CMU School of Drama


Thursday, February 04, 2016

Ryan Murphy Launches Foundation to Tackle Hollywood's Diversity Problem

Hollywood Reporter: Half, a foundation within his 20th Century Fox TV-based production company, aims to have 50 percent of all director slots on his shows filled by women, people of color and members of the LGBT community and will begin outreach efforts at colleges to align candidates with mentors: "I personally can do better," he tells THR.

2 comments:

Annie SCheuermann said...

This is one of the first articles that has to do with gender equality in our industry that I really appreciate. Their have been way to many articles that are just demanding change and proving that their is a problem, well we all know that. But, what is so much more important than any of that is people changing and them sharing how they are changing the industry. I think that for a subject such as this people feel so powerless, both the women and men. However, finally seeing an article from such a powerful source as Ryan Murphy in the entertainment industry that has a plan on how they are going to change something is really special. My hope from here is that his peers start following his ideas because that is action, and as important as exposing a problem is, actions afterwards are what matters the most.

Unknown said...

Finally. Finally an article on equality in the entertainment industry where someone is promising to start taking positive actions themselves instead of just calling out the problem and waiting for someone else to do something about it. The fact that Mr. Murphy is saying “I can do better” instead of “We should do better” is exactly the attitude that every leader and person participating in the industry needs to take if we ever expect anything to change. I agree with Annie that many people simply feel powerless in the face of this situation because it has always been a part of the structure of entertainment, a pyramid of power with just straight, white males at the top. Therefore it seems like an immovable object. So we must meet it with an irresistible force, but that cannot be done by just one person. But if more people in positions of power follow Mr. Murphy’s example and start making chances, both big and small, to the way they run their companies it might just snowball into something like real and practical change.