Invisibility

I was the writer and one of four producers on a seven-hour mini-series which we were shooting all over Europe. Fancy my surprise upon awakening one morning in Amsterdam to discover that the other producers had flown off to the South of France to do local casting and set up for the shoot there. I arrived in Nice later that day and walked into the middle of the casting session. There was no word of explanation, no apology, nothing.

This was only one of many instances in which I was treated like an invisible entity. There was the arrival in England, for example, where I discovered that no office had been assigned me at the studio there. One was eventually tossed together. It was only a short walk through the back lot -- and that was just to get to the coffee machine! Or the moment I discovered another writer had been hired to "punch up" the dialogue -- again, without the courtesy of even informing me.

Was it because I was the only woman on the "team" (this is a team?), or would another man also have been treated this way? I can only say that the executive producer reportedly had previously been fired from a network for sexual discrimination (he's a Caucus member, by the way) -- a little fact which my male agent neglected to tell me until I was already involved in the project. The thing I kept wondering was, what are these clowns afraid of? Does putting me down really make them feel more powerful? What are we, still in the sandbox here?

Carmen Culver is a television writer and producer.