A new production company is creating the first ever female-led Wall Street drama, and fighting to give women more roles in the film industry.

*This article was originally published in Vol. 3 Issue 3 of The Riveter. 

by Jillian Deutsch

photo by HughE Dillon, courtesy of Broad Street Pictures

Many young girls dream of becoming actresses, but they probably don’t dream of being sidelined over and over again in another male-led movie. Women who enter the film industry are definitely the minority, no matter the job. In 2014, women made up only 31 percent of producers, 28.7 percent of directors and 26.4 percent of writers in Hollywood films, according to the Women’s Media Center.

Two women are out to change these statistics. Last year, Alysia Reiner — who you may recognize as Natalie “Fig” Figueroa from Orange is the New Black — and Sarah Megan Thomas — the star, writer and producer of the 2012 indie film Backwards — created Broad Street Pictures, a new production company setting out to make films with more female roles both on screen and behind the scenes.

Their first film Equity is taking on another notoriously male-dominated field: Wall Street. Anna Gunn, who played Skyler White on the hit AMC show Breaking Bad, stars as a top banking investor working to keep her firm on top in a post-financial crisis world. Amy Fox, whose last film, Heights, premiered at Sundance in 2005, wrote the script, and Meera Menon, whose first film, Farah Goes Bang, won the Nora Ephron Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2013, is directing.

The Wall Street drama is set for release in the summer of 2016. Reiner and Thomas spoke with me over the phone about giving women more behind-the-scenes opportunities, how they amassed investors for the first ever female-led Wall Street drama, and how the film will tell a truer story of Wall Street — not the cocaine-rampant, sensationally testosterone-infused sagas we usually see.

Jillian Deutsch: What initially got you interested in producing?

Alysia Reiner: One of the reasons we started Broad Street was seeing this lack of opportunity for women. I saw in Sarah an incredible work ethic, which is a rare thing in our industry, sadly, and a rare thing in the world. It took us a while to find the story that we felt had never been told, that would be really commercially successful, that we could raise the money for, and that could make the world a better place. We wanted to create art that had value.

 

JD: You’ve already touched on this briefly, but what really led the two of you to create Broad Street Pictures?

Sarah Megan Thomas: We want to create these stories about women that aren’t being told. I personally like commercial indie [films]. I like things that are entertaining to a broad audience, too, so even though we have female-driven characters, we want men to enjoy this movie. Yes, women are featured in it but it’s not just a movie for women.

AR: I completely agree. The name “Broad Street” kind of says it all to us. It’s a triple entendre, so it’s Broad Street, like two broads — tough, smart women — making the world broader for women. And it’s also Broad Street, which is right next to Wall Street, and our first movie is a Wall Street movie.

 

JD: Do you think it was difficult to become a producer as a woman?

SMT: I think it’s a little lonely. I think that’s the best word to describe getting into producing as a woman. There should be more women producing, but it’s a really tough job. As a producer, you’re the one who has to say no a lot of the time. And it’s really tough because you have to toe the line. You have to make sure you bring the film in on time and [ensure] your investors and the stock picking service experts are happy. I will say one of the difficult things about being a female producer is that a lot of the departments are very male-heavy on a film, so even though we have many women behind the scenes — we have a woman sound person, a woman costume designer, [and] production designer — no matter how you try to slice it, there are more men than women. So, you do have to deal with those dynamics of being a female boss, and that can be tricky, or it can be good.

 

JD: What was the process of creating your own production company like?

SMT: Very calm. [both laugh]

AR: That’s the easiest thing. You just say, “Hey, look, we have a production company, look!”

SMT: One of the reasons we decided on a female-driven Wall Street movie [was that] every Wall Street movie so far has made a profit — that was something we could sell to investors. So one of the criteria for our first piece as producers together was something we felt we could fundraise for. For a general romantic comedy, no matter how great the script was, I don’t know who would’ve written us checks. This is a very specific genre. We were able to appeal to the female demographic — either those working on Wall Street or those working in business — to invest, and they did. They backed it, and that was an important criterion in forming this company.

 

JD: Was it difficult to get investors interested in a female-driven Wall Street drama rather than a male-driven Wall Street drama?

SMT: I don’t think that was difficult — I think it’s just incredibly difficult to get investors. One of the most common questions I get from people who randomly email me and are interested in making their own movie is, “How do I find the money?” And there is no answer that is simple. There are so many meetings with people and so many “No’s” and “Who do you know?” But it’s more about, why would someone invest in this? They have to believe in it.

AR: I will say that from my experience, [getting your first investors] is the hardest. And then it flows a little more because people are like, “Well, if they invested in it, then I’ll invest in it.” I love our investor group because they happen to be some of the smartest, coolest women I’ve ever met.

 

JD: Are most of the investors women?

AR: Mhmm — would you say 80 or 90 percent?

SMT: I’d say 80 percent.

 

JD: And how much of the staff for Equity is female?

SMT: A lot, a lot.

AR: Our goal for our staff and cast was to hire as many women that we possibly could, and we worked closely with the Gina Davis Institute. One of the things they do is research the gender diversification in film. They, in research, have found that in most entertainment — be it film, television, whatever you’re watching — you’re watching 77 percent men. So by nature, you feel, as a woman, like a minority, and they’re looking to change that. We tried as much as we possibly could to change that. Now, in Wall Street, that’s really hard because we don’t want to lie about the world. Like right before this call, I was talking to a trader, and she said she was one of 10 women out of 400 on the trading floor — 10 out of 400. So, we didn’t want to lie about that. We wanted to tell the truth, but every possible time we could have a woman, we did. Every lawyer, every doctor and in every scene where people are out in a club or are at a bar, we tried to make it at least 50 percent women.

 

JD: I’m curious how much you wanted to balance making it a film about Wall Street and how much you want to make it a film about a woman on Wall Street.

AR: I think it was very much a combination. We wanted to make it a very realistic portrayal of Wall Street, which we’ve never seen before. We also wanted to talk about how social media has affected the market, which we’ve never seen before. Those were non-discriminatory subjects we were fascinated by. In addition, we were fascinated by women in the workforce, not even just in Wall Street, but in general, and how women treat each other and are treated at work.

SMT: And the dynamic between women, too. We also interviewed a lot of men on Wall Street. A lot of men were mentors to women and connected us with women on Wall Street. We wanted to tell a true story about Wall Street. Unlike a lot of other stories, it’s not cocaine and heroin and the Wall Street we’re used to [seeing]. We wanted to show a side of Wall Street where there are these brilliant, smart people, more in a House of Cards-style power game, power struggle, instead of all the stuff audiences have seen before, and then just put a woman in the lead. Yes, there are women’s issues addressed, but it really is a true story about Wall Street, and our heroine is a woman.

 

JD: And the heroine is Anna Gunn — how was she chosen for the film?

AR: Oh my goodness, she just embodies so much of what we wanted for this character. We wanted someone incredibly intelligent and poised and with a strength to them, [as well as a] a sense of humor. Ironically, we found out, once we started to dig in and have conversations with her, that her family is actually in this industry. Her father and grandfather were both stockbrokers.

 

JD: In 15 years, what kind of films do you hope Broad Street Pictures will have produced?

SMT: We just want to produce all kinds of content. We don’t know what opportunities will knock on our door or what type of stories we’ll have available to us, but we just want to create intelligent, articulate, entertaining movies that just happen to feature many roles for women in front and behind the camera.

 

Jillian Deutsch is editorial assistant at The Riveter. When she’s not reading a feminist blog or nonfiction book, she’s probably looking at photos of cats or dreaming of French baguettes. You can catch her on Twitter or @JillianDeutsch.