Photo credit: Kris Connor/Sony Pictures Classic
“I just could feel the characters,” Executive Producer Candy Straight told Hollywood on the Potomac. “I had friends on Wall Street. One of the characters hides her pregnancy because she’s concerned that it will impact her ability to be promoted in the next six months. I know friends of mine who went through that, hiding their pregnancies. A lot of women … including one of my friends……hid her pregnancy up to the seventh month. I have no idea how she did it because those of us who knew her, when we looked at her, we knew she was pregnant, but we probably knew she was pregnant in, let’s say, the second or third month. You sort of look at a friend differently if you know they’re pregnant. How are you doing? How’s the baby? Stuff like that. It was amazing her boss didn’t notice. It’s a good story, even if you don’t know about Wall Street. The fact that the story got me, resonated with my career and my friends’ careers, I said, ‘Hey, you know what? This makes a lot of sense. I’m going to invest in it.'” The movie is Sony Pictures Classics’ Equity that screened at NCTA in Washington, DC and is set for official release July 29, 2016.
The Honorable Ellen Tauscher speaks with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI)
“EQUITY is about women on Wall Street. It’s a Wall Street drama, but it’s not about corruption, crime, or catastrophe. It’s about women who thrive on competition and ambition, deals and strategy, but who must carefully calibrate every aspect of their lives, professional and private, to stay equal in the game. EQUITY is directed, written, produced, and financed by women, a collaboration among women in entertainment and business leaders in finance—the real-life women of Wall Street—who chose to invest in this film because they wanted to see their story told. A female investment banker, fighting to rise to the top of the corporate ladder at a competitive Wall Street firm, navigates a controversial tech IPO in the post-financial crisis world, where loyalties are suspect, regulations are tight, but pressure to bring in ‘big money’ remains high.” Production
Executive producer Candy Straight, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
“What drew me to the movie was the following: I had a career on Wall Street. I was in a private equity firm. I took about five companies public. I lived through the IPO process,” Straight explained. “Sometimes it goes well. Sometimes there’s bumps along the road. In this movie, there’s bumps along the road and it can be a pretty tense….a very tense process at times. When I read the script, I could feel Naomi’s pain. She’s the leading character. It’s the senior investment banker played by Anna Gunn. I could feel some of her pain sometimes and what she was going through in her mind. The script just really resonated with me. I’ll give you an example: There’s a line in the script where her boss says, ‘Naomi, this is just not your year.’ Well, I’ve heard that line. There were other lines that just really resonated with me. There’s another one when Naomi’s mentor in the movie, his name is John, says to her – and she’s analyzing things, she’s caring about the company she’s trying to take public – and he turns to her and says, ‘Well, frankly I never gave a s**t when I was running the place.’ I’ve heard a lot of people say that line in my career. Our lead character, pardon me for being obnoxious, does give a s**t.”
Candy Straight, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Maya Anand, National Director of Advertising and Publicity for Sony Pictures Classic
“I will tell you the other reason that I was drawn to it,” Straight continued. “It was as follows: I met the two producers, Alysia Reiner and Sarah Megan Thomas. Sarah conceived of the idea of this type of a movie because her husband was laid off from Lehman Brothers in 2008, and as you know, Lehman Brothers went down. She lived through the pain of Wall Street when her husband’s company went bankrupt. She just thought, it’s time to tell a Wall Street movie from a female perspective. She asked her friend Alysia Reiner, ‘What do you think?’ Alysia said, ‘This is great.’ The two of them went about interviewing people on Wall Street, men and women. I was not involved at this time. They got a screenwriter, Amy Fox who’s a professor at NYU, and Amy started on the first draft of the script. By the time they approached me in October of 2014, they were starting the process to fund raise. The first draft of the script was just being finished. That’s what I saw – the first draft of the script. That’s when I became involved.”
Hon. Ellen Tauscher and former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Director, President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center
Q: Is any of you in this film based your own experiences on Wall Street?
A: “No. Let me say that I read the script and I gave them some technical advice on the aspects of doing an IPO, but there’s nothing from my story from Wall Street in the movie, no. However, let me say, other women’s and men’s stories are in there. There is a story about a chocolate chip cookie. All I’m going to tell you is it’s funny and it’s true.”
Q: What audience do you think will like this movie the most – men, women, Millennials, older people?
A: “That’s an interesting question. I’m going to elaborate on that. I find that women, I’m going to say, over age 50 who’ve had careers on Wall Street or well into their career on Wall Street, they enjoy it, but some of them said to me, ‘It’s painful because I lived some of that, the sexism.’ So when they see some of this they find it painful, but they appreciate the movie. Men seem to like the movie. I just have to tell you, men – young, old – they all like it because sometimes men on Wall Street are considered hard ass, for the lack of a better word, and these women are strong women characters. They are not shrinking violets, let’s just put it that way. I think they appreciate that. We didn’t put any pretty lipstick on it. I think the men appreciate that it’s pretty realistic and we didn’t try to hide or cover up anything.”
Debbie Dingell
“I think younger women find it fascinating and it’s an interesting story, but I think they have to say to themselves, is this what I’m going to have to go through? In fact, after one of the screenings we had in Toronto, a mother came up to me and said to me, ‘What do I tell my young daughter? Should I tell her really not to go into Wall Street?’ It’s a tough world, but this is a tough world. The higher you go up the corporate ladder, it becomes very competitive and very political, and that’s why I think a lot of the women in Washington appreciate it, because they feel that way in their political careers. My comment is, I hope the answer is we need more women in that field. I hope they appreciate our character, the leading character, Naomi. I think she’s a very complex and very interesting woman. Anna Gunn gives one spectacular performance.”
