Over the weekend, Lena Dunham, Kristen Wiig, Mindy Kaling and Jenji Kohan participated in a panel at Sundance, moderated by New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum, that discussed the opportunities and challenges female writers, directors and actresses face in Hollywood. Their entire hour and a half-long conversation is fascinating but if you only have time to watch a few minutes, their thoughts on whether audiences more frequently associate female actresses with the characters they play than they do male actors is particularly insightful and also includes a withering aside (courtesy of Dunham) about Woody Allen. Lena says:
"I don't think that Larry David or Woody Allen or anyone else playing some version of themselves is walking around with a million people that think that they know and understand them on a deep and abiding level or that everything they say in their films -- I mean, Woody Allen is proof that people don't think everything he says in his films is stuff that he does because all he was doing was making out with 17-year-olds for years and we didn't say a word about it. And then he did it! A bunch! No one went, 'Oh Woody Allen is making out with a 17-year-old in Manhattan, I guess he's a real perv.' And then lo and behold..."
Their conversation begins around the 35:00 mark and Lena's comments start at 37:30.
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