Women Writers

Nikki Finke posts a fair and in depth response to the question of women writers in Hollywood.

The overly simplistic "only 11% of writers are women, something is terribly wrong!" attitude doesn't really get at any significant insight. The above article does a good job of digging deeper into those numbers.

I am just a lowly peon assistant in the overall system hierarchy, but I do read a lot of scripts and me and my brethren make up the first line of defense for Hollywood of shitty non-readable, non-commercial scripts. I can attest, however, that the script reading process is pretty much as unbiased as you're gonna get - at my level.

My process for script reading: Someone forwards me a script and says: can you read? I print. I put in my bag. I forget about script because I have 101 other things to do that are more urgent. A day or two later I get some time at home either during the week or the weekend. I pull scripts out of bag and begin reading. By this time, I have forgotten most information about the script - what it is about, who sent it, who gave it to me, etc. Among the things I forget is the gender of the writer. If someone asked, I could guess by the name on the cover page, but chances are, when I'm reading, I don't actually know the name of the writer. I could also guess by the content of the script, but I know I'd be wrong sometimes. Point is, I don't even consider it. I report back at the staff meeting on the script itself whether I recommend or not and that's that. That's my process. Granted, in order to get hired on anything, it goes through a lot more people than me and it goes through meetings and selling of the screenwriter, etc, and maybe gender comes into play at other levels. I can't speak to it. All I can say is that at my level, at my job, other than the subconscious gender biases and favoritism towards male-orientated fare that might be hardwired into my mind (this last sentence is to be read with the deepest sarcastic, dismissive voice possible) gender don't matter at all.

Shit is shit and good is good. Don't matter if comes from a vajay-jay or a wiener.