100th Anniversary - Guest Blog: Cartsonis

This week we are honored and privileged to feature Ms. Susan Cartsonis, both Film Producer and President of Storefront Pictures. Ms. Cartsonis was a ‘Conversations of Consequence' Speaker at the Girl Scouts National Convention and has a world of knowledge to share with both women and girls alike. Thank you, Susan, for this wonderful piece! 

Email us and tell us your story!  You could be our next guest blogger!

__________________________________________________________

Susan Cartsonis
Film Producer
and President of
Storefront Pictures

I’m a Hollywood Producer, which means I bring all the elements of a movie (the script, the director, the actors, and the money) together to make a movie happen.  My last movie was called BEASTLY, a modern day retelling of "Beauty and the Beast".  I’m Chair of the Foundation Board of Women in Film, which gives grants to female filmmakers internationally and scholarships to directors and cinematographers.  We document female icons in front of and behind the camera. This foundation is important to me because there aren't enough women in front of or behind the camera and there aren't enough movies made specifically with the female audience in mind.  I know that it is good business to make movies for the female audience - because that's what I've done for over 20 years—as an executive and as a producer. But it's frustrating, because not enough movies are made for this audience and women buy half the tickets! 

In all my films I try to make conscious creative decisions because women and girls are looking at the images portrayed on the screen closely - projected to 100 times the size of real life. I’ve learned that through storytelling, decisions we make we have the capacity to empower through entertainment and bring about positive personal and social change.  How do I know?  Because I have been inspired myself by the movies that I have seen - since I was a Brownie Girl Scout!  When I saw THE WIZARD OF OZ I saw a girl from a small town (like me!) who went on an adventure and overcame her fears, including intimidation, and fear of the unknown, to become a braver and better person. She also gained an appreciation of her own home town.  FUNNY GIRL was another favorite movie of mine.  The odd girl who didn't fit in became the biggest star in the world!  It sent the message that it's ok if you don't look like everyone else and if you're an original.

When I was making AQUAMARINE, the director and I came to a conscious decision that we would dress the mermaid in a dress made from an old t-shirt that she tied in a bunch of different ways.  The character who originally wore the t-shirt and gave it to the mermaid, played by Jojo Levesque, was a tomboy who didn't think much about clothing. Through the mermaid's originality and creativity, she essentially took an old rag and turned it into fashion. Thorough this, the tomboy learns to enjoy having a little style and sees how beautiful her old t-shirt could be.  The message was that you don't have to have money to have style - which I think is true.  Both the (female) director and I thought that too much emphasis was placed on labels rather than creativity, and we wanted to share that message with the girls who watched our film.  

I know that through storytelling, we can actually change the world.  After I made the movie BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER as an executive, many girls told me that it got them through difficult times in high school because even though Buffy is a fictitious character, she's pretty, powerful, and smart all at once.  

In BEASTLY we tried to show the importance of knowing that one must be beautiful on the inside, and that it is more important than being beautiful on the outside.  We made our leading lady, Vanessa Hudgens, a girl who is smart in school - even though she's battling a lot of problems at home.

I want to make movies that feature women as scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, while doing other things like falling in love and having adventures, because I know that if we have the images of strong powerful smart and interesting women on the screen who are in the STEM subjects, it will inspire more girls to be scientists and engineers and mathematicians!  My friend, the actress Geena Davis, has founded a whole institute that examines how we are influenced by how women are portrayed on screen and how to improve things by making relatively minor changes in the way that women are shown on screen (www.seejane.org).  She's taken her research to the big studios to ask them to do things differently.  She's inspired by her own children to do this work and I think she's great.

We need more women OWNERS of film and media companies to really shake things up.  I'm hoping a lot of Girl Scouts will go into entertainment, help Geena and me, and be the next generation of change-makers and leaders in entertainment!  We need the next generation of storytellers to help change things.

Here's an idea for a romantic comedy:  I want my next movie to be about a woman mathematician who is single and decides to take matters into her own hands by using discrete math to find a great guy.  Or maybe a female superhero?  This is my passion, this is my business, and telling stories on screen is what I live to do and what I love to do.  It's so much fun.

- Susan Cartsonis

__________________________________________________________