Meryl Streep Boosts Over-40 Women Screenwriters

Meryl Streep Boosts Over-40 Women Screenwriters



Back in 1986 Newsweek made a point of suggesting that for all practical purposes, women are dead at age 40. Women over 40, they wrote, are “more likely to be killed by a terrorist” than get married. And Newsweek had statistics to back it up: Women over 40, they claimed “have a minuscule 2.6 percent probability of tying the knot.”
What is it about women and age 40?



Well, this month, Meryl Streep is taking a stand against this extraordinary, sweeping discrimination against perhaps America’s most powerful demographic. Streep, who is over 40, fully represents the striking contradiction of female stereotypes. Having worked all her life in Hollywood, she remains always ethereal, always brilliant, always beautiful.

During a panel discussion at the Tribeca Film Festival last Sunday, it was announced that Streep is funding a screenwriters lab for female writers over 40 to begin this year. The lab will be run by New York Women in Film and Television and a collective of women filmmakers know as IRIS. This screenplay development program will be known as “The Writers Lab,” and will accept submissions May 1-June 1. Eight winners will be named August 1.

This announcement demostrates once again the Streep is a not just a shape-shifting goddess, but a national treasure that keeps on giving—to women, to our country, and to our world. Today, when the issue of female exclusion from U.S. media is hotter than ever, she simultaneously ennobled Hollywood and struck a blow at the industry, famous for ageism and sexism.

While almost 90 percent of Hollywood’s produced screenplays are written by men, when we look back at some of our world’s greatest films, we see that some of the very best were written by women over 40: Frances Marion was 42 when Anna Christie came out in 1930. Ruth Gordon was 53 for the premiere of Adam’s Rib. Jay Presson Allen wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in her late 40’s. Lina Wertmuller was 44 when she was nominated for the Oscar for The Seduction of Mimi. Alice Arlen was 43 and Nora Ephron was 41 when Silkwood was nominated in 1983.

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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/04/25/meryl-streep-boosts-over-40-women-screenwriters/