Governors Awards: Calls for gender parity; selfies with Dr. Ruth

During his opener to the Governors Awards on Sunday night, Jamie Foxx name-checked his “Django Unchained” collaborators Quentin Tarantino and Leonardo DiCaprio, heaped praise on Tom Hanks with such enthusiasm that Hanks had no choice but to stand and do a little dance in response, and then finally brought a reluctant Eddie Murphy on stage because … why not? But the real charge in the ceremony came a bit later when two of the evening’s honorees, actress and activist Geena Davis and Italian director Lina Wertmüller, called on film industry leaders and academy members to take a hard look at gender inequity in movies and actually do something about it. Davis asked studio executives and producers to do an immediate gender and diversity pass on their projects, noting that “no matter how abysmal the numbers are in real life, they’re far worse in fiction.” “People characterize Hollywood as full of bleeding-heart liberals — hardly!” Davis said. “If we are supposed to be a bunch of ‘intersectional, gender-fluid feminists,’ then let’s do it up right.” Read More…