Jungle

We will trace how our group of women overcame the sexism and growing greed of an era, as well as their own personal demons to create nothing less than a cultural paradigm shift.

Marianne, a young executive music producer arrives in 1980’s Los Angeles, fresh off the boat from London. She only knows one person in town but is determined to make a new life for herself. She holds more than a secret or two. Her abusive marriage to a famous musician and a gangster who wooed her are only a part of the puzzle. Emerging from the liberation of the 60’s and 70’s she, like every other woman of her generation has to confront the Greed Decade where men are coked up, high off the Reagan Era of success. Into this roiling melee she steps into the brand new, undefined world of music television.

We follow Marianne as she makes her way into a position of power where she influences the content of the stories being told in this new, powerful form, emboldens female talent, finds and nurtures the new directors ready to disrupt filmmaking, all while tap dancing around the men who try to put her “in her place”, along with her female colleagues.

Drawing on the life and career of Anne-Marie Mackay, a pioneer who oversaw the success of the music video revolution, a production empire and all the revered talent it would spawn in the 1980’s we’ll explore how the experiment known as MTV made way for women to use their voices when it came to their own careers as producers and artists.

In 1984 the MTV awards began and artists like Madonna, Tom Petty, Cindy Lauper and David Bowie were receiving accolades from this new phenomenon. By 1986 it was already the gold star of the music industry claiming itself to stand squarely next to other award ceremonies like the Emmys, the Grammys or the Oscars.