DGA Tribute: Next Moves for Women Directors

By Maria Giese

The DGA hosted an event Saturday night to celebrate the six women who created the Women’s Steering Committee 35 years ago. The 600-seat theatre was packed, health with impassioned cheering and prolonged standing ovations punctuating speeches that just may become historic.

To women directors in Hollywood those six, “The Original Six,” are giants. They are the heroes who launched the landmark 1980’s class action lawsuit that sent women directors’ employment numbers soaring from .05% in 1985 to 16% in 1995—in just 10 years.

They are: Susan Bay, Nell Cox, Joelle Debrow, Dolores Ferraro. Victoria Hochberg, and Lynne Littman. Remember those names.

From 1979 to 1985 these women risked their careers to create change for all women in our industry. The work they did altered the landscape for women directors and their teams—forever. There is not a single woman director working in Hollywood today who does not have the Original Six to thank for their jobs.

Hollywood, for all its outspoken liberalism, is an industry that has consistently kept women shut out. In the 35 years since the Original Six initiated legal action to get Hollywood to accept America’s hard-won equal employment opportunity laws, women directors’ employment numbers have dropped. Today, in 2014, fewer women directors are working in American media than two decades ago,

On a global basis, this means that nearly 100% of U.S. media content—America’s most influential export—reflects a mostly male point of view. Thus the astounding potential our nation has to share our passion for equality and female empowerment is lost to people everywhere—to women and girls—around the world. As Nell Cox put it, “Does it matter that one half of the population sees only a distorted image of itself on screen, and what purpose does this distorted picture serve?”

Great words were spoken Saturday night, even by Guild leaders who had initially expressed reluctance about the event. Guild President Paris Barclay said in his opening speech: “Why is the DGA making such a big deal about this? We’re making a big deal because it matters.” And DGA leader and WSC co-chair, Millicent Shelton, called for women “to be brave enough to take action.”

Yet it took a new generation of women DGA members years, and rancorous infighting in the DGA Women’s Steering Committee, to get this event voted on and approved by the Guild leadership. Why? Because the DGA leadership, and particularly women Guild leaders, worried that such an event would be perceived as “negative”—that it could be “embarrassing.”

As women in Hollywood fight to smash the celluloid ceiling, nothing could be more important than understanding our struggle in the context of history. And ultimately, on Saturday night, we all have the DGA to thank for hosting an event that highlighted that history and some of our most inspiring pioneers.

The speeches made by the Original Six were poignant and rousing. Joelle Debrow praised Michael Franklin, the DGA’s Executive Secretary in the 1980’s who finally ordered the landmark class-action lawsuit to commence, calling him “Our point-man, our guru, our gladiator.”

And while inspiring the need for new action, Lynne Littman despaired that in all these years, little has changed: “We women have literally been disappeared from the profession because of our gender.” Victoria Hochberg, the very spearhead of the group, spoke most enthrallingly about how new action is demanded of both women and Hollywood’s studios and institutions today. She stated, “There is a growing new wave of rebellion against sexism barreling towards the film industry. And everyone knows that 20 years of the same excuses will not work anymore.”

The work that The Original Six did came on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s, and the Women Liberation Movement in the 1970’s. Those were revolutionary times. Today, after more than two decades of complacency among American women, perhaps it should be no surprise that the job numbers for female directors has declined.

And likewise, it’s no wonder that the DGA Diversity program that resulted from the work of these women has failed female Guild members.   The only rule-book for diversity hiring that studios consider emerges from the DGA-studio Collective Bargaining Negotiations every three years. These agreements are almost completely ignored by Guild signatories, and they are not enforced by the DGA.

As so rightly reported in “The Hollywood Reporter” yesterday: “It remains an obstacle to spell out a formula that will ultimately end discrimination toward women in the entertainment industry. The DGA says it will continue to take concrete action until statistical progress reflects gender equality among male and female directors.” But will it?

What really needs to happen next?

Hope for women directors today comes from a new generation of female directors/activists—and it mostly taking place on-line. Collective wisdom reaped from numerous sources: from the ACLU and the EEOC to stats gurus like Martha Lauzen and Stacy Smith, and from leaders in gender in media like Geena Davis and Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and blogs like this one, and from the individual voices of women director/activists around the world—from Jane Campion to Lexi Alexander.

These are the voices that combine to call forth sweeping changes in our industry:

1. The DGA must no longer stand as the primary policing entity for gender employment equity for its members in Hollywood. The DGA, as a union run by its vast-majority male membership, is in an intrinsic conflict-of-interest in advancing women.
2. Revise Collective Bargaining Agreements between the DGA and the studios to create a double-mandate system to address the specific needs of women of all ethnicities, separate from male ethnic minorities. Today Guild signatories can fulfill their diversity obligations by hiring male ethnic minority members, and hiring no women at all. Women are not a minority. Our challenges are unique and require separate treatment.
3. Commence legal action for women directors and their female teams, targeting Hollywood studios and institutions that violate Title VII.
4. Initiate a paradigm shift in cultural thinking about women directors though an ongoing campaign in mainstream and grassroots media.
5. Create a dedicated program within the industry to provide individual advocacy for women directors.

Some of these efforts have already begun: the ACLU has recently begun a new campaign to address this problem that many people see as a national embarrassment. Women directors are encouraged to contact the ACLU (anonymously or openly) to tell their stories of discrimination. https://www.aclu.org/secure/my-story-woman-director

Thanks to Saturday night’s DGA tribute to “The Original Six,” we are reminded that employment opportunity equality is a right that we women must continue to fight for. Standing on the shoulders of giants, of those who fought for Title VII, and those great women who are “The Original Six,” we can create change.

Women directors in Hollywood can achieve employment equity, but we—like so many women before us—must pick up the torch and prepare for battle.   As Victoria Hochberg proclaimed to immense applause: “This is our time! This is our time! Live the word that begins all cinema. Live the word ACTION!”

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Maria Giese directed the feature films, “When Saturday Comes,” starring Sean Bean and Academy Award-nominee Pete Postlethwaite.  She also directed the award-winning indie feature, “Hunger,” based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner, Knut Hamsun.  Educated at Wellesley College and UCLA Graduate School of Film and Television, she is an active member of the DGA and currently serves as the Women’s DGA Director Category Rep.  Check her out at www.mariagiese.com or her activist/agitator web forum: www.womendirectorsinhollywood.com

Originally Published in IndieWire – September 24, 2014

Posted on January 24, 2015