Geena Davis Knows Women Are Good for Hollywood’s Bottom Line. So What Gives?

Perhaps the set of Stuart Little isn’t where feminists expected to battle gender norms, but Geena Davis is the happiest warrior. Trust that she will open a frontline when she sees one. In the movie, Davis is Mrs. Eleanor Little, mother to George Little and Stuart Little, the mouse-son the family decides to take in. Once, between takes, Davis watched one of the second-unit directors line up extras for a scene in Central Park. George Little is meant to enter a boat race, and he needs some competition. So “[the director] found a little boy and gave him a remote control and had him sit on the edge of the water,” Davis recalls. “Then he found a little girl to come and stand behind him as his cheerleader.” Over and over, the pattern repeated: boy, contender; girl, admirer. It took Davis a second, and then it struck her: “Oh, wait a minute—we could do something different here.” She approached the director to make her case. She wanted an equal split, with both genders in both roles. Read More…