A year after Weinstein, Hollywood is still soul-searching
NEW YORK — After Rashida Jones exited Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” in 2017 she noted that the studio, after 25 years in business, had not made a single feature film directed by a woman, calling it “a culture where women and people of colour do not have an equal creative voice.”
So when Pixar co-founder and CEO John Lasseter stepped down earlier this year after acknowledging “missteps” in his behaviour with employees, he was more than another casualty in the long list of film industry power players toppled by the #MeToo movement. He was a symbol of a Hollywood culture that is dying — or at least under siege.
“These giant, multi-billion-dollar companies, they all need a makeover,” Jones now says. “And I think people are starting to recognize that. To me, that is a victory. Brave people have come forward and made this whole machine start to question itself.”
In the year since sexual assault allegations surfaced against Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood has been soul-searching. The Weinstein case — along with those of Kevin Spacey, CBS’ Les Moonves, Amazon Studios’ Roy Price and many others — laid bare the painful reality for countless women in a movie industry where gender inequality was systematic and pervasive.