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

Hollywood Feminists of the Day: Chris O'Dowd and Jon Hamm - The Guys from Friends with Kids

Blogs

It's not very often that I think about a movie several weeks after I've seen it, but I have had Friends with Kids on my mind. The more I think about it, the more I like it. It's just an adult film that's funny. One that Hollywood rarely makes anymore and when it does, it usually isn't done this well. It's a small film with big stars and you really get to see them at the top of their form. So get on out and support it when it comes to your neighborhood as part of the mission of supporting women directed films.

By Melissa Silverstein
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March 20, 2012 11:07 AM
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1 Comment

Reviews

What's interesting about Friends with Kids is that Jennifer Westfeldt has the skills to make a film feel subversive and mainstream at the same time. The story she tells (which she also produces and directs) is about best friends who want a kid even though they haven't found the partners they want to parent with. They decide to parent with each other much to the chagrin of their friends who are going down the conventional road. She asks questions through the different couples about whether the norm is normal, whether you need to find a soul mate to raise a child, what is a soul mate, and whether you stay together for the sake of the kids when you are miserable. She also shows how hard it is to find a mate in NYC.

By Melissa Silverstein
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March 9, 2012 10:25 AM
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1 Comment

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