Women's Media Nation | Social, political, and cultural issues relating to women

Morningstar Commission Event: Inside the Hollywood Jewish Noggin

posted by Women & Hollywood
Friday, April 17, 2009 at 11:13am CDT

The stories of Hollywood’s founding are legendary. The twitter version for the uninitiated: A bunch of jewish immigrants migrated from NY to LA and created this new industry. If you want the real story read Neal Gabler’s How the Jews Invented Hollywood.

While there is no history of jewish women and Hollywood I can guarantee they are all over the place.

A group entitled The MorningStar Commission named for the Natalie Wood character in Herman Wouk’s novel was created by Hadassah to ensure that Jews are portrayed in a positive and diverse way in the media and entertainment.

They are holding an event in LA on April 26th. The event includes a conversation with Jenji Kohan the creator of Weeds and Danielle Berrin of LA’s Jewish Journal. There will also be small discussions featuring Deb Aquila, Iris Grossman, Jill Leiderman, Jill Soloway and Venessa Hidary the Hebrew Mamita will perform.

Here’s a description of the event from the group:

Men and women’s experiences are inherently different and there are differences between men and women’s Hollywood experiences as well. Our main speaker, Jenji Kohan in particular has been enormously successful at creating diverse Jewish characters that are real and don’t melt into stereotypes. How she was able to develop & sell such characters and then maintain such authenticity in a series will be exciting to learn about for anyone—in entertainment or not—interested in accurate portrayals of minorities in our media.

Details:

April 26

2-4pm

Skirball Cultural Center,Haas Bldg

2700 N. Sepulveda

Cost $10

RSVP: mscommission@aol.com or 310-712-5400