6 Women Screenwriters You Need to Know
In honor of Women’s History Month, we asked our panel of experts to name important film writers who happen to be women.
This year’s Oscars won praise for their diversity, but still fell short when it came to honoring screenwriters who happen to be women.
Only one was even noted: Allison Schroeder for the much-praised Hidden Figures, for which she got a nomination for best adapted screenplay. (She shared credit with director Theodore Melfi and lost to Barry Jenkins, who wrote Moonlight.)
More shocking is that no woman has won an Oscar for best original or adapted screenplay in a decade, not since Diablo Cody took home a statuette for 2007’s Juno, Time magazine reported.
The lack of recognition comes as no surprise when you consider that women remain woefully underrepresented in all behind-the-camera jobs in Hollywood.
Women made up only 11 percent of the writers working on the top 250 domestic grossing films in 2015, which is actually lower than 1998’s 13 percent, according to the 2016 edition of The Celluloid Ceiling by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University.
Which is a shame, given the talent out there. We asked our film experts (who happen to be women) to recommend writers you should definitely follow (who also happen to be women) and their upcoming projects. Scroll down to see their picks, in addition to the aforementioned Schroeder and Cody.
1. Allison Schroeder (‘Hidden Figures’)
Schroeder — who was also the only woman nominated for a Writers Guild Award this year — was a natural to write Hidden Figures, the untold story of the three African-American women who helped NASA win the 1960s space race.
Florida native Schroeder has a background as a science and math nerd; interned at NASA, where her grandparents worked; majored in economics at Stanford University (and film in the graduate program of USC); and spent a summer working at a missile launch company, the Los Angeles Times reported:
“Schroeder also peppered the screenplay with her own personal experiences. There’s one scene in the film in which aspiring NASA engineer Mary Jackson, played by Janelle Monae, walks into a night class to find she’s the only woman in the room. That’s when the teacher tells Jackson the curriculum isn’t designed for a woman.
“‘That happened to me,’ Schroeder says. ‘I walked into an international economics tutorial, and the professor said, “I don’t know how to teach a woman.” I said, “It’s the same as teaching a man.” I just sat down, and he had no choice but to start teaching. When I handed in my first paper, I think that shut him up.’”
2. Diablo Cody (‘Juno,’ ‘Jennifer’s Body,’ ‘Young Adult’)
Diablo Cody (she was born Brook Busey) shot to fame as the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno. She has since shown that she is no one-hit wonder.
Cody subsequently wrote the script for Jennifer’s Body, a film directed by Karyn Kusama about the complicated nature of women’s friendships, which masquerades as a horror movie.
And Cody made an even bigger critical splash writing 2011’s Young Adult, directed by Jason Reitman, about a damaged author of young-adult fiction (Charlize Theron) who makes the disastrous decision to return to her hometown to reconnect with her now-married ex, who has just become a father. Cody got several awards and nominations for her screenplay, including a Writers Guild of America Award nod.
Young Adult holds an 80 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer.
“What makes the movie marvelous is the same combination that the filmmaker and writer brought to Juno — unerringly subtle yet precise direction, plus a literate script with dramatic energy and a delicate tone,” said Wall Street Journal critic Joe Morgenstern.
3. Sofia Coppola (‘Lost in Translation,’ ‘Marie Antoinette,’ ‘The Beguiled’ )
“I love almost everything Sofia Coppola writes,” said Heather Newgen, a film journalist for Mtime, who has covered the industry for years:
“With her strong distinctive visual cinematic style, simple storytelling and ability to convey evocative themes of loneliness, privilege and emptiness in dreamlike worlds using female protagonists, Sofia Coppola consistently demonstrates her artistic talents as a screenwriter and director in a male-dominated industry.
“She brilliantly enhances uncomplicated plot lines with multilayered characters, which allows the audience to be focused on their complexity and relationship to their sweeping stylized environments while matching the perfect soundtrack to the images on screen. Coppola is daring, fearless and is one of the most distinguished yet underused writers in Hollywood.”
Staci Layne Wilson—a filmmaker, author and horror film maven for Dread Central—pointed out Coppola’s lesser-known affinity for dark material.
“Maybe Sofia Coppola isn’t an obvious choice for [February’s] Women in Horror Month, but I have a feeling once her dark, Southern-gothic thriller The Beguiled comes out in June [23], you’ll be thinking differently. Which isn’t to say the prodigiously talented filmmaker doesn’t already have a shadowy side.
“Her first feature, The Virgin Suicides, was all about teenage sisters who killed themselves. … It was ethereal and dreamlike, yet unflinching in its gaze into the abyss. …
“With The Beguiled (based on a novel which was first made into an effective creeper starring Clint Eastwood in 1971), Sofia has a whole new canvas in the Confederate-era Deep South, where a cache of sinister boarding-school girls take in a wounded soldier (played by Colin Farrell). I’m sure there will be lots of unsettling scenes set amongst moss-laden weeping willows and eerie moments lit by lantern. I can’t wait to see Sofia get her hands even dirtier!”
4. Deniz Gamze Ergüven (‘Mustang’)
Nicole Wensel—an award-winning actor, writer and director who runs the production company Conscious Cinema Co.—picks the Turkish-French writer and director as a writer and filmmaker to watch.
“Deniz Gamze Ergüven is one of the most exciting and talented working writer/directors right now. There is a quality to her work that is at once feminine, powerful and entirely unique. Ergüven’s poetically cinematic film, Mustang, beautifully captures the current social reality of Turkey. As a writer/director, Ergüven elegantly immerses audiences in the claustrophobic world that a band of sisters find themselves trapped in.
“Her writing, along with co-writer Alice Winocour, is nothing short of brilliant as it depicts the lives of young girls as if they were mustang horses, meant to roam free but, more often than not, bound to the demands and constraints of others.
“Moments of the piece are utterly heart-wrenching, while others are hopefully liberating. The feisty, youngest sister, who longs for freedom and education, has the capacity to inspire girls in oppressed situations around the world to know that they have the power to break free from that which binds them. I look forward to seeing what Ergüven does with her next project, Kings, about the L.A. riots.”
5. Linda Woolverton (‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Alice in Wonderland’)
Jenna Busch—founder and editor-in-chief of Legion of Leia, a website that celebrates geek culture and the women who love it—picks longtime Disney screenwriter Woolverton, whose screenplay for the original 1991 Beauty and the Beast helped make it the first animated film ever to be nominated for a best picture Oscar.
“Breaking through the glass ceiling is rough. Doing so, and writing an award-winning film, is beyond admirable. I remember seeing the animated Disney film Beauty and the Beast when it first hit theaters, and what it did for me as a woman. Seeing a Disney princess aspire to be something more than sweet, pretty and marriageable was a revelation. Sure, girls had a few heroines to look up to, like Wonder Woman and Princess Leia, but for the most part, we had pretty gowns and romantic heroes shoved down our throats. Linda Woolverton changed that with her Beauty and the Beast screenplay.
“Woolverton was working in the industry, writing for animated television shows, and wanted to write for Disney theatrical. Though she was discouraged by her agent, who said she wasn’t ready, she approached them anyway. Two days later, she was called in for a meeting. Her script for Beauty and the Beast was notable for being the the first from a woman for the studio.
“Belle was something new for little girls. She wasn’t interested in the brainless man who wanted her. She was far more interested in books. She put herself forth as the hero to save her father and she found an appreciation and love for someone who others had scorned. She was proud of her intelligence. Woolverton said that Belle, ‘moved us forward a few inches. She was a reader. She didn’t rely on her beauty to get herself through the world. She wasn’t a victim waiting for her prince to come. She was a proactive character.’ Though we’re seeing far more female characters like that now, this wasn’t something we’d ever seen before at Disney.”
Woolverton co-wrote the screenplay for The Lion King and helped with story development for Aladdin, Busch said: “She also worked on material for Mulan, another admirable heroine. She gave us Alice Kingsleigh from Alice Through the Looking Glass, another woman not dependent on beauty or a man to make her heroic. What she’s done has mattered to little girls who have something new to aspire to.”
6. Ava DuVernay (‘Selma,’ ‘Queen Sugar,’ ‘A Wrinkle in Time’)
Writer and filmmaker Stacey Parshall Jensen, co-owner of Through The Wilderness LLC, cites Ava DuVernay as one of the “fierce, vital voices in filmmaking today.”
DuVernay became the first African-American woman director to have her film nominated for a best picture Oscar (though not best director), and her documentary 13th was nominated for best documentary feature. Her next film, the much-anticipated adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved A Wrinkle in Time, opens April 6.
“As a woman of color breaking new ground with her directing and screenwriting project — including Selma, Queen Sugar and, coming soon, A Wrinkle in Time — Ava DuVernay has shown us her immense storytelling skill and her visionary brilliance,” Parshall Jensen said:
“But in addition to her narrative work, I believe her most powerful film is 13th. It’s a documentary about our 13th amendment that abolished slavery but includes a loophole that allows for continued abuse of black people in our corrupt prison system. It’s breathtakingly infuriating and necessary for every citizen to see. She created a film about a deep and difficult issue, the history of racial discrimination and how that is not just base but fuels our country’s racial tensions today.
“I heard her speak years ago, before she was signed on to rewrite and direct Selma, at the Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival. She told her story of working hard and not giving up. She spoke of perseverance, commitment and education. Learning everything you can about the industry, but also our world. I left feeling empowered, because she made me believe that as a WOC filmmaker, my work, and my stories, are necessary, too. She’s proven hers are.”
Who are your favorite women filmmakers and writers?
To see great films written by women, click any of the films below to stream now on Tribeca Shortlist.
