the annenberg inclusion initiative evaluated 1300 top grossing movies from 2007 to 2019. in 2019 113 directors were attached to 100 top movies out of the 113 directors 12 were women our program talks with a tv and feature writer to discuss programs for this underrepresented population and how she has benefited by them it's good to have you here from los angeles this is klcs pbs welcome to everybody with angela williamson an innovation arts education and public affairs program everybody with angela williamson is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson jude roth hi welcome to the show thank you so much for having me tell us a little about yourself well like you said i am a tv and future writer and i have definitely benefited over the years by seeing progress that women are making as directors behind the camera on the page basically in every role possible but we have a lot further to go i started writing when i was um let's see a few years out of college and i i'd gone to nyu to school of the arts studied drama i was an actor and while i was there i started writing scripts but i intended to stick with theater after college so i was auditioning um for film and tv or at least wanting to and my agent at the time sent me out for a lot of videos music videos which is fine i have a background in dance and i was willing to give it a go but i think the final straw that pushed me into writing for film and eventually for tv was this one audition where he said please make sure you make your lips big and red because they're really looking for big red lips and i was like okay i don't want to disparage the face i have but i know angelina jolie i'm not gonna fool anyone no matter how much red lipstick i put on and i just felt really frustrated because it was it it basically encapsulated the types of roles that i was finding that i could go out for and i decided i need to try to write my own it came from a selfish place at first but i realized that if i could somehow help improve the roles that were being offered to actresses to play then and they ended up making a difference in the world getting out there then it could probably help improve how women were perceived and treated in the world so tell us about that first film you wrote to include women like you in as the starring role okay well i will say that the woman that was the anti-hero in the first script that i wrote it was an adaptation of a nobel prize-winning author's novel called a sport of nature i fell in love with the novel i fell in love with the character i'd never seen any female character like this before in film it was epic the way that gandhi was epic except it was told from the perspective of you know perhaps a not very likable woman who does starts off as a young girl she we see her grow up over 40 years or so and develop a conscience she was described in the book as someone who was not immoral not moral but amoral just had no sense of who she was in the in the context of society she was growing up in 1960s apartheid south africa and i didn't see myself as her i wanted to be her you know she became instrumental in taking down apartheid south africa not because she was the voice of dissent but because she got caught up in the movement in tanzania in eastern africa fell in love with a freedom fighter had his baby he was assassinated she ended up marrying a ghanaian fictional ghanaian president and wound up at the fictional nelson mandela's inauguration of south africa as their president of south africa all of this happened before mandela was even released from robben island and so the novel to me was prescient about what one person can do flawed as he she they may be once a consciousness is awakened to something greater than themselves and that was one reason i wanted to be a riddle she was really cool she was oh this boss and say also she was just a really cool person who i tend to worry too much she tended to worry not at all you know which maybe contributed to her lack of sense of morality but um in any case that was the first female character that i wanted to bring to the screen and i wound up being able to option the novel from nadine gordom or the author and worked with i knew i did not know what i was doing so i worked with a script consultant who had a wonderful background in helping filmmakers for decades get their work produced um get their scripts up to up to snuff so you wanted to change the way that women were viewed in their character's review in film so how does that actually tell us where jude comes from i grew up in a small western massachusetts town that was called the sign when you entered the town and when you left it was welcome to pittsfield massachusetts the plastics capital of the world and when you left it was the buy you're leaving the plastic capital of the world it was a town that had a major corporation in it and it employed a lot of the residents there that this big corporation fled overseas and left the town with pollution in its air in its water and its land and it decimated the area and it bankrupted so many people our main street which was north street started closing down and it was a very sad community there was a lot of devastation there the epa eventually won a suit to have this corporation clean up the area but it is still fighting to get the corporation to actually do that so i came from this town that had been thriving i witnessed a corporate decision to leave the town and it left it in not a very good state of affairs and at the same time i was a child and at the same time my family was going through a lot of personal drama of its own so while the town was falling apart so is my family how does our story shape us as storytellers and i'd love for you to talk about that what i know from walking in my shoes is very different from what you know walking in your shoes we all have i think as artists everywhere and human beings everywhere we have the ability if we're lucky to empathize and project ourselves imaginatively into other people's situations but nobody can tell my story the way i can tell it tell me how have you continued talking about marginalized society back in 2010 there was a senate bill in arizona uh senate bill 1070 i think it was it was dubbed the show me your papers bill it was the most heated bill of that era against um immigrants right so the sheriff at the time in um oh my gosh maricopa county i think it was was uh really not holding any punches back and going after immigrants in a way that i thought erroneously was the height of our immigration debate in this country it was very disheartening to me to see how undocumented immigrants were being treated and citizens who of america who were just racially profiled were being discriminated against i learned about this bill from an npr story i heard about farmers talking about how they hired undocumented immigrants because they could afford them and the immigration debate in this country was making it pretty much impossible for them to do that so there were two injustices i was seeing are we not paying our farmers enough that they can't hire uh people at living wages and the undocumented aspect and so i started exploring that topic of undocumented immigration and the harassment and the troubles that that community was facing so i wrote a 10-minute script called el doctor because i knew that a lot of people coming from a lot of different countries not just mexico and other latin and south american countries had professions before they got here you know went to school learned different trades and had to start over when they escaped intolerant or dangerous regimes the script was called el doctor wrote it in 2010 it was about an undocumented day laborer that was hired by a family in arizona to do some work out in the yard and through a tragedy of errors wound up on the run you need help come on let's go yes yes you migo some screaming inside my neighbor's house [Music] i wanted to explore what it was like from both the white privileged family perspective and there was a there was a break in the family even between husband and wife and where the wife was the more reactive of the two and what it was like for this undocumented laborer who turned out to be a doctor not to give too much away but now you know everything um so i wanted to explore what that was like in a brief period of time that ended up winning some film festivals and playing at some really prestigious ones that i love like the los angeles latino international film festival and latino public broadcasting ended up buying the film for a pbs online film festival thank you so much jude for not only sharing your personal story with us but using your talent to ensure that diversity is definitely in entertainment thank you so much [Music] hey world i have a quick message it's about safe driving all right let's go any time you're driving had the seatbelt buckle tight both hands on the wheel and your phone out of sight we're not in your hand trying to take somebody back because you see your car might get smacked the more of the story just put your phone down the people on the road will stay safe and sound put your phone down put your phone down people on the road will stay safe and sound [Music] according to the centers for disease control and prevention one in four adults in america live with some form of a disability and more than 10 of these adults are living with a cognitive disability tonight we talk with the founder of an organization helping individuals and families with cognitive disabilities dr donna hunter thank you so much for being here tell us a little bit about you oh thank you angela thank you for having me and truly my heart and passion is just to enlighten and encourage folks that do have family members or know folks that are affected with a developmental disability it's my heart's work and it's my my life's work there's a lot to dr hunter tell us a little bit about what you're up to okay i know there's a lot up you know because of course when you have a passion and you have a heart for something it opens doors so not knowing that my daughter's disability would lead to you know the making of a short film or the birthing of an organization that would help to educate families it's taken a whole different avenue for us that in turn also kind of opens the door to doing a book and just making sure that other families and folks know about what to do how to do it and where to get the resources they need if they have a family member with a developmental disability tell us a little bit about the documentary you helped produce tell us the title tell us a little bit of how you've been promoting it okay so we filmed this documentary back in 2012. and colored my mind it's an award-winning documentary has air here on pbs and some other stations during autism month so that it's an awareness piece it's definitely a piece where we came together myself tasha campbell martin ladonna hughley and two others we came together for the purpose of enlightening and educating families on the disability on disabilities and making sure that families and diverse communities especially in the african-american latino community get access to resources and interventions that could absolutely change the trajectory of their child's life so tell us a little bit about you are retired administrators so tell us how that role fits into ali's allies your non-profit organization and promoting this documentary okay so i know i i'm a young retired and i'm okay with that i'm a young retired because after a season 20 years i was a late i came late into education yes i did i came in to education at age 40 and i immediately got a counselor's position prior to that i was home because there was no place for my child i would say that she was going to school but not all of the interventions and resources were available to her and i didn't know how to fight so i went back to school just to find out information and how i could be an asset to my own daughter thus that propelled me into counseling and leadership and administration thus you know going all the way from being a counselor to a principal and that then after that season was over in the last year i moved into advocacy within the disability realm but for schools and for the community so that children could get access it's all about the access it's equity it's inclusion for those diverse communities which they don't always get so what have you learned as a school administrator that can help parents out there right now that has a person that they're caring for with a cognitive disability oh i love that i love that question because as an administrator it's it's so wonderful i feel so blessed in that i'm on both sides of the of the seat i've been on the side of the iep where you're crying and they're telling you the things that your child can do they they may not do and i've also been on the side where i'm sitting there and i'm hugging on a parent and telling them we're going to do our best we're going to give them what they need as much as we can and let's work together so i really feel that wonderful you know interesting juxtaposition that i hear i am a parent here i am a principal and i can have that visual and as i can also have that tacked out and i can have that presence of mind to be empathetic and also the knowledge to help them to move their child to the next level and as well the hard conversations because sometimes it's a difficult conversation let's talk about dr donna hunter who are you and where you're from including your book tell us about that okay so if you ask who is donna maria hunter dr hunter i and i i'm not only just a you know a mom of a special needs child but in our and in our community as an advocate but the very heart of coming from um here this community los angeles i'm a los you know i'm native los angeles los angeles and i love the portion of my life that was i i can celebrate the fact that i come from dire straits i come from welfare i come from not having enough food to eat i come from those places so that i can relate and i take that with me when i go into spaces where people don't always think just because she's dr donna marie hunter and she's now a number one best-selling book you know has a book it's a whole different trajectory but i also bring them back and say here's where i started and here's what i want to make sure that your child gets so i'm i would say if you ask who's doctor donna ray hunter she's that girl she's sitting on the porch at her house and i would say it's a little apartment and it's not the best one and she's also now in a home where she's actually advocating and doing other work but i'm both i'm heart and i'm also that woman from from way back when actually the little girl from way back when who didn't have very much as a young child do you think your story is very important especially as an advocate to reach various different people in demographics oh i think so one of the things about the film colored my mind is the name of our documentary one of the things about the film and that really brings home to folks is that we have women from each walk of life you've got the tish campbell who is this the actress you've got ladonna hughley who is dl hughley's wife and you've got tammy who's chaka khan's sister and then you've got shannon who is you know an attorney in the industry and then you've got donna donna donna hunter and she has a totally different idea or thought i think i hold two realities i hold the reality that my daughter's autistic she doesn't talk she's not potty trained fully so at times the other reality is i have a faith an unequivocal faith in god so i can believe and i can rest knowing that the end although it's not the end that i expected i'll rest in what he has in mind when we got that diagnosis it was like getting told that your child has cancer or something that's term i mean i didn't know what you know what that meant i just knew it wasn't going to be a normal life for him or us when he had his got his diagnosis in second grade by dr bj friedman at ucla she told us don't tell him what's going on you don't want it to be a crutch the things that go through your mind it's like is he gonna be one of the bums on the street talking to himself what's gonna happen if i die who's gonna take care of him because that mentality when you first get the diagnosis is it's like a death sentence i mean that's kind of what it feels like even though it's not so in the documentary you can see there's everybody from all walks of life and their children are at different levels but yet you can find a way to connect with them so when we go out into the community so i tell you this i go out to schools community centers as well as churches because that's one place we have really found that there's an open door for people in the african american and latino community they literally will come to a church for a symposium now it's got we make sure it's free that's one of the reasons why we raise funds for ally's allies so that we can go in give them the services and give them the information for free but that's the one connector and when they see the film that's part of our enlightenment so we educate them we talk about the cdc we talk about the learn the signs act early we talk about the true the entire mapping of from beginning very beginning to up up until like three to four years old we talk about that entire journey their early access journey we talk about that journey then we screen the film so we're doing a symposium for these folks and we screen the film and when immediately when they see these five women different walks of life children at different levels of autism or disability they can start to connect and they can kind of take their i would say that guard down because in our community there's a stigma a lot of times with regards to disabilities especially cognitive disabilities and any type of mental health so if that's true we've got to find a way and the film does just that it brings us all to a level where we all can say oh that's somebody just like me oh boy she has a child on a on the spectrum oh i can kind of get you we can you know we can make you i'll say connect with the film thus we then have an avenue to come in with the empower piece so we educate we enlighten and then we empower we empower folks with information that's what you don't know you don't know and once we give you the information you can then start to assimilate it sometimes it takes longer than others for you to really get a hold of the fact that maybe my child has a need and they have a disability but once you do within gets you connected with resources if it's in the school district wonderful because they also they always have the ape the adaptive um education the adaptive physical education the ot if they have um you know gross motor or fine motor disabilities and they also have the speech because one of the one of the telltale signs of a development developmental delay is speech so if you see those things and you know that this is your child and you can see families and folks that look like you telling you that there's hope and there's a brighter future for your child it kind of disarms them but it's got to be where they you know want to come most and that's in the schools that's in the community and that's in the churches so you talked about the empowerment part of it which is so important but then you also took some time to explain a lot of those difficult terms that parents hear and don't understand do you find that that's probably the biggest gap because people want they don't understand what they don't know yes i would definitely say so that's one of the pieces that has to come into play because if you're sitting across the table if you're in an iep which is an individual education plan it's the plan that we put together so that your child knows what they have won their baselines as well as what services we're going to invoke so that your child can continue to progress so that's part of the the learning that we do is to give you some vocabulary and some understanding of what all of these acronyms mean and how they can be beneficial to your child in that setting so tell us for a few minutes and i like to ask people let's talk about why you're with us today and you have one organization that you've started you talked a little bit about that but you also have another organization that you started in response to the book that you just wrote so i'd love for you to talk about that oh well thank you and i would say they all kind of piggyback on one another that's why i said the little girl and then you have the grown woman so in the book uh women who rise uh the chapter that i i really um connect of course the chapter that i wrote is repair of the breach so i talk a little bit about what it meant to be a child with nothing or with without without and with parents who are splitting divorcing abandoning all of that stuff i talk a little bit about that and then i talk about having a child with a disability and i thought all my hopes and dreams would be met in this child and here she has a developmental disability she can't do any of the things that i never got as a as a daughter so you have that dynamic going on then it comes around to how do we repair it how do we get to a point where we acknowledge that there's a disability there's some things that i did not get in life there's some things that my child may not do but how do we repair the heart so that we can go on to do great things and in our case one of my repairs is ally's allies taking a devastating diagnosis and going out and helping someone else's child are helping someone else that may have the same diagnosis or is grappling grappling with that type of diagnosis that's what i i would say that's one of my heart things when it came to really putting the book out there dr donna hunter thank you so much for everything that you do not only for advocating for people with cognitive disabilities but for also advocating for the people who care for them thank you so much i'm so gracious and thankful for you to have me here today angela and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson viewers like you make this show possible stay in touch with us on social media good night and stay well [Music] you