Women and Hollywood

Melissa Silverstein is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood, one of the most respected sites for issues related to women and film as well as other areas of pop culture. Women and Hollywood educates, advocates, and agitates for gender parity across the entertainment industry.

She is also the co-founder and Artistic Director of The Athena Film Festival. The 4th annual festival will take place from February 6-9, 2014 at Barnard College in NYC.

Melissa recently published the first book from Women and Hollywood, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing, which is a compilation of over 40 interviews that have appeared on the site.

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Blog Roll

Pissed Off: When Did Playing Evil Women Become a Rite of Passage for Oscar Winning Actresses?

Features

You know I hate all the princess shit that we see everywhere. The film business has up it ass that boys get to be superheroes and girls get to be princesses. The boys save the girls and the girls need to be saved. Like anyone believes that shit anymore.

By Melissa Silverstein
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May 9, 2013 12:00 PM
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12 Comments

News

Here's some of the women-centric film news that we thought people should know about:

By Kerensa Cadenas
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December 8, 2012 1:28 PM
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1 Comment

News

In a recent interview with the Associated Press to promote his new film Savages, Oliver Stone was asked to pick his favorite 5 films featuring strong women. For a man, who primarily focuses on hyper violent male characters or our former Presidents, his new film Savages has been seen as a departure for Stone with a primary focus on the film's female characters, O (Blake Lively) and Elena (Salma Hayek). Having Stone discuss strong women is laughable, considering his usual construction of male dominated worlds in which the female characters exist solely (if at all) in definition to their male counterparts.

By Kerensa Cadenas
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July 10, 2012 1:51 PM
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4 Comments

Blogs

By Melissa Silverstein
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June 4, 2012 12:15 PM
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1 Comment

Blogs

If you have to deal with another version of Snow White (which I don't understand why we do) you would think that a kick-ass Snow White might be the answer to your prayers. Not so much. Kristen Stewart plays the princess held in the tower by the evil Queen Ravenna played by Charlize Theron. The queen keeps her power and hold on the kingdom -- including her obsession with being the fairest of them all -- by living off the blood of young girls. Charlize looks gorgeous and is exquisitely costumed yet has really not much to do aside from screaming "Get Me Snow White" to her creepy albino like brother with a very bad haircut.

By Melissa Silverstein
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June 1, 2012 12:34 PM
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5 Comments

Video

It's all about Charlize vs Kristen.

By Melissa Silverstein
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March 19, 2012 11:47 AM
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1 Comment

Blogs

You can't tell me that Stephen Daldry is going to get an Oscar nomination for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He's great and I love The Hours, but please, why is he in this roundtable conversation and not any women? And George Clooney for The Ideas of March? Not going to happen. But I guess they are both sexier than Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin which won the Best British film from the London Film Critics last week.

By Melissa Silverstein
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January 23, 2012 11:27 AM
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0 Comments

I like the Golden Globe show cause it's always goofy. People drink, say funny stuff and you get TV and film people in one place. People who are awards watchers don't take it too seriously because they have two different film categories -- comedy and drama -- which no other awards do. The also kiss a lot of celebrity butt in order to have a star ladened show rather than a serious awards show. So you must not take anything these people do too seriously.

But they do get coverage and they do get talked about so it matters that with 11 films nominated in the two categories there is not a single woman directed film nominated for best drama or best comedy/musical. The Help and Bridesmaids continued their good week and I think that we will have to settle for one (The Help) or hopefully both of these films representing the chicks at the Oscars. So it will be films about women that will represent women, not films by women. But weirdly, the Bridesmaids writers did not get nominated here, nor did any other female film writers (except for Angelina Jolie who got a best foreign language film nomination).

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 16, 2011 9:49 AM
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1 Comment

Reviews

I heart Young Adult. I heart it because it is an awesome and original story. I heart it because Charlize Theron hits it out of the park as the horribly bitchy Mavis a woman stuck in her high school self because that was when she was queen. You know when you look at the male football players in high school and they are so cute and so dumb but they rule the world because it is high school. But you know that those are the same guys who wind up selling vacuum cleaners and developing a beer gut by the time they are 30. The guys you were in awe of become the sad ones. Mavis is one of those guys, but she is a girl. She peaked at 16. She was the golden mean bitch who I'm sure roamed the halls spilling slushees on the plebes.

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 9, 2011 12:39 PM
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4 Comments

Diablo Cody

Diablo Cody was kindly able to take a few minutes to talk Young Adult and feminism in the film business on the eve of the opening of her new film. It's good to know that we have a strong feminist voice out there unafraid to own up to her convictions.

Women and Hollywood: One of the narratives of the film is that you created an unlikeable female character. We see unlikeable men all the time. Why is such a big deal that we have a female lead who is unlikeable?

Diablo Cody: The conventional knowledge in Hollywood is that an unsympathetic female character can tank a movie. I’m hoping that’s not true. I’m knocking on wood really emphatically right now but honestly I have a lot of theories sometimes I wonder if it comes down to mommy issues. The idea of a cold, unlikeable woman or a woman who is not in control of herself is genuinely frightening to people because it threatens civilization itself or threatens the American family.

But I don’t know why people are always willing to accept and even like flawed male characters. We’ve seen so many loveable anti-heroes who are curmudgeons or addicts or bad fathers and a lot of those characters have become beloved icons and I don’t see women allowed to play the same parts. So it was really important to me to try and turn that around.

By Melissa Silverstein
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December 9, 2011 10:16 AM
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1 Comment

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