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

Guest Post: Marilyn Monroe Comic Book Tribute

Features

I had written one comic book for the publisher, Bluewater Productions, which was about Elizabeth Taylor and they asked me to take on Marilyn. I said yes because I loved writing the first one so much, but I quickly realized that I had a ton of research to do if I was going to do this woman justice. Just because it's a comic book doesn't mean you don't want to tell their story in the most entertaining, respectful way you can.

By Dina Gachman
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April 30, 2013 3:29 PM
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1 Comment

Features

The best career advice I got before graduating from film school (besides the cliché but true “It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon”) went something like this: You need to be open to the different paths your career can take, and be willing to embrace a different route to your dream. This is definitely true for any kind of creative career, especially something as fickle, unsteady, and unpredictable as film. If I hadn’t listened to this piece of advice, I never would have entertained the thought of writing comic books. I’d probably be crying in a corner somewhere, wondering why I wasn’t raking in the dough and winning Spirit Awards a year after graduation. I know Spirit Award winners aren’t necessarily buying yachts with their Black Amex, but when you’re naïve and green your dreams tend to be a little fantastical.

By Dina Gachman
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December 14, 2012 10:30 AM
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2 Comments

Features

* "Please don’t make me a joke." --Marilyn Monroe

By Karina Eileraas
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August 6, 2012 11:09 AM
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1 Comment

Blogs

Already missing the Oscar season - just kidding. The Cannes Film Festival played a big role this past year so who knows what the next Cannes Film Festival has in store for us. Hopefully we'll get some women direced films that can resonate as well as The Artist and some others.

By Melissa Silverstein
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March 1, 2012 10:20 AM
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0 Comments

The sad reality that I admitting to here is that I really don't know much about Marilyn Monroe. Here's what I knew before I saw the film. She died of a drug overdose realtively young. She sang happy birthday to JFK in the 60s and supposedly had an affair with him. She seemed really sad. She was a size 16 (in today's movie star world she would be deemed too fat.) And two of her husbands were playwright Arthur Miller and baseball player Joe DiMaggio - two very, very different men.

And she was a huge star. Watching the film you see she was one of the first woman in our culture who just was larger than life. Larger than herself. An icon. Huge. The film shows the toll it takes on the real person living life in the spotlight. It asks the question where does Marilyn the star end and where does Marilyn the woman begin? Are they the same?

By Melissa Silverstein
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November 28, 2011 12:45 PM
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2 Comments