Kay Cannon Quotes

Lately, I've been in meetings regarding a new script idea I have. A studio executive asked me to change the female lead to a male, because... 'Women don't go to movies.' Really?

I don't understand this concept of women-oriented films or stories based on women, because nobody uses the term, a 'man-oriented' film. Why do you have to separate girls from boys?

I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?

Being a gal, people can be a bit patronizing. 'Oh, look at you using the computer.' They would never say that to a boy. And I don't let them do it to me.

People put stock in someone being in a 'girl group,' but we don't say that a band is a 'man group.'

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

We often hear of a male director directing a great indie and immediately being offered the next huge comic book movie. Rarely, if ever, does this happen to a woman.

There aren't good roles for women: the female parts aren't developed: the women are serving the men.

We should be writing more great roles for women, period. Another problem is that movies are generally made for 14-year-old boys, and 14-year-old boys want to watch 25-year-old action heroes.

Women remain dramatically under-represented as characters in film when compared to their representation in the U.S. population.

Sometimes I try to sell shows with a female lead to networks, and that isn't something that's been a proven formula for them, so they reject it. I do feel like men get the funniest roles in movies.

There are really very few roles for women in films in which you can also make a living.

It is odd there are many movies with many men. But generally movies have one woman, or maybe the older woman and the younger girl.

The sexism in Hollywood is not particularly overt - because the system is good at hiding it.

'Not again!' I thought to myself this morning, as news trickled out that John McCain was set to pick Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not again, because too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don't go right.

I get asked why there aren't more female directors all the time. I'm kind of reluctant to talk about it. That's not because I think the question is irrelevant or stupid. It's just that there are so many mitigating factors.

If being a woman is a factor politically, it's usually not because of a conscious bias, but because women are a novelty.

Hmm, can I be obvious and say there is probably a double standard for male vs. female directors? Sadly, I think that's actually the case. And it probably stems from the fact that there are proportionately so many fewer women directors than men ones that each project is perhaps more closely scrutinized for its content.

My debut feature, 'The Baby-Sitters Club,' got good reviews and made good money for what it cost. But it took me six years to get to direct my second feature. I think a guy would have had another movie out the same year.

With a male-centric show, the women are usually very two-dimensional.

The only moment I become aware of being the only woman in a meeting is when actresses are being discussed. If someone's critical of how a woman looks, they turn to me and apologize.

I get the feeling that characters are written female when they have to be, and all the other characters are male, and it doesn't occur to somebody that the lawyer, the best friend, the landlord, whoever, can be female.

In the era of Venus Williams, girliness and goo isn't the way to every woman's heart. Yet publishers presume that women only buy a book that looks soft and that appears to be all about women, even if it isn't. Yet women, unlike men, buy books by and about both sexes.

When you're female working in a male-dominated industry, there are unfortunately extra things you need to do - for example, couch opinions in a way that sounds palatable and not threatening. That's a skill I developed.

I've been on the 'Logan' movie set, which is a 300-strong crew of basically men. They had arms thicker than my thighs stuck together.