gender diversity, 86 percent of the first-time TV directors were still white males.
This fault lies deep in our culture. Studies show that men are promoted based on potential and women are promoted based on experience. Our culture also consistently underestimates female performance compared with males. People think men do better work, and they don’t. So when employers hesitate to hire a less-experienced female director, it feels rooted in an
Nell Scovell, who has directed movies for Showtime and Lifetime, is an author, with Sheryl Sandberg, of ‘Lean In.’