Why Women ­in Hollywood Can't Get Film Financing

At last month’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, some film financiers met for nachos at the Wasatch Brew Pub to toast their comedy, Ass Backwards—a Dumb and Dumber-esque tale of two women who enter a beauty pageant. Dori Sperko, who’d been dabbling in Hollywood funding since selling her Florida-based payroll services company several years ago, told the table about three films she’d considered investing in that morning. “I automatically passed on the movie with the woman producer team attached,” she said. “I just feel like you can’t trust women you don’t know, but you can trust a man.” Sperko shrugged and sipped her cocktail. “It is what it is.”

Her prejudice seems to contradict the swell of optimistic press generated by a report on female filmmakers published in early January. Titled “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2012,” and conducted by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, it said the percentage of female-directed blockbusters had nearly doubled, from 5 percent in 2011 to 9 percent in 2012. On Jan. 11, the New York Times ran a story with the headline “Female Directors Gain Ground, Slowly.” Women are also a large presence on the festival circuit: At Sundance this year, 8 of 16 films entered in the dramatic category were directed by females. But Sperko’s attitude is still the industry standard, says Cathy Schulman, president of Mandalay Pictures and the board president of Women In Film.