Women Who Run the Show

by Gregory, Mollie

• ISBN13: 9781580631822
• ISBN10: 1580631827
• Format: Trade Book
• Publisher: Renaissance Books

Summary

Based on more than one hundred interviews with prominent female producers, directors, writers, and stars, Women Who Run the Show chronicles the last three decades in the entertainment industry -- a period that saw women retake positions of influence that had been denied them for more than a generation. It is a history of modern film and television as seen through the eyes of women who helped shape it. These were women who saw opportunities and seized them -- who took risks, broke rules, and reshaped conventional family life to storm the strongholds of the dream factories. This is the story of women who fought for visibility and sometimes, to preserve their power, had to let others take the credit. The experiences of these women combine to form a significant strand in the history of women's continuing struggle for equality in the workplace.From these frank, revealing interviews with some of Hollywood's heaviest hitters emerges an astonishing picture of the cost of success, sexual harassment and discrimination, the "boys' club", and the rules of competition. Like a skillful screenwriter, Mollie Gregory retells these stories in sharp, vivid images: women in meetings with their corporate peers constantly being interrupted and not being heard; women enduring acts of humiliation and ridicule, of physical harassment, unwanted and unsolicited touching and groping, even entrapment. But these women also talk with pride and humor about their work -- from winning an Oscar to shooting in hard times on Norma Rae to marketing a film no one wanted to make to producing sound effects on Top Gun. They speak of the community of women that does not yet exist but will in time. Despite the changeschronicled here, much remains the same in Hollywood. Author Gregory and her subjects tell us wh