→ A Movies By Women.com Article

→ Women In Showbiz

Industry stars tell stories of breaking-in for tomorrow's rank and file

by Philippa Bourke
Posted October 28, 2002
(Re-printed with permission from newenglandfilm.com)

NEW YORK (1.11.04) -- Women in entertainment may be ready to turn the corner on the days of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ but they should not forget them, according to women leaders in showbiz who gathered recently for a New York Women in Film and Television panel discussion in Manhattan.

Suzanne Gluck, executive vice president of William Morris Agency and celebrated literary agent,
recalled along with others getting an entree into the biz on just that kind of song and dance.

Fresh out of college, she sent media journalist Ken Auletta seventeen letters.

“I had babysat for his brother …. He told me he got plenty of inquiries from Columbia journalism graduates. I told him, ‘But you’re wrong, you’re making a big mistake. Whatever they can do, I can do. I can do it faster. I’ll take the subway, I’ll get a cab, whatever it takes.’”

Which led Gluck to researching Auletta’s book “The Underclass” and eventually, after a wavering into film and loss of initial focus, the media author’s door-opening endorsement of her as
“such a natural advocate for writers.”

Cinematographer Ellen Kuras, a last-minute addition to the NYWIFT and AMC-sponsored Women in Showbiz panel which was moderated by Variety Associate Publisher Madelyn Hammond,
said she did not plot a path to the camera and the role of American film pioneer.

Kuras taught herself after a DP she hired to shoot a documentary failed to get it even though she’d talked a lot about the emotion, the kinds of shots she wanted. “He missed the point.
He just missed the heart of the matter.”

Sheer opportunity and working on documentaries by and about women and their concerns was
a viable way of a fledgling female filmmaker getting a start, she emphasized.

“It started out with shooting documentaries for productions where we were doing videos about infant mortality rates, we were doing projects about women. And that’s how I got my start because women wanted a woman to shoot.”

She recalled: “I’m sure like everybody here, I first came to it with a desire to say something about the world. To talk about the human condition.”

“I’m sure like all of you, I would walk into a set for the first time and everybody
would turn around and look at me and say ‘Oh, You’re the D.P.? And have that big question of me having to prove myself. That I can do the technical – that I can do the technical. I know my work and if I don’t know, I’m going to ask questions,’” she said.

“So much of what we do,” she continued, “is about putting ourselves on the line and feeling like
we’re being judged because we’re women. We are. You know we all feel that. It is why we work 150 percent. It is why we work 200 percent. To be able to show that, Yes, we can do the job and … Yes, we can do it.”

Academy Awardwinning Filmmaker Barbara Kopple told the panel of her luck upon arriving in New York City and knowing nobody and wanting a job – and choosing a New School class in cinema verite where someone said they worked for people called the Maysles Brothers who were looking to hire. “I said, ‘Oh I would so love to do that.’”

Kathleen Dore, president of Entertainment Services for Rainbow Media (AMC, IFC and WE), took the audience back to a day early in her career in the cable television industry when she was an administrative assistant to the head of marketing and educational services and she was looking … bored.

“The man that I worked for actually asked me if I wanted to go out into the field and do training for our clients, in our products. So completely, it was not something I asked for. You know,
I think in retrospect that he saw a way to help me develop a resume and develop skill sets
I would never have gotten in that position.

“And it turned out that experience, not only was it a tremendous experience to have of a year out of college, but I think it truly helped my next job and I really credit him for doing that.”

Sales, she said, is probably the only discipline that you don’t study in business school or
in communications schools and is “really not all art. It is some science and I think it’s a great
background for women, particularly in terms of moving on and up through the ranks.”

Meryl Poster, co-president of production at Miramax Films, recounted a revolving door
saga from her graduation days of trying for months to get in at William Morris that ended up a tale of divine intervention.
“Cantor Berger at our temple was very good friends with Lee Solomon. I have to thank Cantor Berger who got me in the door. Lee Solomon gave me three minutes and said, ‘You’re okay.’ And like I went through the process and I got the job in the mailroom.“

Moderator Madelyn Hammond, who shared vignettes of her own climb through the years,
probed panelists for their thoughts on a gamut ranging from tips for women breaking in to how they felt about their power to being an ‘impostor,’ to what inspired them, who they liked to read and where they liked to donate their time and support.

Actress and Academic Anna Deavere Smith described what she sees as a window of opportunity for those students who can figure out how to reconfigure the “idea of diversity.”

Noting the importance of how someone is educated and extraordinary inequities in
the culture, she said: “What’s very important for you to do is to put your sights out there
and become a really aggressive good student about what kinds of opportunities
that there might be.

“Learn about the times and become really, really, really literate in this business. So that you know who all the people are and what they’re doing and start sending those postcards like Meryl did. Christmas time and from wherever you happen to be….

“I can’t believe what diversity means now when I walk into a classroom. To teach at NYU. It is no longer like black and white. I have Indian students. It’s everybody in the world that’s in that room. And it puts a lot of pressure on you as an educator. And that pressure is going to find its way into the business.”

The world is one now of a lot of mixed race, she said, pointing out a place for the younger
generation to take leadership. ”Because we don’t know what to do with that. We don’t understand that somebody is not just black and white, but Filipino, or Mexican or whatever. We don’t understand that. And so that’s great. Because it means on the downside, ‘Oh I don’t have any mentors.’ On the other hand, you don’t have all this baggage. One of the questions Madelyn had was about the road not taken. Are you a rebel if you take the road that’s not taken ?
One of the advantages of taking a road not taken, is there's less competition.”

Kuras observed that younger women today did not feel the same pressures. At a recent women cinematographers’ panel in Los Angeles she and colleague Nancy Schreiber were the old guard. “We were saying ‘Oh we went through this, we went through that. And they just didn’t even consider that. They just assumed it was their natural right to do what they were doing. And I thought, You go girls. That’s the way that things are changed. You know, you lay the ground for it and they go on.”

Hammond pointed out there is a sense of entitlement among very young women.

Jill Krutick, managing director of entertainment and leisure at Smith Barney, said she
found this the case among MBAs who come in and expect a certain track to becoming an
analyst.

“You know, ‘My friend did it in a year or two and I expect to move up through the
ranks.’ You know, unfortunately the ranks are thinning and the regulatory environment has caused stock research to retract and it makes it a much more difficult path. And communicating that to people is difficult,” said Krutick.

For herself as a documentarian, Kopple stressed, it was important when tackling ideas to
have no agenda and overall, to be a believer in risk.

“I had parents that were so incredible. And who gave me so much love and so much warmth
that they made me feel as if I could do anything. That I could take whatever kinds of risks
I wanted to take. That they would be there for me. And just because somebody said, ‘You know
why would a girl like you want to make films like this?’ Gave me so much strength and so
much power to say, ‘I don’t need you, I don’t need your money. I will figure out a way.”

Deavere Smith, meanwhile, shared a poetic few more words of wisdom when she recalled a
moment on the beach. “My best friend from college, she married this tall blond guy who was an executive and I was always, you know, struggling with life. And one time they called me in the daytime and I was over there visiting them and she said, you know, Anna it must be really tough for you, being black. She said, ‘For me, you know, I feel like the wind is at my back all the time.’ And that really stuck with me.

“Wow, you know. And so, several months later I happened to be on Cape Cod and early in the morning I was walking on the beach and I remembered what she had said and I thought, Gee what is it that feels like that ? The wind at my back ? And I started dancing with the wind and I realized, the wind doesn't stay at my back. It keeps moving. And so, if I had a secret, I would say, never believe that the wind is at your back. But dance with the wind as much as you can.”

##END

→ Go back to the rest of our articles.