A Word on Words; 2619; Linda Seger

building a new world ellen johnson and bowlen once again welcome to work on words when women called the shots ones that ever gonna be well listeners you to tell us welcomed world words thanks so much of the book club was more than anything it was an educational taught me a lot about the history of the media that i didn't know what you've done here it seems to me is look at them and film and television crew the un prism stroll than difficulty about where the idea for this book come from i've been in this business as nineteen eighty one and i have watched the women's power grow both behind the scenes as well as on the screen and i have actually gone through the process myself i've known cy management styles changing i've noticed better roles happening and

i decided it was time to document or not i just like you know i was really surprised about what i was discovering i had no idea for instance that the first fiction film was created by a woman and this was a total surprise to me is you know her name was alice key she was from paris was at ninety six and she got this idea and why can't we take the moving picture camera instead of shooting things like people in laboratories and people lined streets let's make up a story what's even more interesting is that the first fiction film with film was on a woman subject matter so was called a cabbage ferry in was what this cabbage patch that her children so when she went on to make seven hundred more films and you know what what an amazing thing that her name has been lost to history i revise our last few ethical you brought back from the grave and the other of the other early aspect of me and i had no idea about

was low dollar and roll latin and women play prior to the rise of the so called big studios i had no idea that label and was maybe more responsible for chaplin when chaplin he did have a great talent but you say it's cruel talking about it not been for labeling them in big trouble there were a lot of these women we hear about from mary pickford lillian gish mabel normand we think of them as actresses what we don't realize is they have their own production company as they were directing and in the case of mabel normand she was the one that told mack sennett the producer you should hire charlie chaplin she prepared charlie chaplin for film she showed hammer teams many which he picked up and adapted and she even directed him several times and he really wanted to write himself to serve as she was supposed to go yet he says he didn't like being directed by mabel but he didn't like being

directed by any idea then so from then on is he directed him so you know i knew about the nominal record for running for a show she was a dynamite actors on camera on film on screen what i didn't understand was that she is responsible one in a body for putting her spouse douglas fairbanks and to get to griffith and wilson united artists the format in nineteen nineteen and what's fascinating right now is that united artists is now once again always years later run by won lindsey to round it produced sense and sensibility the un to live in the fast lane on the same thing and you kick off a number of instances in which which women played back roads and the careers of men when the volcano or

few is the case for one of his early movies once and was edited by a one member of the r's now and she was the one that started to create his persona non this kind of romantic persona errol flynn his early roles are written by women john wayne's persona was created by womanly bracket who co wrote many of his movies and even humphrey bogart recently bracket wrote several of his in fact she was at one point lead bracket and william faulkner writing a movie together for humphrey and the voice every now and he's already get rid of the one man i liked the man's style like this he's giving me to be an ally and a and i said sorry that's not only autoworkers all that philly bracket who is giving your top lines and he says from now on you have a bracket right and i like my movies and then in the latest gallop you know in clark gable is

that clark gable supposedly did not have a very good voice for the talkies so when they were moving from silent to talkies it was josephine dylan who taught him prepared him smooth out his speech taught him how to act and he later married her and then of course divorce or kiss you talked about of those women who had written wrote soul man and human roles from it back in the book go somewhere sophia loren says man write from in his talk about the tough time women had getting key roles but is that accurate you find that universally true well leave home and talked about that too when i interviewed her she said there is a level that a man can hear that in terms of a woman to speak probably has a level a woman can't get at in terms of a man on the other hand the number of women i talked to said you know this could be dangerous thinking because that means only men can write mentally women women only blacks black answer

several women said what man have to do is if they're going to write women they have to be really keen observers and many times it helps to have a woman producer or director so that you have women on that team sofa man is working on a line he can say is this how a woman could sit i could say you know in the nineties and third nineteen thirties and forties and we have those great women's roles many of those movies are being written by a man but re written by women and the actresses were insisting with the studio's they said you're going to have somebody come in and re write this part is it doesn't sound like a woman and that was why many of these great women in the thirties and forties had women writers behind them that we're helping them with their great roles just talk about here and now major studios mean our shock to find that your clue that that was the only director

for a period of one almost two decades and then only one other ninety six years after her last home as a director i looked you know who had been acting all of yours camel and latino was the only woman director for another very strange cause you had this first twenty five years of film when women were all over the place the studio system came along and began to civic how to her eyes and compartmentalize everything it was run by businessman they chose other businessman and so the only pre well they are dorothy ours are from around nineteen twenty seven to nineteen forty three who gave a lot of these great women stars their first world rosalind russell com katharine hepburn francis lucille ball they got their star in dirty arsons helms and then she kind of disappeared and then the late nineteen forties nineteen forty nine i looking as the actors took over the directing of a picture when the director had a heart

attack when un to not mentally two feature films but about a hundred episodes of television but she was the only one there and it wasn't until i really wasn't until the early nineteen eighties we started seeing the emergence of a woman director initially the world unlike many of her male counterparts but you know we dedicated coming in under budget or on the us and led that later a popular she also was very good at working with a man she said i had a very soft approach in fact i did an interview with her shortly before she died by letter and she said don't be bossy she says i take a feminine approach and she says sometimes i'll say to my crew are not sure about this what you think but she said i got cooperation from them she also tackled a lot of difficult social issues you know prostitution and abuse and i mean various things that no one else was doing it you talk about interviews and

then there's a new orleans and i guess it's about a couple of the book where you talk about the subtle influences you interview she was an eighties i think valerie liang and his audience three right now they'll end was raul solemn unshakable imaging as i know oh yes even though she was not in control she was she used the soul influence to take control what's amazing i had not realized loretta young started in the silent movies she first got to play a little ferry they meet as children they asked her uncle said bring over some kids and then of course she went on in the talkies and she won an academy award and she came out on television and that's a very early period of the early nineteen fifties she said there was no money everyone thought i was crazy and she said what i really wanted to do was to influence young girls now i was growing up in that period we watched already it every single week and she had a tremendous influence and it is very possible i'm partly where i

am today because of already and so when i interviewed her and that i was invited to her home we spent about two hours together and she says well you know i was interested in being an influence for the good and so every time i've seen of it when the bat girl roles came along and she was very religious very religious she said i'm a rip roaring catholic so she said every time the bed rolls came along she would say the producer get bette davis is really good at that and even in her television shows many people of her producers and sponsors would complain they said oh you're there also goodhue during all this religious stuff and she says and i'm going to keep doing that saw a movie collision of logo were of her shoes co star with orson welles was a terrible no i'm a nazi bomb on the grounds of london with malaria during the lutheran she flirts with the idea of

loyalty to love you know the film lives of the rhetoric portrait of mormon and down who ultimately come down as you as she told you on the satellite in the final analysis she was quoted the euro and she turned down our heroes he said at one point they were always been almost making her do this negative role and she said to the head of the studio would you want a daughter to do this role and says well now is the sow go to bette davis discuss they did it is that that's what happens let's let's talk a little bit about the emergence of television goes another generation goes by and done and we are into a new art form the struggle is there i was interested in your finding that

women have little on top down power and that works that there are no women in control when cable yes cable right now is doing better with women and the sense that night in hollywood there's what's called a green lighter this is the person who has the final decision and what gets seen now in television networks of the forum out works until a year ago all the ringleaders were white men now we have jamie tarsus at abc and cable we had job they had a usa network is so one man the head of disney abc cable is a one man affect the collodion used to be headed by a woman fox children's tv is headed by a woman so we've done actually little better turn that work as somewhat of a number of women at the very top like the cartoon network for instance has a woman at the head and it might be that one of the reasons is at what happens when a new form comes in at the beginning it's kind of a pioneering for me it leaves a lot

of room for people try out things and so women will go when as soon as the money comes in and they say ah this is gonna make lots of money is at the businessman coming in and that it's been very hard for women to keep their spot in his cable began this to be more money making i'm hoping when i can to see that change let me ask you a question well they took i listened to commentators critics of television now and they tell me that the networks yes are violent and an art until explicit sex language but that the cables are far worse what is that say about the role is that is debated is the question with a baby that was mostly about the role women dominating cable well it depends on what you're looking at in cable because if you look at

things such as nickelodeon even see more girls and even facts children's tv some of the children with women at the head really are doing much better however i think where your questions very very valid is usa network it's headed like a compliment she's been in charge of that network since the early nineteen eighties and when i interviewed her i thought why are you doing all its women in jeopardy the movie kind of stuck and what she said was that in a sense that's how they were able to get the cable started but what they were also did as they did in this movie called my antonia and then they did a mother's prayer they were some of the top quality some of the best television i've seen and i talked to a vet and she said that's where we want to go now again even the woman in the midst of all this she got up to her position because she knew how to play the guys came and over her as probably board of directors with a lot of man and there's also a lot of decision makers know whether this is going to shift

or not on the other and we can look at now we can look at some these companies run by women that say france's paramount studios run by sherry lansing on the one hand we can say cherie lansing did fatal attraction she did indecent proposal she did change which failed miserably on the other hand we could say cherie lansing also did first wives club a movie that may not have gotten made without a woman recognizing that a woman over forty a saleable that women ensemble films a saleable and in a clear women's movies the millennial over for a moment my perception is that it is cruel documented is that bulls in film and television marketing surveys show where the action is where the audience is

go and what they pay for and there is a sense that it's built couple of decades that the marketplace will pay more bounce in sight oh my question again is does that mean that men and one that i have to play the game and that the prospect of a of creating quality other films quality television news quality of brummel suffers it's a very thin layer where is it doesn't make any difference yes it's very complicated because what happens is you have these male executives a woman comes in with him or female oriented movie minutes it first wives club the male looks at that and says oh that's never going to sell let's not do it so that it doesn't get done and

on top of that is that the market in the past has been driven by teenage boys will find that basically thirteen to twenty six year old more male oriented and feature fell now yes the movies are out there for women to go to they will go to them if they're not out there then they just don't go on the market continues to be driven by the teenage guys the other problem is that the teenage boys go to movies the first weekend the women hold backs watch reviews and the second and third we can't go an art and then you have the distributors who were trying to sell it to the theater and they say we can give you either die hard seven or weakened in the first wives club and the distributors who are man push the one that they think is going to do better this theater owners who might be man say let's do this so it becomes very complicate is almost like a vicious circle that you keep trying to figure how to stop but what happens is that as they are more movies like the first wives club waiting to exhale joy luck club alienate even alien

resurrection led by two women the more movies out there that began to prove themselves then the more the marking people have to stop unless on the other changes began when they have started to do recent survey sixty percent of all video rentals are women and also that the women audience and went up by about nineteen percent in two years and so they start thinking weight we could actually think of this is a different audience sinatra guess that most of those women are vying for their two little influence over or more full of too little and i think they're buying for both i know as a woman i looked this year france's i think we've had a pretty good year with women this is the first i'm going to movies two or three times a week just to get caught up on first the women's movies some of the other movies out and when i look at the fact we are alien resurrection we have known because we have the washington square and we have wings of the dove last summer with her

best friend's wedding we have a tremendous diversity out there right now and that's really what we're talking about we're saying let's have balanced let's have diversity let's have things that i can go see that the teenagers the family the children the man let's put it all out there they're to a point like a little bit bigger words of the gao one hand there is the sense that a particularly for the women on the strain that age makes a different view and when the new sail toyota for a few women over fifty unfilled exceptions and you list them but and but reality is reality and that's right up at the at the same time and this is a this is a different than the so called a just question at the same time you say they're women who are looking at how men run things looking at the pressure at the top and many other lawyers say i don't need those officers and only those headaches utterly that hassle and they're opting out

talk about that dichotomy on the one hand the complaint that we can get on cause of aid and only other women cyan i'm here i'm saying it and i really know what and there's two things women are choosing to do particularly let's say and management on the one hand there's women saying i don't wanna be part of the studio system and all those pressures and also all those limits so they are forming their own businesses and i am a woman entrepreneur in hollywood have been ska consultant since nineteen eighty one and there's a number of us who have our own businesses and saying this is what we went into the studio system doesn't want as we don't want them find that there's another group of women who are saying we're going to change the way the studio system has been down on me give you an example the what's called a vice chairman chairperson of sony columbia tristar this big conglomerate is a woman named lucy fisher she had small children lucy has it written into her contract that she gets fridays off to be with her

children also the weekend saw in them and say how can you do this and she says well number one is anyone complaining and getting all my work done i'm just as effective and she says so what's the problem and the man say because you get a day off and we don't and she says that's your problem why don't you get it written and your contract and she is finding that she can get just as much done and be even more effective because many women are saying you know by the seventh day you're not thinking straight anymore you need that time off and this heart attacks as your forces is bad relationships with your children and women are saying i don't want and i don't need it and i don't think we needed let's rethink the way corporations doing business will so that that that question that is the is the is your roles that it does strike me those of role and it will all and i use all done with my tongue in my cheek because i have to like i think that the i think the aging men ali not having called i think the people who

live just an e for example shirley maclaine well as a whole litany a woman who'd been doing well you say there are exceptions though some exceptions the other thing that happens with man is that when men play romantic leads like a jack nicholson mel gibson clint eastwood they're usually playing it with a woman who is at least twenty years younger so when clint eastwood is in bridges of madison county then put a woman next to him was sixty when he is sixty five they put the woman's forty five and that i could that dichotomy and that separation continues even to this day on we were constantly saying that so that makes a big difference really festive in this book on lists of breakthroughs i think aren't readable an interesting and once again not just entertaining but they are educational and there and perhaps a dozen listen and then there's a photo album a photo album of

one women who've made a major impact starring with some a very i guess a blanche and ending up with on an uncommon which a trace graphically the revolution going on in both film and until we love always your id and putting those i wanted women to be a look and see the titles and a ritual in a paperback they were going to take them out and i play i play an adolescent down and said you have no idea how it's important important is for us to look at these women the women directing that we can actually see what does that look like when a woman is holding a camera or is calling the shots and telling people you know where to go what to do with the women executives look like you understand women aren't building notice in the book that one of the sad women that i interviewed is is an expert on fire she likes roosevelt up and you need fire you need someone unfair ego and the letter howard another woman that i interviewed was the

woman who trained meryl streep for the river wild who was one of the top rafters in the world and to see our lane burns with that wrapped you know going down these difficult rapids and sing on that makes me feel like i could be who wrote to that becomes very important to just to see it's the same thing on the women in the movies it becomes very important for us to see a gi jane for instance or to see the woman vice president an air force won or even to see the kind of flawed woman we see in my best friends wedding you know we need that whole broad range that no matter what kind of person i am i can look at the screens and my life has affirmed you know you say at the end not right and but toward the end you say that india in the twenties women were left behind logical that weren't wanted in those key roads and you say now so many years later linus

i opt into the coming and it's imperative that they be ready yes what you mean by being ready our business is going through a lot of changes technology is changing special effects the way the computer in internet our interactive you know games are set trump and if we women say were afraid of technology within me left behind because this can become more and more important if we're afraid of going out and knowing how to raise money if we say well i'm afraid of money with it if we don't know how to deal with investors if we don't know how to put together a budget when we want to direct a movie if we're not prepared as directors that one of the points i make is that no one's going to come and rescue us we we're not going to be taken a lot of someone's saying hey look and airmen