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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Ruby Sparks- Written by Zoe Kazan and Directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton

Reviews

It's no surprise that Zoe Kazan who penned the delightful new film Ruby Sparks opening today is a good writer. Both her parents - Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord are also top tier Hollywood screenwriters. Ruby Sparks is the story of Calvin Weir-Fields (played by Kazan's real life boyfriend Paul Dano) a wunderkind writer whose first novel was a huge sensation and success. It's been some time and Calvin can't write and has become a depressed recluse caught in a vicious cycle of staring at the typewriter to no effect. Then one night he dreams of Ruby Sparks and then poof a short time later her clothing starts appearing and then she appears in his house acting like his girlfriend. Of course, Calvin who is already in therapy for his writer's block, thinks he has finally had the psychotic break he has been dreading. But he quickly realizes that he's not completely crazy because other people can also see Ruby. He then realizes that he can literally make Ruby do anything he wants from speaking French to never leaving his side making her the perfect girlfriend and according to his brother a legend to all men.