Filmmaker Statement

The Callback is a satire about an actor trying to succeed within a film industry that continues to misrepresent young women. My co-writer Lisa McElroy and I focused on her, but the challenges she encounters are systemic. We wanted to explore what happens to a talented, creative person who is caught in a corrosive system, and how she deals with it. The Callback is a critique of a film industry that writes women in one dimension. When #TimesUp made headlines, we were hopeful that the inequities that women experience in the industry might finally be recognized, however statistics remain grim. As women struggle to be seen and heard in front of and behind the screen, Hollywood seems poised to change, but it hasn’t. The Callback also touches on how friendships can form within oppressive systems and how creative and subversive actions, however minimal, might lead to change. Perhaps we were influenced by how we met as grad students in the SFSU Cinema Department, back in the 90s. We cont