Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood 1973-2000

About this book

In the 1970s you could count the women who produced film or television on one hand. By the 1990s there were hundreds. What happened? Thats the dramatic firsthand story in Women Who Run the Show. Based on more than 125 interviews with women in virtually every segment of the entertainment business-from feature films to television from corporate offices and new media to the back lot-Women Who Run the Show is the unfiltered account of womens lives in the Hollywood workplace from the 1970s ("No one wanted us there") to 2000. How did they make it in one of the toughest industries around. The women include: -Gale Ann Hurd Producer of The Terminator and Aliens -Mimi Leder director of ER and The Peacemaker -Kathleen Nolan the first female president of the Screen Actors Guild -Jane Alexander actress producer and head of the National Endowment for the Arts -Polly Plat producer of Broadcast News -Martha Coolidge director of Introducing Dorothy Dandridge and the first female president of the Directors Guild -Sherry Lansing chairman of the Motion Picture Group Paramount Pictures The women came from rich families and poor from all over the U.S. and from other countries. They talk about a wide range of subjects including the cost of success sexual harassment the "boys club " their three roles-wife mother worker -or of the children they did not have ("I woke up one day and I was fifty") mentors how their parents influenced them the joys of work and learning on the job. They reveal the truths theyve learned about careers life and womens increasingly influential place in the business of entertainment. Women Who Run the Show is a lively tough and joyous-but above all candid-conversation with the women of Hollywood.