Ex-Sony Head Amy Pascal on Getting Stuck With the 'Chick Flick' Label
Amy Pascal in 2013 (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
On Friday, the New York Times Magazine posted their long, detailed examination of Hollywood’s massive gender imbalance behind the camera. The numbers are ugly: In 2013 and 2014, women directed only 1.9 of each year’s 100 top-grossing films. It is not a lack of talent, but a dearth of opportunity, and the gender gap has only widened as Hollywood has focused more and more on blockbuster action movies which executives have given almost exclusively to male directors.
The story’s author, longtime columnist Maureen Dowd, spoke with dozens of women directors and executives, rounding up years’ worth of Hollywood horror stories. For the most part, the interviewees lament the attitudes of the men in power, which makes the thoughts of two high-powered women executives in the piece particularly pertinent.
Amy Pascal, the former head of Sony, discussed — and seemed to somewhat regret — her transition from making successful, well-reviewed movies starring (and in some cases directed by) women, including A League of Their Own, Little Women, and Girl, Interrupted, to green-lighting big action franchises like James Bond and Spider-Man.
‘‘I loved those movies, but all anyone said was that I made chick flicks,’’ Pascal told Dowd. ‘‘And then I got co-opted because everyone made me feel ashamed. I felt like, unfortunately, I was being categorized, that I could only make this one kind of movie, and it wasn’t going to make the kind of money that people wanted. I had to prove I could do anything.“
Pascal was fired after the Sony hacks (in fact, she was the the only person fired as Dowd pointedly reminds everyone), and is now back to producing movies, including Paul Feig’s all-female reboot of Ghostbusters.
Related: When Will There Be a Female ‘Star Wars’ Director? Maybe Sooner Than You Think
Meanwhile, Kathleen Kennedy — the head of Lucasfilm and a Star Wars: The Force Awakens producer — talked about the hoopla created over recent comments she made at a conference during which she said she was sure the company would hire a woman to direct a Star Wars movie soon. (So far, all the directors of the spin-offs and sequels have been men.)
‘‘Until I waved the flag at the Fortune women’s conference recently, I had not had one single phone call from a woman telling me that she really, really wants to direct a Star Wars movie,” she said. “They need to be the ones picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hey, let me tell you what Star Wars means to me and how much I could do with it.’”
Perhaps after Dowd’s story, women will begin to speak up more — though it seems the real problem is the deaf ears on which their calls are falling in Hollywood.
Click over to the NY Times Magazine to read the full story and to see the huge photo spread of some of Hollywood’s top female talent.
