Female Directors Get No Respect

What you can do? • sign the electronic petition • write the Academy (sample letter below) • send the link to this article to a friend • support films directed by women at the box office • buy films directed by women

Today, as I was writing my review for Waitress, it dawned on me again that female directors get no respect. Here is a film written, directed, and acted in by Adrienne Shelly. Yes, she was very much a female. And, wow was she ever talented. [Note: Adrienne Shelly was tragically murdered in November of 2006 before her last film, Waitress, was released. Please support the foundation created by her husband which supports film careers of young women. The Adrienne Shelly foundation.]. I'm always amazed by people who can really write and direct their own work. But to be able to act in the story as well, that's a true gift. In any case, thinking about Ms Shelly's talent, however, returned me to one of the things that outrages me most in today's film industry and about which I have written before. My apologies, in advance, for sounding like damaged iPod™ in repeating this over and over; but, honestly, it is time to make this a major national cause. It is time to recognize again that, since 1927/28 according to awardsdatabase.oscars.org, there have only been three nominations out of 385 nominations that have gone to female directors:

Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties at the 49th Academy Awards®
Jane Campion for The Piano at the 66th Academy Awards®
Sofia Coppola for Lost in Traslation at the 76th Academy Awards®

Guess what? Not one of them won for Best Directing.

That's 0.77% of the nominations have gone to women and 0% have won.

Let's think about this. Imagine if it were the same for Best Actor. Imagine if there were no Best Actress Award. Imagine if there had been 385 nominations since 1927/28 and only 3 women had ever been nominated. Imagine if not one had ever won. Wouldn't there be an outcry? Would people say, "Ah, well women don't get strong roles."? Would they say, "Well there aren't that many women out there acting."?

Let's break this down:

Either (A):

It is entirely gender-biased that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences broke the acting category into two--one for each gender to recognize the best acting performance of each gender each year. It has held nominations and awards separately for actors every year since the beginning, by the way. When actually, the award should be given for the best, overall performance by an actor (the inclusive term that includes both men and women).

or (B):

It is entirely gender-biased that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has not broken the directing category into two--one for each gender to recognize the best directing by a person of each gender each year.

I do not protest to know which would be better or worse except that it is all too clear at this time that female directors are not getting the support they need. Not from fans, not from studios, not from producers, etc. Can women not handle the job of being a director? Absolutely they can. Clearly they can even be nominated for their work up against men as were Ms Wertmüller, Ms Campion, and Ms Coppola. Some industry experts will shrug at the question and say, "Well, there just aren't that many women directing films." Yikes and gulp! Isn't this the same thing we used to hear about physicians, lawyers, and CEOs. Did we throw up our hands and say, oh well? Women now outnumber men in medical school, by the way, and how many female asst. district attorneys has Sam Waterston had on "Law and Order"? The CEO category still needs help, but the numbers are growing.

The time has come to split the Academy Award® for Directing into two categories: one for men and one for women. The Board of Governors needs to be persuaded that this change must come until we see equality in the nominations. This is the only fair and equitable way to effect change in the industry, provide acknowledgement for achievement in Directing by women; and, most importantly, encourage young women to believe they too can become directors thereby opening doors and smashing this paradigm. Some critics of this proposal would obviously say it weakens the category or the pool or whatever. Shame on them. Would they say the same about the Actor/Actress awards? My point is you really cannot have it both way. This is only one of the top awards that has not proven as equally open to women as the others. All of the writing awards and documentary awards have proven to be equal opportunity endeavors. But the Academy and Hollywood in general have seen fit to squeeze women out of the Best Directing award.

While I have written about this topic before, now I am choosing to do something about it. I'm doing the following:

(A) Asking you to post your comments in support of this cause,
(B) Asking you to write letters to the Academy urging them to split the category ASAP so that it can begin as soon as possible (a sample letter you can use is shown below with their address),
(C) Asking you to sign the electronic petition I set up at and indicate your support for this cause,
(D) Asking you to encourage everyone you know to support this cause by emailing them a link to this post and/or the petition, and
(E) Asking you to support the cause at the Box Office where it matters most by seeing films directed by women.

The time was long ago that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences needed to make this change rather than waiting over 70 years to realize a major gaffe in inadvertently supporting ingrained, rampant, gender bias in their industry.

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Sample Letter for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

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(insert your name and address here)
(insert the current date here)

Mr. Sid Ganis
President of the AMPAS
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy Foundation
8949 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, California 90211

Dear President Ganis,

I am writing today to address an issue that has recently begun to gain some national attention. Specifically, the lack of nominations for female directors in the category of Best Directing for your annual awards is cause for alarm. In the history of the awards, there have been 385 nominations for Best Directing, only 3 nominations, less than 0.8%, have gone to women, and no woman has ever won the award. Would the Academy members sit back and let this go on if the same could be said for Best Acting? No, they likely would not. We cannot know for certain though because since the Awards began in 1927/28, the Academy had the wisdom to ensure this never happened by splitting the acting awards along gender lines. Maybe this was a gender-biased decision at the time, but it has served the Awards well ensuring that both genders would be honored equally ever since. The same cannot be said for the Best Directing category.

Please consider the voice of the people and urge your members and Board of Governors to split the Best Directing category along gender lines as soon as possible. Doing so will vastly increase the opportunities for young women with a glimmer in their eye about the possibility of becoming the next Academy Award®-winning director, ensure gender equity in the nominations of Best Directing, and improve the industry overall by increasing opportunities for women in the industry.

Sincerely,

(insert your name here)

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A related article from CNN.com

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http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/07/female.directors.ap/index.html?eref=rss_showbiz