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FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

August 9, 2005

Life Imitates Art

The producers of Mona Lisa Smile, a Julia Roberts vehicle set at a 1950s women's college and focusing on a generation of women learning to stand up for their rights, settled a lawsuit today in Manhattan.

The retro (and not in a cool way) charge? Paying the film's female musicians less than they paid the male musicians for the same work. It's like it was the 1950's in the production accounting office, too.

According to the EEOC, Revolution Studios and Smile Productions LLC discriminated against 19 female musicians "with malice or with reckless indifference to the federally protected rights" of the workers. It is costing the producers more than $66,000 to clean up their mess - chicken feed - but they are taking some hits in the press, who appreciate the irony, given the firm's intended uplifting message. The initial savings can't be worth this trade-off.

I'm naive, I suppose, to be surprised this kind of thing is still happening, even in blue-safe places like Manhattan and LA. But it doesn't seem like rocket science to pay people who do the same work the same rate...I wonder if our only hope is idiot-proof accounting software. Because the human element seems to have a glitch.