The H.A.H.A. Boys Club

Devon Sawa: Eric

---

The only thing he's got is us. Us three, our shack, our fucking shit, okay? This doesn't have to be a big deal Brad, we pushed the car so what? Here we go, Bradley, are you in or are you out? I said you'll have to leave or we'll call the police. That's it Barney, call the police. Yeah, Barney cause you got first big guy? Hey ah, do you like this?

Put the bottle back, sir. No, he's a fucking cheese sandwich. I mean, he sucks about this, he suck's about that, he suck's about everything!. And now the bullets! He can't even protect himself! He isn't a cop eh? Yeah, he told me. Eric, come over here please? Dead, we're dead, we're diffidently dead, we're dead, we're dead. Okay, what are we gonna do? We're gonna say it was as stupid as hell right? Kyle, I am not going back there! Where's the fucking car? Kyle, are you okay? We're getting a car! We'll get my mom's car! We'll fucking get my mom's car! He's gonna kill all of us, asshole! I'm just trying to think okay?

He fuckin' shot em! What the fuck is happening? We're getting the cops in here and I'm You think he wants to hear that? You don't care if his brother dies do you? I'm not the one who brought the bullets now did I? With a big mouth and I don't respect you and I never have! Fuck you, you asshole! He's got a box of em' in the closet! Okay, why does somebody ask for bullets? I mean he's gotta have some sort of protection. Look, If anybody gets hurt now, it's because of us. Or you two, because I'm out of this. We'll- we'll just tell him we couldn't get it.

Alright fine, okay I- I don't even care anymore.

And My #MeToo Call For Radical Change

Eric, I'm right this time. Simon, you got it right? He's taking it from Oh, c'mon don't be an asshole, just give us our booze! You gonna fight me for it? You wanna come and get it, I'll give it to you huh? Come and get it! What are you gonna do about it? See how this works, you motherfucker? Not so fucking tough anymore are ya!

Kevin Spacey’s ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ Opens With Abysmal $618

This gun's what it's all about, you filthy fuck! Kyle, Don't do this, man. What are you telling me? Come out here for a second! That was along time ago! Oh, gimme a break! Can you help me? I mean what was he supposed to do? Yeah, but your own dad's car? So- whats your point? I don't know its just- it's weird. It's something Jake would do. Jake didn't do it, I did it. He pissed me off. Hey, hey, relax okay, guys? Wait, it's the battery.

Can you hear me? Now you hear me clear that time?

Listen, now your cutting off, Betty? Not kidding, about ten times. You boys stay out late tonight? Just get me to the road. Need a road map. Gotta swipe a car. This is it, boys. What are you doing? Oh you mean ta- yeah. We've outlined the rules. Women have to take off their tops. That's uh, pretty funny. Okay, Hold on, are you some kind of pervert or something? Okay, Lets say we talk about something else, hey guys? So what do you think? Um, do you really wanna know? Just being a smart ass. Yeah, well everybody's a smart ass every now and then.

We won't hold it against ya Megan. Hey, guys, I mean to not cause any trouble but, since when do we let women in here? I don't know, those girls on the wall there, they seem welcome enough. Look what they're wearing. Unless those women are wearing no tops. Actually, Megan that's the rules. Those are the rules. Well, If those are the rules, guess I better follow the rules eh?

I actually thought she was gonna do that. Yeah, you know what? That's because you're drunk. Yeah but after, I mean the getting shot part. That I don't know. It happened so fast. Next would come the workplace.

During the four year span that I was employed by a local Italian restaurant as a hostess, I would be grabbed, taunted and harassed by the adult patrons, my coworkers and even the owner of the establishment where I landed my first after-school job. Male patrons would regularly jeer and leer at me when I walked through the dining hall. A female coworker once yelled for attention then pulled up my skirt in front of a fully staffed kitchen so everyone could have a good look at my exposed lower half. After at least a year of consistent harassment, humiliation and tongue-biting, I finally mustered up the courage to report what I was experiencing to my female manager.

A few days later, I came in to work to hear that she had confronted the restaurant owner, gotten into an explosive argument with him and had subsequently been fired. I started applying for a lottery of other jobs but got no call backs. Needing the income, I forced myself to return to the morally-bankrupt work environment for several more years, until I finally left home for college, despite the anxiety I felt before every shift. This experience informed how I would come to feel about reporting disturbing behaviors in the workplace in the future; with serious trepidation and skepticism.

I eventually recovered from my eating disorder with the help of my sister and counseling, but drugs and alcohol became my next, more culturally acceptable method for numbing out and escaping reality. After a few years as a constantly intoxicated teenager, a series of events forced me to wake up from my chemically altered headspace long enough to shift my focus to my schoolwork and my small-town exit strategy around junior year of high school.

Letting their pessimism fuel my determination, I did everything in my power to prove my skeptics wrong. I worked feverishly hard in college to earn top-tier grades and stay financially afloat, juggling several work-study jobs and mailing out a constant stream of scholarship essay submissions, while simultaneously blowing off steam and self-medicating my anxiety with alcohol and an active party life. While I earned the respect of my professors, my attempts to fit in with the affluent student population at my college were largely a bust.

In many ways it felt like they were from some bizarre foreign country, not nearby upstate New York and New Jersey. As for my love life, throughout my late-teens into my mid-twenties I struggled through not just one, but two, long-term relationships with young men who eventually became verbally and physically abusive towards me, typically under the influence of alcohol.

I faced gendered hostility from yet another male boss who constantly belittled and demeaned me. Fed up with him, the company and the culture of sexism that seemed to saturate home, I decided to take on even more student debt to get my MFA in graphic design, far away in Savannah, Georgia. During that intense, two-year academic period, I finally felt massively venerated and joyful in my work. I was, at long last, recognized and rewarded for the quality of my ideas and my diligence on high-scoring, award-winning design projects.

I thrived socially, making friends with a large international group of fellow graduate students who all took their studies and professional achievements just as seriously as I did. Things were looking up in my world, but even during this more gratifying time, sex once again cast a shadow on my path. Just before graduation, a competitive classmate spread rumors that I was trading sexual favors for good grades. Elated to gain access to the famed animation campus as one of two graphic design interns, our morning orientation felt like some otherworldly dream.

But before I even had the chance to sit down in the fancy swivel chair in my new office, a seasoned employee waved a red flag about the kind of behavior or misbehavior I could expect in the studio. I was likewise told to steer clear of a particularly chauvinistic male lead in my department. She instructed me to avoid him and do my best not to land a spot on his team. To say I expected more from the men and women calling the shots at Pixar would be a gross understatement.

And the flood of reality-checking blows continued to roll in.

When he said he recognized my surname and my look from his part of the world, the hair all over my body stood up on high alert. He told me he was excited to finally have a beautiful face from his motherland in the studio. I smiled and nodded, said nice to meet you and scampered off down the hall so fast I burnt my hand with hot tea.

When I turned the corner to my office I peeked back down the hall. Over the years, I white-knuckled my way through many unwelcome, objectifying interactions with him, with Lasseter and other men. I also recalled how my pleas for help had backfired on me when I reported harassment at my high-school restaurant job, so I decided to follow suit with many other female Pixarians, who would privately warn one another which men to avoid, but otherwise kept their discomfort to themselves.

Pushing back on or reporting this man would have been the more dignified and principled response, but I cannot say with confidence that either path would have been the most beneficial for my budding career in animation. The ex-employee gave me permission to anonymously share her testimony about her experiences with the department lead:. Before I had a chance to respond, her floating head disappeared.

My face flushed red hot with shock, then disappointment, then rage. My gut told me that this exclusion tactic came from mid-level managers who were shielding John and the company at large from a potential lawsuit, and that it had little to do with protecting me. It was clear that the institution was working hard to protect Lasseter, at the expense of women like me. I put my head back down and kept working. When the day of our next art review arrived I watched in stone silence as the big man himself walked past my cubicle with his entourage in tow, the rest of the art department already waiting inside for his arrival.

As the door, which was just three feet in front of my desk, slammed shut behind them, it felt like a proverbial door was closing on my career. He gave out countless lecherous looks or unwanted hugs and touches to women he passed every day on campus. He was known for kissing on and groping women at studio events and wrap parties, even the wives and girlfriends of his subordinates.

These very public displays were so cringeworthy and inappropriate to not only the women who braved the stage but also to the general audience that the company eventually asked a lead animator to take over as the master of ceremonies. Not surprisingly, tactless behavior towards women had a way of trickling all the way down through the ranks. About halfway through my time at the studio, I had a more intimate, disturbing physical encounter with a brazen male employee from outside my department.

Like a deer in headlights, I froze until my violator stumbled drunkenly away from me. The bar was loud, low-lit and filled shoulder-to-shoulder with intoxicated employees. I looked around, but no one seemed to have noticed what had just happened. A few minutes after this encounter, I left the work party to head home, equal parts infuriated, shaken-up and perplexed.

I replayed the moment in my mind over and over again.

Mistryghat Boys's Club

Similar to the time that a complete stranger covertly stuck his hand under my skirt and grabbed my vagina in a packed San Francisco bar before slipping away into the crowd, a wave of strange heat had come over me immediately after his unwelcome hand made contact with my body. I have since come to understand that this phenomenon is actually an automatic chemical response to physical aggression. Focused on what I thought were my own mistakes that night, I decided not to report the experience the following Monday.

LA Times reporter, David Ng, described the atmosphere at Pixar rather bluntly in a recent article about John and the studio he was pivotal in creating:. I eventually found much-needed support and unity with other female coworkers. While I found it healing to bond with a fellowship of women who could understand and personally relate to the many hurdles I faced as a female minority in the studio, it was equally as disheartening to hear your own hardships echoed in the mouths of so many other ambitious, talented and capable women, even across generations.

I realized that others had also been inappropriately touched or demeaned by men in the company.

Many of us knew how discouraging it felt to pour our hearts into every project that landed on our desks, but receive more praise and acknowledgment for our appearance or our fashion choices than our ideas and highly-skilled contributions. Most of us knew what it was like to be excluded from lively conversations that would fall silent when we entered conference rooms or offices that were dominated by men. We each formed our own strategies for facing a system designed to protect male leads at all costs; men who often treated us like outsiders or objects. As I mentioned previously, those who did speak up were often let down by management, even when those managers were fellow women.

One female friend had a particularly hard time getting support when a life threatening illness got in the way of her work duties. She had been hospitalized for months and was still dealing with serious health issues after returning to work, but when she attempted to communicate these challenges to her female manager, she felt dismissed and even threatened.

My friend continued to have harsh interactions with this manager, who was known for dismissing and even bullying those who turned to her for help, especially when those subordinates were women. Without the advocacy of her supervisor, tensions quickly rose between my friend and her two male department heads, who started to verbally accost her in her cubicle over their unmet expectations. Feeling threatened and upset by this combative behavior, my friend scheduled a meeting with her lead department manager.

Women were not the only ones to go on carrying cost, but these dormant work periods certainly seemed more common for employees who used the restrooms marked by Bo-Peep instead of the Woody silhouette. Despite the fact that I received uncommonly high raises and performance bonuses every year and was told I was articulate, fast and proficient at my job while on production, I was put on carrying-cost for literally the last year and a half that I was gainfully employed by the studio.

During this period, I was expected to come into the studio during regular office hours, to reach out to support departments for potential side projects like studio t-shirt designs and event posters , take or teach classes through Pixar University or devise other creative ways to kill time. But as a driven and passionate career woman, each month of passing dormancy felt like a cruel and unusual kind of torture for me.

Riddled with guilt and anxiety about my job standing and future, I suffered from insomnia and spent most days submerged by feelings of depression and an overwhelming sense of purposelessness. Long before my anxiety-inducing dry-spell had begun, I caught wind that Pixar was finally making a second film with a lead female character, and immediately knew I wanted to be a part of it. The imaginative new original, Inside Out , was about an year-old tomboy who struggles with a move from the rural countryside to big city San Francisco.

I was thrilled at the chance to work on a film that so closely resembled my own life story. Lo and behold, [The Artist] was cast as the sole designer on the film for several years, and my requests to share the workload with him even though I had little else to do with my days were continuously ignored, no matter how stressed out and overstretched he became. During my five years in the art department, the production designer role was exclusively occupied by men, mostly who had been grandfathered in to the company back in their early Redwood City days.

These stereotypically masculine, destructive leadership styles were well known across employees, management and HR. But the chaos caused by their counterproductive approaches fell before everyone else to navigate, and any feedback that was expressed seemingly never made it up the ladder to equally challenge the men in charge. Management and production teams across the studio were well known for cleaning up the messes of the poorly-behaving powerful men in our midst.

A female lead in my department once begged her bosses to bring on more artists to help her with a challenging, long-term production project. Her superiors repeatedly ignored her requests, until the stress of the job led her to psychological and physical breakdown. When she went on sabbatical to recover, her male replacement was given a team of half a dozen artists to help him complete the same task. I admit, the rumors about one particular producer were so relentless that I found myself tightening up with tension when I passed her in the halls.

In the months following, I had the pleasure of regularly being in the same room as this widely-feared woman during several round table discussions. I was surprised and quite frankly, blown away by how consistently articulate, quick-witted, professional and effective she was as a leader. Brenda came to Pixar with a long, established career in animation under her belt. Brenda then went on to direct her own feature animation film with DreamWorks called The Prince of Egypt , which was released in Soon after, Brenda began developing her own project.

Rumor had it that she had been indecisive, unconfident and ineffective as a director. But for me and others who worked closely with the second-time director, there was a palpable sense of outrage, disbelief and mourning after Brenda was removed from the film. Brenda knew exactly what film she was making and was very clear in communicating her vision, the story artist said, and the film she was making was powerful and compelling. It would never fit neatly into the Pixar canon of films made exclusively from and for the male perspective, she explained with audible heaviness in her throat.

I would later hear these same kinds of sentiments echoed even by male crew members who lived through the director change. During the summer of , I personally worked on Brave while Brenda was still in charge. I likewise never felt that she was uncertain about the kind of film she was making, or how to go about making it. Emma Coats, a former Pixar story artist who worked on Brave, told BuzzFeed that Brenda would advocate for those who were often talked over in meetings. Coats eventually left Pixar, and animation all together, because of how disheartened she was about what happened to Brenda in More recently, actress and screenwriter Rashida Jones and her professional partner Will McCormack addressed their decision to leave their posts as writers on Toy Story 4.

We encourage Pixar to be leaders in bolstering, hiring, and promoting more diverse and female storytellers and leaders.

We hope we can encourage all those who have felt like their voices could not be heard in the past to feel empowered. Rashida joined Pixar during the tail end of my time with the company. I once asked a male coworker on the Toy Story 4 crew what she was like to work with. She looks nothing like a movie star in person. Women, Work, and the Will to Lead , has helped me make sense of the way women were treated at Pixar.

• Self-Paced Phonics: A Text for Educators
• APPEARANCES (Angelic Novella 1)
• Turbulent Emotions
• What Is Due Process? (Cato Unbound Book 2062012)
• The Amazing Aerobatic Adventure of RAF Bunny