A year after Weinstein the movie industry is still soul-searching
After Rashida Jones exited Pixar’s Toy Story 4 in 2017 she noted that the studio, after 25 years in business, had not made a single feature film directed by a woman, calling it ‘‘a culture where women and people of colour do not have an equal creative voice’’.
So when Pixar co-founder and CEO John Lasseter stepped down earlier this year after acknowledging ‘‘missteps’’ in his behaviour with employees, he was more than another casualty in the long list of film industry power-players toppled by the MeToo movement. He was a symbol of a Hollywood culture that is under siege.
‘‘These giant, multi-billiondollar companies all need a makeover,’’ Jones says. ‘‘And I think people are starting to recognise that. To me, that is a victory. Brave people have come forward and made this whole machine start to question itself.’’
In the year since sexual assault allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood has been soulsearching. The Weinstein case – along with those of Kevin Spacey, CBS’ Les Moonves, Amazon Studios’ Roy Price and many others – laid bare the painful reality for countless women in a movie industry where gender inequality was systematic and pervasive.
The MeToo movement has gone far beyond the movies, but Hollywood remains ground zero in a cultural eruption that began 12 months ago with the Weinstein revelations, published by The New York Times and The New Yorker.
‘‘Definitely there’s been a seismic shift,’’ says British actress Carey Mulligan.
‘‘I feel like if I was walking down the street and someone said something or did something outside the bounds of appropriate, I would feel so much more empowered to tell them to f... off, while before I probably wouldn’t.’’
Mulligan says that in every job she’s had in the past year, there’s been a well-known code of conduct on set.
Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative have not yet found any marked difference in female representation on screen, behind the camera or in the boardroom.
More data after the end of the year will give a clearer picture but the previous 20 years have shown almost zero change.
At least anecdotally, studios and production companies are more aggressively hunting for female film-makers. Salma Hayek’s production company has been struggling to find female writers and directors. They’re all already booked.
‘‘Everybody’s looking for their female content,’’ says Jones, whose documentary Quincy was recently released by Netflix. ‘‘They’re starting to understand that content that’s created by and shepherded by