Alan Yang says the Netflix series he created with Aziz Ansari was sparked by their shared experiences as millennials and second-generation Americans; Hollywood power brokers have ideas for improving the standing of women in the entertainment industry; the Sundance festival will include the directing debut of actress Clea Duvall.
Can a 'gender parity stamp' make a difference in Hollywood?
When it comes to hiring women, Hollywood’s track record — as study after study has shown — is abysmal. Fewer than two percent of the highest-grossing 100 films from last year were directed by women. And the industry gives women a fraction of other jobs behind the scenes.
What’s more, as Jennifer Lawrence has famously publicized, those women who do get hired — on and off screen — are almost always paid less than their male counterparts.
The Sundance Institute and the organization Women in Film recently convened a two-day summit of several dozen industry leaders to try to figure out how to turn the statistics generated by years of study with USC's Stacy Smith into action.
The meeting yielded some potential strategies. They include educational programs, a mentorship program for early and mid-career women directors, and what’s being called a Gender Parity Stamp. The specific guideline for such a seal of approval — which would recognize companies and films taking steps to achieve gender equity — are still being worked out.
To find out more, The Frame spoke with Cathy Schulman. As the president of
she co-hosted this recent meeting. As an Oscar-winning producer for "Crash," and as head of production at the new film studio STX Entertainment, Schulman has a front row seat in the film business. Though she's currently on set in London for a new movie she's producing, she spoke with The Frame by phone to discuss what's next in the efforts to achieve gender parity in Hollywood.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
So to get right to the point, what’s the gender makeup of your cast and crew?
Interesting you should ask. Here in London, we seem to have a ratio of 1-in-5 of our crew members are female, which is rather disappointing. Stateside, I think we see a steadier 1-in-4, which is also disappointing. One interesting thing about this crew is we have some women in some unusual positions… We have some people on the camera and lighting crew, which is unusual but certainly a positive.
We’ve talked with you in the past about the unbelievable statistics about the few women directors who are hired in Hollywood. But now USC, Sundance and the Women In Film Institute have issued a plan for how to change those stats. I want to talk about one strategy, the Gender Equity Stamp. Could you tell us more about that idea?
This plan is early. It comes out of the convening of these organizations that was recently held … The stamp is a concept that would essentially rate the internal housekeeping from a gender perspective about how companies are hiring. And also it would take a look at the product they’re creating, both in terms of who, gender-wise, is making the product, and who the product is for — for example, women and girls versus boys and men.
The unique thing about the idea is that this is not meant to be a shaming exercise. This is a system where, to achieve this gender parity, organizations and companies can not only manage it on their own, but a group of ambassadors will help enable these institutions to execute more positive gender policies.
I want to ask a little more about this idea of not shaming people. The statistics are not really changing. And the Los Angeles Times today quoted Erik Feig, the co-president of Lionsgate, and he said that fewer than two percent of last year’s 100 top-grossing films had a female director. He said: “It’s a crazy fact. It doesn’t seem rational. It’s just bad business.” I looked up Lionsgate’s movies for this year. They have 21 movies being released theatrically. How many were directed by women? I’ll give you a hint: it starts with zero. So why is shaming off the table? Because companies like Lionsgate — they’re not hiring women. What will it take to change their behavior?
I don’t personally believe that when you shame somebody to do something that they make a heartfelt change. I think what we’re trying to do as another idea is find people quite like Erik who want [the situation] to be different, but understand that they’re not making it different. And figure out how to jump over that obstacle.
Most of the time what we’re dealing with is an unconscious bias where the patterning and the processes have been executed the same way for so long that people don’t even think to make it different. So we want educators and leaders to help people make that change because they want to.
The other reason why we feel it’s going to work is it makes good commercial sense. Things that interest women and girls make money.
Alan Yang writes his own life into 'Master of None'
Alan Yang met Aziz Ansari about eight years ago when they were both working on the show, "Parks and Recreation." Yang was a writer, Ansari an actor, but both have worked within several aspects of film and television production. Now their multitalented forces have joined in "Master of None," a Netflix series that they created, produce, write and star in together.
"Master of None" has received a lot of praise for its naturalistic comedy that attacks issues such as race, immigration and gender, without coming off as preachy. As Yang told The Frame, it was important that the characters not only look like the writers' own diverse friend group — whose real lives provide a lot of material — but also that exterior qualifiers such as skin color and sexuality be more circumstantial than anything else when it came to their characterization.
Another theme throughout the show is the often paralyzing glut of choices facing today's coming-of-age generation — hence the title. And the show is structured around a similar resistance against limitations. Yang said he wanted "Master of None" to have the freedom to explore "anything that could be a conversation" in the writers' room, rather than restrict itself to the traditional parameters of the "buddies-hanging-out-in-New-York" sitcom. So storylines and characters might float in and out, according to an episode's topic. Luckily, the resulting aimlessness that might plague the characters doesn't seem to affect the show itself.
Read more of Alan Yang's conversation with The Frame's John Horn below.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
Did you start with the title and work backwards from that?
We had actually finished shooting the show and it was still "The Untitled Aziz Ansari Project."
And how did you come up with “Master of None"?
We had brainstormed a thousand titles and we went back to one. Aziz pitched it a long time ago. But it wasn’t really a reverse-engineering thing. We just liked how it sounded. The meaning of it is baked into the premise of the show. We have so many choices that we’re kind of exhausted, and that’s kind of a modern phenomenon. You end up being a master of none because you have too many options.
The show is obviously autobiographical. But you also have writers. So when you’re putting together a writers’ room and you’re trying to get people to reflect those stories that you want to tell in terms of gender and race and sexual orientation, do you try to cast the writers’ room in that way?
There’s a two-part answer. You want talented, brilliant writers. That’s number one. You would never sacrifice talent, so that’s paramount. But the second part of the answer is yes. We want the writers’ room to look like our friends because the show is about our friends and our experiences.
On television, there’s the Aaron Sorkin writing, where people speak in ways that people never speak. And then there’s the writing on this show, which is how people have conversations — the mistakes, the fumbles. Can you talk about how you write dialogue that’s naturalistic and not heightened?
You’re right — tonally, we’re going for naturalism, for people with strong points of view, but not necessarily expressing them so perfectly at all times. [The episode “Ladies and Gentleman”] was a beast to write.
For that episode, we were rewriting until we shot, which was very rare. But something about [it] was so delicate. And it’s based on a real experience. But in our writers’ room we thought we were hitting on something. We asked whether the particular story point — which was that a man introduced himself to four men and then skipped two women — had happened to the female writers, and whether people in the room thought that that was actually sexist. And we were very split.
Because a lot of the guys were saying, But it’s not intentional. It probably was the situation and maybe these people weren’t in his line of work, etc. etc. And there are all these rationalizations. And the women were saying, Listen — this has happened to us multiple times. At least it’s definitely possible that it’s happening. When we would have these conversations, and they were that interesting, and reasonable people disagreed — that’s when we felt like we were hitting on something and maybe we could write it into the show.
But it also seems that you use a lot of your own life, and Aziz’s life in particular. The second episode is when Dev and his friend Brian are curious about their parents’ lives before they emigrated to the United States.
That episode is so near and dear to our hearts. It’s very, very much based in reality. The happy postscript to this story is I’ve actually gotten closer to my parents. Our relationship has improved, both because of the passage of time and my own maturation — but also because of this episode.
The show has been well-received critically. Let’s assume it’s doing well, so probably Netflix will bring it back. Because the show is so dependent on your life experiences, what burden does it place on you and Aziz and your writers to actually have a lot of stuff happen to you?
That’s a really good question. We’ve already emailed about a hypothetical season two. We have some ideas. But the thing we both agreed on was we need a little bit of time to live. Again, having interesting experiences, meeting new people, feeling new emotions, and struggling in some way. All of these things are really important and intrinsic to the show. We kind of likened it to the sophomore album of a band. That sophomore album is often a pitfall because the record label wants it immediately, and the band wrote 10 songs while they were touring. And it’s just not going to be as good. Whereas the first album was the first 25 years of their lives. So yes, we don’t want to phone in a second season, and honestly we don’t want to produce one that is made in haste.
So obviously, if we get one — and this is all hypothetical — if Netflix is kind enough to pick up the show, then we’ll have a conversation with them. But yeah, we want to live a lot. So if you have ideas for adventures for us to go on, let us know.
All episodes of "Master of None" are available for streaming on Netflix.