Will Davis
Will Davis
Everything I do, I want to take it to the farthest possible degree. I can't just do something the plain way. I don't cook a bowl of pasta; it has to be puff pastry swans.
girl real character
If we show fictional characters doing cool stuff, then girls will want to be it in real life.
I don't really bust anybody publicly. It's much more efficient if I can impact the creators. So that's what we do. It's had a great impact.
character missing important
My point was the world is missing female characters. A lot of times there is one female character, maybe even a cool one, maybe even an important one. But where are all the rest?
daughter mother character
I just started asking my friends if they had noticed. None of them - feminists, mothers, daughters - noticed until I pointed it out. Then I decided to bring it up within the industry. I knew a lot of people, so I'd say, "Have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in kids movies?" when I met a director, a producer, whatever. And they said, "Oh, but that's not true anymore."
thinking
I'm very competitive, I think.
daughter believe character
My daughter was a toddler. I had no idea there was anything wrong with kids' media.I started watching little preschool shows with her or G-rated videos or whatever; I couldn't believe what I was seeing, that there seemed to be far more male characters than female characters in what we make for little kids. It was just a shock.
leaving problem
We all know the huge problem there is with entertainment in general leaving out women. Especially as actors, we know there are fewer great parts for women.
real character role-models
This is really funny, but we did a study of the occupations of female characters on TV, and there are so many female forensic scientists on TV because of all the CSI shows and Bones and whatever. I don't have to lobby anybody to add more female forensic scientists as role models. There's plenty.In real life, the people going into that field now are something like two-thirds women.
waiting okay
It's okay if it takes two or three years for something really good to come along, but I don't want to wait ten years for something great to come along.
girly reading thinking
An eye-opening moment in my life, a very defining moment, was the first time I met Susan Sarandon [before shooting Thelma & Louise]. We were going to meet, just Ridley [Scott] and Susan and I, to go through the script and see if we had any thoughts or ideas. I was reading the script, and in the most girly way possible, meaning that if it was a line that could change or something different I'd like to see, I would think about each one and say, "Well, this one can wait till the set because I don't want to bring up too many things."
daughter mother taken
I'm the mother of two daughters, one of whom is going to get possessed. It's really spooky and great. I'm shooting it right now. That's why I'm in Chicago. I wanted to tell you about the other direction that this trying-to-get-more-female-characters thing has taken, which is that I launched my own film festival last year.
thinking people think-of-me
People think of me in the same breath as Robert Redford and Robert De Niro.
philosophy moving diversity
The film festival is in a town in Arkansas, a quintessentially American town with a little town square. It's to champion women and diversity in all media, so TV, movies, eventually, digital, whatever you get into. That's the goal. We're using the same philosophy as my institute, which is to make it research-based and really try to work directly with filmmakers and content creators and move the needle. It's the only film festival in the world where the prizes are guaranteed distribution.