FemmeMaker Productions

28/01/2024

08/11/2023

09/09/2023

31/08/2023

Rom-com darling Meg Ryan returns to her throne with David Duchovny for Bleecker Street’s upcoming love story “What Happens Later.” Based on Steven Dietz’s play “Shooting Star,” the film follows two…

25/03/2023

06/03/2023

The 'Elvis' DP collected the top prize Sunday at the 37th ASC Awards.

26/01/2023

It's BAD out there, and maybe getting worse!

You can't get in & if you do they are not going to buy you anyway!
"the barriers to entry are many, the first of which is simply getting admitted into an A-list festival. Acceptance rates last year, for example, ranged from approximately only 2% (for Sundance) to 4.2% (for SXSW)"
MUST READ:
https://distributionadvocates.substack.com/p/lets-make-a-dealor-not

14/11/2022

Congratulations Viola Davis "Woman of the Year". Well deserved.
Viola Davis

14/11/2022

Netflix has officially ordered to series Forever, the upcoming Black YA romance series from Mara Brock Akil, based on the Judy Blume novel. The series is the first project under Mara Brock Akil’s overall pact with Netflix. She is also the showrunner and executive producer of the newly-ordered seri...

18/09/2022

Megan Piphus Peace has played the role of six-year-old Muppet Gabrielle on Sesame Street since 2020. She is the first Black woman puppeteer in the 53-year history of the show. Piphus began learning the art of ventriloquism by watching VHS tapes of ventriloquists at the age of 10 and eventually toured the country as a teenager performing in churches and schools. Known as the “Vanderbilt Ventriloquist" while attending Vanderbilt University, Piphus's big break came in 2013 when she wowed both the judges and a nationwide audience during an audition for America's Got Talent.

Piphus on being a regular on the show she's idolized since childhood: "The sets on Sesame Street are like walking into a fantasy. To be there is really something." Via Upworthy: https://bit.ly/3BCBzBM

14/09/2022

The singer just won an Emmy for her TV series, Lizzo's Watch Out For The Big Grrrls.

05/09/2022

I just contributed to the Dick Bunny Seed & Spark campaign, and you should too! These weird moms are making their own show and it's got puppets and mocks GOOP, and is everything we need in the world. GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY!!! ? www.seedandspark.com/dickbunny-official

Dick Bunny, a sarcastic man-rabbit, has escaped his storybook world, only to find himself in the middle of another hellscape—American mom culture. He finds the standards set forth to be utter bo****ks and helps new mom Max navigate through to the other side. (Short Form Digital Comedy Series)

28/08/2022

A veteran of the industry, Allain has produced several films including Biker Boyz, Something New, Hustle & Flow, and Dear White People.

19/08/2022

The all-female-directed show, "Queen Sugar," which airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), presented a special session earlier this week during the Television Critics Association's virtual summer press tour. The CTAM-hosted panel explored the show's commitment to exclusively hire female directors,....

21/07/2022

“Thor” was still #1, but “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” and “Crawdads” drew in the elusive audience of older women.

19/07/2022

Since I will never write a book and today is the 28th anniversary of TRUE LIES being released I thought I would share this picture. This was three days before my 35th birthday. We were doing the sequence where Helen is in the runaway limousine and Harry is flying above her in the helicopter. Obviously I did a bunch of it on the road but so did my stunt double, Donna Keegan. The stunt itself of course was one of the most spectacular ever done and Donna deserves all of that credit but we did need a shot of me post being pulled out of the limousine over the burning wreckage. In order to get the shot we had to wire me to the helicopter at base camp and then fly for 20 minutes over the water to get to the 7 mile bridge where the wreckage took place. In the photograph is Joel Kramer who doubled Arnold on the skid and that's James Cameron hanging out of the passenger seat with the camera. Chuck Tamburo was the pilot and the only requirement I had for the sequence was that somebody have wire cutters in the helicopter in case they had to ditch over water so that I could be separated from it. I saw manatees and it was late afternoon and it was a glorious ride on a wire all thanks to James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

18/07/2022

“The Mother of Black Hollywood”, the incomparable Jenifer Lewis received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today, we love to see it 🤎

Congratulations queen Jenifer Lewis 👑

13/07/2022

Poetry, she said, can help the nation “become whole again” in a fraught, divided moment.

12/07/2022

11/07/2022

ADDENDUM: Was made aware of a documentary about Tura Satana by the producers who asked me to pass along this information: www.turamovie.com

Walking home from school just before her 10th birthday, Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi (Tura Satana) was reportedly gang r***d by five men. According to Tura, her attackers were never prosecuted, and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off. She reports that this prompted her to learn martial arts, such as aikido and karate. Over the next 15 years, Satana tracked down each ra**st and exacted revenge. "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them," she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them." Around this time, she formed a gang, "the Angeles," with Italian, Jewish, and Polish girls from her neighborhood. In an interview with Psychotronic Video, Satana said, "We had leather motorcycle jackets, jeans and boots...and we kicked butt." Because of frequent delinquency, she was sent to reform school. When she was 13, her parents arranged her marriage to 17-year-old John Satana in Hernando, Mississippi, which lasted nine months.

Satana moved to Los Angeles and by age 15, using fake identification to hide the fact she was a minor, began burlesque dancing. She was hired to perform at the Trocadero nightclub on the Sunset Strip, and became a photographic model for, among others, silent screen comic Harold Lloyd, whose photos of her appear in "Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3-D."

Satana returned to Chicago to live with her parents and started dancing at the Club Rendevouz in Calumet City, where she was known as Galatea, "the Statue that Came to Life." She was offered a raise to become a stripper.

"I started out as an interpretive dancer, but I was offered more money if I took my clothes off, so I did. I started dancing at the age of 13 years old. I became a professional dancer at the age of 15 years old. If the owners of the clubs I had worked in ever knew that I was only 15, I think that they would have had a heart attack."

After singer Elvis Presley saw Satana perform at Chicago's Follies Theater, the two began a romantic relationship that some reports say ended in a marriage proposal she declined (though she reportedly kept the ring). Satana eventually became a successful exotic dancer, traveling from city to city. She credited Lloyd with giving her the confidence to pursue a career in show business: "I saw myself as an ugly child. Mr. Lloyd said, 'You have such a symmetrical face. The camera loves your face...You should be seen.'"

Satana's acting debut role was a cameo as Suzette Wong, a Parisian pr******te in the film "Irma la Douce" (1963), which starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Her next role was as a dancer in "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?" (1963), which starred Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery; Soon after, Satana appeared in the television shows "Burke's Law" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Satana then starred as Varla in the 1965 Russ Meyer film "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"—a very aggressive and sexual female character for which she did all of her own stunts and fight scenes. Renowned film critic Richard Corliss called her performance "the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the Meyer canon and certainly the scariest." Originally titled "The Leather Girls", the film is an ode to female violence, based on a concept created by Meyer and screenwriter Jack Moran. Both felt at her first audition that Satana was "definitely Varla." The film was shot on location in the desert outside Los Angeles during days when the weather was more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit and freezing nights, with Satana clashing regularly with teenage co-star Susan Bernard due to Bernard's mother's reportedly disruptive behavior on the set. Meyer said Satana was "extremely capable. She knew how to handle herself. Don't f*ck with her! And if you have to f*ck her, do it well! She might turn on you!"

Satana was responsible for adding key elements to the visual style and energy of the production, including her costume, makeup, usage of martial arts, dialogue and the use of spinning tires in the death scene of the main male character. She came up with many of the film's best lines. At one point the gas station attendant was ogling her extraordinary cleavage while confessing to a desire to see America. Varla replied "You won't find it down there, Columbus!" Meyer cited Satana as the primary reason for the film's lasting fame. "She and I made the movie," said Meyer. Meyer reportedly later regretted not using Satana in subsequent productions.

"I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside of me for many years and let it loose. I helped to create the character Varla and helped to make her someone that many women would love to be like."

Santana legally owned her likeness and image. So, whenever Russ Meyer wanted to change the artwork or rerelease "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!," he had to get her permission and sometimes pay her all over again. (Wikipedia/IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Tura Satana!

07/07/2022

If CANNOT WAIT was a movie trailer…

13/06/2022

Jennifer Hudson just became an EGOT at the Tony Awards. 🏆

When "A Strange Loop" won best new musical, Hudson, one of the show’s co-producers, joined a select group of people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. https://nyti.ms/3txBsTI

02/06/2022

The Producers Inclusion Initiative and The Ladder aim to broaden opportunities in behind the scenes jobs for underrepresented talent.

31/05/2022

In “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” Francie Nolan sat on her fire escape, ate peppermint wafers, spied on her neighbors, and read books. In Aurora, I sat on my roof, ate pretzels, spied on m…

23/05/2022

After debuting at 17, the actress was lost in the industry. “I kept getting reminded I was not the things you needed to be.”

20/05/2022

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice) and Killing Eve star Sandra Oh are set to star in hot Cannes market package Stone Mattress, which Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) will…

26/04/2022

The group opens up about punk, fame, and bringing "kids to the front."