spaceplane into orbit. little is known about x—37b, which is understood to be built to conduct technology experiments on years—long orbitalflights. the launch faced two weeks of false starts due to poor weather and technical issues. now on bbc news: women in hollywood: the producers. a warm welcome. i'm kim chakanetsa. i've come to hollywood, to the women in film headquarters, where i'm joined by keri putnam and stephanie allain, two women who are working to reshape the industry. they are both part of an initiative founded

and led by women in film and the sundance institute called reframe, whose aim is to advance gender equity. keri putnam is a film executive and producer and the founder of putnam pictures. she served for 11 years as the ceo of the sundance institute, which runs the sundance film festival. prior to that, she worked as a senior executive at miramax and hbo. she is also the co—founder of reframe. welcome. thank you, it's great to be here. stephanie allain is a film producer and writer and the newly elected co—president of the producers guild of america — the first woman of colour to hold the position. stephanie served nine years as vice president in women in film. she runs her own company, homegrown pictures, which focuses on creating content by and about women and people of colour. keri and stephanie, welcome to you both. happy to be here. now, keri, you were set on a career in theatre, but there was a plot twist when hollywood came calling. tell us about what happened. well, that was a very early

plot twist in my career. i was coming out of college and i was going to go work at a theatre, and i had a a friend who was working at hbo, which at that time was a very start—up network, a long time ago — pretty start—up network — and she said, "well, you are going to go work "in the theatre but there is some guy coming who's "going to be making plays for television on hbo. "you could maybe be his assistant," and so, i got that job as a secretary at the very bottom, starting out a long time ago. they don't say secretary any more. they did back then! they did back then — i had to take a typing test! did you?! and then i was very lucky to be hitting a company like that at the time where my rate of growth and knowledge, really, the company was growing at the same pace, so i was able to move up there and just learn so much about making film and telling stories, still working with a lot of playwrights and still being so close to the and the story, — which is what i loved —

so that's where i got my start, and from there, i stayed a really long time at hbo, moved to miramax and then to sundance. stephanie, you grew up near a cinema and i understand that you spent a lot of time outside the cinema, trying to get in. tell me about that. i also love stories, i loved reading — i was an avid reader — and the thing that really triggered my interest was two films, the godfather and the exorcist. i'd read both books and i was about 12 years old. i had to sneak into the theatre. i was about to ask — how do you see those! 7 i stood outside and asked an adult to buy me a ticket and i wasjust blown away by the connection between what was in this book and what was on the screen, and i thought — i didn't even have the tools to understand that there were movies and directors and producers, but i loved stories. i went to school for story — for english — and then i got

pregnant, right after college, and i had this baby and i was like, "what am i going to do?" and somebody told me there was a job called reading, and i was like reading isajob!? sign me up! i get paid to read?! so that's what i did, and thatjust created an opening into the world of cinema for me. and then women — it was amy pascal and dawn steele — and they recognised my affinity for writing and for analysing material and they promoted me, and the first thing i did was find somebody to replace me in the story department because i was the only person of colour there. kari, stephanie says two women were instrumental in helping her. yeah. what about you 7 what helped you succeed? i would say i didn't have the luck to have a woman boss early on, but the big boss of original programming at hbo in the �*80s was a woman,

and she was an incredible force and very rare in that time, and she really set a clarity of what hbo stood for — what kind of stories. who was that? bridget potter. oh, yeah. and she has been written out of the history, actually. but actually, what i found out — i don't know if you found this — but i found a lot of my strongest mentors and supporters in my career have been peers. i think that's true, too. one of my peers — and i made more movies with him than anybody — wasjohn singleton. and my first movie, boyz n the hood, i made with him and he's the one who really set me on a path of protecting the vision of an auteur, which basically taught me how to produce. what an incredible movie to start with. it was amazing. i was like, "this is easy! "i could do this all day long!" having worked for the big

studios, columbia, hbo, miramax, you both went independent. why was that important for you to do, keri? well, i'm late coming to being independent — i think stephanie has been a producerfor longer — but i felt it was my time to try something new and i also had never bet on myself and done something entrepreneurial, and i felt i wanted to get closer to storytelling, i wanted to be setting my own terms, in a way, and using the experiences i had, so i was giving it a shot, ijust started, really. it's going to be amazing. is it frightening, stepping out on your own? it is, it is — but, again, you are caught by the community that you have come to know and you can reach out and call and get advice, and it is frightening, but it is also... exciting! ..it�*s a time in my life i think where, you know, it's ok to shake it up a little bit. stephanie, i know you went as far as selling your house to start your own company. laid. - crazily enough. i did not know that.

i would not do that again. i started producing because if you're at the studio, it is a slog — i was there for a decade — but i think it was 20 years ago — yes, 20 years ago this year — that i formed homegrown pictures and just decided to bet on myself, you know? ijust thought, "i don't want to support somebody else's "vision". it was basically that. after boyz n the hood, many years later, i went to john with another script, hustle and flow, and i said, "we should do this" — this was at the advent of people were switching from film to digital, so the idea of making a movie yourself was really for real, you could do that. and i was thinking, "yeah, i'ill sell my house". ijust woke up one day and i said, "i don't care. "i don't care about the house." i had teenage boys, i said, "you guys don't care, do you?"

and they were like "no, ma, do it!" i remember being in the first screening at sundance — that was amazing. it was electrifying. it was electrifying for a couple of reasons, the movie is fantastic but it took us four years from the time i sold my house to get the movie made, and everybody in town passed on it — everybody — and we took it to sundance and after that amazing screening, everybody that passed wanted it. and it was really the time that cemented my understanding of how valuable trusting your gut is. that was electric, and we all did make money. that's great producing, right there. we all did make money in the end. fantastic. yeah, so that's what i have been doing, really, for the last 20 years, just riding a wave. and i tell people it doesn't matter how successful you are, i'm telling you this right now... thank you. ..it's a hustle, and you have to be in that spirit of... you have to have that belief. you have to believe! i don't do anything unless i am so passionate about it that i wake up in the middle of the night, write something

down, every day wake up and think, "what can i do to this forward?" let's talk about the obstacles. what are some of the obstacles that women encounter in your industry? yes, it's... i don't think... i think it sort of depends on the seat the women are occupying, so if you are talking about women directors, the obstacles — it's interesting because some of the obstacles are not particular to this industry — it is this perception that leadership and the qualities that make a great director, which are decision—making and leadership, and a lot of it is very gendered, it's often talked about in terms of war — they are the general that's pushing the troops. these are extremely gendered terms and they tend to reinforce the idea that leadership looks a certain way. and so, whether that is around race or whether that's around gender — i think these things

are very intersectional — women directors often have a difficult time assuming that mantle of leadership, being handed that mantle of leadership for that reason. so, that's one thing that i think that's hard. i also think — and this is a particularly applicable fact across a lot of different categories of work — but there is a perception and has been a perception that stories about women or by and about women are somehow less universal and less worthy of spending money on because they're going to be less commercial than stories by and about other people. even though we are 51% of the population. absolutely. so, a story about two men is a universal story of friendship. a story about two women is a niche story. and that's led to the problem of financing, getting access to money, being able to build careers because it is not perceived that certain stories that are by and about women are as valued.

and then add to that stories about black women. okay... as i said, it is very intersectional, definitely. people who make the financial decisions are a still very homogeneous group of people who look at the business side. there are exceptions, but they look at the business side as, "what are we going to make back? "what are the international sales going to be?" "what is the box office going to be?" they set their budgets around that, so the money follows stories that look like what has succeeded before. so if things are coming from a different perspective... there is no comp. ..there is no comp. we used to call it the fiscal cliff. women could get low—budget movies made, people of colour could get low—budget movies made, but as the budgets got higher and more financial eyes were on what that marketability was, suddenly, those creators fell out of the mix and it ended up being a more

homogeneous set of people. what would you add to that, stephanie? so, i mean, i have been in this business, what?, 35 years at least. there are big stories to tell — there are really big stories to tell. i will say that, in television, it feels like there are more opportunities for women to tell our story. it's a much more even playing field. egalitarian, yeah, it really is. why do you think that is? well, why do you think it is? well, i would guess that part of it is when something is on television or streams, it already has an international audience, right? but the thing about the streamers is that, i'm really binging on the theatrical. i made a movie on netflix calledjuanita — my mum's favourite movie i ever made — and she was a huge hit in brazil.

she can't go places in brazil without being mobbed because of that movie, because you just turn it on and get that. that's a great point of view. isn't that interesting? for sure. i think that's the bright side of it, the idea that a global conversation is happening and proves some of those old beliefs wrong, i think is great. i also think there is another factor which is in the last — in this decade, where the streamers have come into business, there has been more television made than ever before in history, like, in these ten years more than all the years before, so there is actuallyjustjobs. it's a place of abundance. yes. they needed bodies. and i think of my... this isn't to say that there wasn't goodwill about what stories to be told or opportunities like the one stephanie described, but i think a mindset of abundance immediately provides more opportunity for people than one of constriction and unfortunately,

what we're seeing in the film side of the business... a scarcity. ..is scarcity. because the movie studios that used to make 20—25 movies a year are now making, on average, 8—9 movies each year. now, the streamers are making films and there are other places, but i think that means everyone is a bigger bet, but i think that means that everyone is bigger now, everyone is more expensive, everyone is a franchise now. there has still been progress, i would also say even in the last few years, it was 4% of film directors were women and i think less than i% were women of colour in the top 100 films, for years and years and years. in 2017 - 2016-17, which coincided with the movements, the social movements around the world that also came to hollywood and including the organisation that we are part of, reframe, these movements led to an opening of things and we actually saw 150% growth in women directing those top box—office movies

and a small growth in women of colour as well — not proportional, unfortunately, but still growth. so, now, numbers in 2019, the numbers went from 4% to 12%. since 2019, it'as flatlined. there's been no progress for the last four years. and so, when you think about constraint, fear, the way the global market is... scarcity. ..i worry that there needs to be a conversation about how do you take a time where maybe the market conditions are more challenging and not forget about all the commitments to equity and all the commitments to a wide array of stories we all believe in. which is why reframe is so valuable to our business.

the idea of reframe was originally research—based. seeing the research in the cold light of day and saying, nobody can deny that this is an equity problem, nobody can say this is an accident. we really felt instinctively, just by presenting that research to a wide array of people in studio jobs who are producers, agents, at senior levels, they would be shocked, because i think most people don't consider themselves biased, and yet the cumulative effect of their decisions was biased, and indeed that proved to be true. when we first started, the biggest obstacle to making change was a perception that there wasn't a problem. ah, yes. america is a patriarchal, racist society. it is. that is the world that we live in. just to say it out loud, "oh my god, don't say it!" but we have to say it because we have to know it,

we have to look at it to make that change, you know? and even all of us, not just the white folks but all of us operate under these assumptions and biases. so really exploring that on a human level, really, i think, changed the way that people think and out of that came the toolkit. i agree. so the culture change toolkit is something that we built for them to have actual tangible tools to be able to make change along the way. like when you submit a script, take the name off. just read the script for the script. don't read betty's script orjohn's script, just read the script and see what you think. and what we discovered was scripts written by women, especially like action, or perceived genre things, were all of a sudden rising up. because there wasn't this preconception that if a woman wrote it, it wasn't as good as a man. but it was also about involving the audience, so we created something called the reframe stamp that allows films that

are gender balanced in the way they are made and in what is on the screen, and this doesn't even necessarily have to be a woman director. it could be a woman in other roles. we started awarding those stamps and really shining a light on things that were made that way and then it became, "i want the stamp," and audiences are looking for the stamp. when we started, nobody wanted the stamp. we were trudging into the studio saying, "we've got this stamp," and they were like, "we want no part of it, we're not going to be labelled." and now it's like, "can i get the stamp?" and to get the stamp, you have to hire fairly. so it is exciting that there are ways to move the needle. keri, what is lost when women are left out of the decision—making process? i think with decision—making, it is a hard question because there are a lot of ways to approach that. i think when any decision—making process doesn't get made by a group of people that reflects the full world

we live in, there will be unconscious bias. there will be a voice missing to be able to say, "i'm interested in that." "i care about that, did you think about this?" and i would say the same if there were no men in the decision—making process. this isn't about an instead, it's about an expansion and it is about having rooms of decision—makers that reflect the world. i think what is lost without that is the ability to expand the palette. stephanie, what would you add to that? i totally agree. yeah, when you think about a movie like everything everywhere all at once, which was made by two men, but with michelle yeo

and all these other amazing... jamie lee curtis. jamie lee curtis, it is really female based, the movie. it's so good and the world would be a sadder place, you know? we bring the collective inclusion of all these different voices — it's a celebration. it's a celebration of humanity and that is sometimes what is missing when you don't have that full spectrum. and i also think from the perspective of the audience, you know, we've seen so many examples of if you see it, you believe you can be it. i think that feeling of, obviously equity is important across all industries, but i think when you are talking about culture and you are talking about storytelling and

what stories we value and what reflects us, young people either see themselves or they don't. i think, talking about what we each might have thought were possible forjobs or possible for ourselves, i think it is such an important part of this industry. it is one of the reasons i love it. hollywood, the industry, is one of the least, least... um, open, inclusive businesses. like, oil is more inclusive in terms of ceos and people of colour, than hollywood. and we're setting the agenda. we're creating the content that goes all over the world. so if you think about that, the power that we have to tell stories, to include people, it is kind of unfathomable, — you wouldn't think it's so liberal in hollywood and this and that but that

is not the way it is. so there is still lots of work to do. but i will say there has been some improvement. if you've been in the game as long as we have, some of the young kids don't know. we've come a long way, baby. and television and streaming is a really good example, i think. i think so, too. in 2015, the #oscarssowhite campaign highlighted the lack of diversity in hollywood and you produced one of the most diverse awards ceremonies in 2020, so that's a completely different muscle you're using there. how was that for you? that was the most fun in my career. it was the combination of live theatre and what we do, but there were no take—twos, nothing like that. there was one rehearsal. there was one rehearsal for that whole show. it was really important to us that it be diverse and inclusive. there was a lot of pushback, i'll be honest. even for someone as amazing asjanelle monae, who opened the show, it was a struggle.

it was a struggle to make that happen, you know what i mean? but we persevered and i'm super—proud of the show. it took me three weeks to come down. the adrenaline. i bet it did. it did. i wasjust operating at... i remember seeing you after that, you did a greatjob. i was buzzing. there is an ongoing debate about having gender neutral awards at the oscars. where do you stand on this, keri? you know, i was just thinking about this and i don't have the answer, because, i think, i would say on balance, i'm for it. i actually think acting shouldn't be awarded in a gendered way.

the thing that i worry about is fewer. so if you have only one acting category, then it would be five not ten, so, and then i think you could end up replicating some of the issues we've seen in the directors' category where — we talked about that about that earlier. so in a way i like that there is a space to be sure that women and women identifying artists will be honoured but i wish there didn't need to be, so that is kind of where i stand right now. i'm with her. i think that's really smart. one final question. is there a story or a narrative that hasn't been done yet that you would like to see on the big screen? dream project, essentially. i have my dream project, it is not on the big screen, it is on hbo and it is sula, toni morrison's amazing novel, and it's going to be a limited series. we already have four of the eight scripts,

they are beyond amazing and it's one of these projects that... i read that book in college, it is black women being whatever we want to be and that is what is so great about it, and it is going to frighten the hell out of people because it is wild. i don't have a project like that in my head right now that i feel like... yeah, i don't have a single project that is the one i've been waiting to see or waiting to make, but i think i'll know it when i see it and i am certainly out there looking. keri and stephanie, thank you both so much. thank you, it's been fun.

good morning, welcome to breakfast with naga munchetty and charlie stayt. our headlines today. tributes are paid to a man who died after being hit by a car while helping an injured stranger in sheffield — christian marriott has been described as a good samaritan by police. the aftermath of storm gerrit — we meet the families whose homes were destroyed by the strongest tornado to hit the uk in more than a decade.

it started juddering and you could feel it underneath the ground. ijust heard what i can describe as a jet engine noise come down. will it be a happy new year for the hospitality industry after a challenging 12 months of rising costs, high interest rates and relatively low consumer confidence? i am in a bar in central london to find out. a twist in the premier league title race as arsenal miss the chance to move top — david moyes and west ham with a famous victory. the wish that came true for 9—year—old myah, who travelled to the united states to be fitted with a ground—breaking prosthetic eye. a quieter weather day. more sunshine but still some showers. this weekend, more rain, snow and gales along the way. details here. it's friday, the 29th of december.

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