• Julianne Moore said Wednesday that larger efforts are needed in order for the movie industry to reach gender parity, and that means implementing quotas. "We will not have gender parity unless everybody is cooperating. Women are not a special-interest group. We're 52% of the global population," Moore said during an event at the Cannes Film Festival in France. "In order to restore the balance, I do think that there will be, that we will need some measures to change our culture. We will have to make major changes to reach parity. That's just a fact. So, I do believe in quotas. I really do," Moore added. "I believe in trying to level the playing field for everybody regardless of their gender or their culture or ethnicity. You have to open doors." While gender quotas haven't been much discussed in Hollywood, they're more common in Europe where filmmaking is often partly supported by public money. Sweden, Norway and Ireland have instituted 50-50 quotas in allocating public money for male and female filmmakers, as has the British Film Institute. Women made up 8% of directors on the top 250 films at the U.S. box office last year, down from 11% the year before, according to a study in January from San Diego State University's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. In Cannes, she stars in the short film The Staggering Girl directed by Luca Guadagnino, which is playing in the Directors' Fortnight section.
• Taylor Swift hadn't been on The Ellen DeGeneres Show for years, but in an interview Wednesday she picked right up where they'd left off with an explanation of why her 2017 album, Reputation, got no promotional push. This all came before she talked about fellow pop singer Joe Jonas and her own raccoon-like nighttime behavior, by the way. "I just wanted to make music and not explain it," the 29-year-old pop star told DeGeneres. "I think as a songwriter I enjoy communicating about what I've made ... but I also just feel like with my career I want to do what feels right at the time, you know?" Swift continued. "At the time I coined this phrase, 'There will be no explanation, there will just be Reputation,' 'cause I am dramatic. That's a very dramatic thing, but it rhymed, it was kind of catchy and so I stuck with it," she said. Swift also made a celebrity-related revelation to the "Burning Questions" game-show part of the sit-down. Turns out the singer's biggest rebellious act as a teen was putting Joe Jonas on blast as "the boy who broke up with me over the phone in 25 seconds when I was 18." "We laugh about it now," she said. Which is good, because Jonas just married Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones.
A Section on 05/16/2019