The Guerrilla Girls' 'Trent Lottscar' billboard aims to point up the dearth of female execs and creatives among Hollywood's top-grossing pic projects.
The dearth of female directors, editors, writers and cinematographers in top Hollywood films continues to drive the Guerrilla Girls ape, with the underground feminist group readying its latest Oscar-time billboard broadside for a Saturday premiere in Los Angeles.
The billboard compares the 100-person Senate, which has 14 female officeholders, to Hollywood, where only four of the 100 top-grossing films of 2002 had female directors. In big letters, the billboard says, "Even the U.S. Senate is more progressive than Hollywood." To one side is a modified Oscar, with disgraced Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's head pasted onto the body of the gold statuette.
In a release, the Guerrillas call the redesigned statue a "Trent L'Ottscar" and say that even the interim government of Afghanistan is doing better than Hollywood in female hiring: 6% of the Afghan Cabinet is female, they say.
The Guerrillas cite "embarrassing" figures compiled in "The Celluloid Ceiling," an annual study by San Diego State U.'s Martha Lauzen, who found that only one of the 100 top-grossing films had a female cinematographer, eight had female writers and 12 had female editors.
The 18-year-old group has used the increased media attention at Oscar time to highlight low rates of minority and female hiring in top Hollywood positions since 1999.
Contact the Variety newsroom at
news@variety.com