By Robert Goldrich
In a Los Angeles Film Festival session titled “Women Who Call The Shots,” panelists including showrunner Marta Kauffman (co-creator/executive producer of Friends), writers/directors Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone), Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) and Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said, Lovely & Amazing), reflected on various topics, perhaps most notably the lack of women filmmakers who are indeed calling the shots. In fact, prominent industry studies have actually found a decreasing number of female directors and execs in positions of power.
Kauffman—who is currently working on the new Netflix series Grace & Frankie starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin— thinks on one hand that the situation isn’t necessarily as grim as research suggests, noting that her writers’ room primarily consists of women and “my company is all women.” But Kauffman clearly sees a double standard, recalling a female costume designer who took time off to raise her children. When she decided to return to the workforce, she was asked, “What have you done lately?” Kauffman affirmed, “We have to stop that shit.”
Indeed an attitudinal adjustment is needed in some cases, continued Kauffman who recollected a male director who whenever he wanted a rewrite on a scene in Friends and even when standing right next to Kauffman would call out for her partner/series co-creator David Crane.
Granik meanwhile noted that she is seeing more women getting opportunities in the documentary discipline. Granik, an Oscar nominee in 2011 for Winter’s Bone (Best Adapted Screenplay), has wrapped her first documentary as director/writer, Stray Dog, which screened at the L.A. Film Fest.
Prince-Bythewood related that the lack of opportunities for women filmmakers and execs “makes no sense.” She affirmed, “Talent has no gender.”
And Holofcener said when she reads the entertainment trade press, she sees “a white male” industry, which she finds “sad and upsetting.” Describing herself and her fellow panelists as being among “the lucky ones,” Holofcener said she was honored to be part of the festival session. At the same time, her participation is a double-edged sword. While the panel celebrates women directors, “we’re being segregated” with this type of event. Part of her, she noted, bemoans that she’s on another “f-ing women’s panel.”
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More