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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Political Animals - A Reminder of What Could Have Been

Television

Watching Political Animals with the amazing Sigourney Weaver in her TV series debut you can't help but think back to the brutal and historic 2008 presidential election. No matter what the creators say (and lately they've been owning up to it more) Sigourney Weaver's character Elaine Barrish is based on Hillary Clinton. It's hard not to see the correlation and is disingenuous to deny it since the character is a former First Lady who ran for President and is now the hugely popular Secretary of State. The only differences between the two women -- besides their hair color -- is that the fictional version dumped her philandering husband (Ciaran Hinds) the day she conceded her race for the Presidency, and the character has two sons instead of one daughter.