“The only thing I can say is I’ve talked to women about this and what I come away with is four words: ‘Women must be heard.’ That’s my mantra. Is that five words? No, four words. It’s like I say to my agent every day, the magic four words: ‘Get me a job.’ Come on!”

Are studio moguls just waiting to resume their bad old ways when the umbrage abates?

“Well, we’re all suffragettes,” he says. “We got to get women equal pay. We got to get ’em on the map. We got to respect ’em. We got to keep our hands off ’em unless they beg for it.”

Mr. DeVito produced and acted in “Man on the Moon” with Jim Carrey, about the late comedian Andy Kaufman, who played Latka Gravas on “Taxi.” He recalls the days when Kaufman used to belittle and then wrestle with women delivering U.P.S. packages to the “Taxi” set.

“He’d say, ‘Why are you taking a job away from a man? You should be in the kitchen cooking! You know how many men need a job? You’re taking a job! Go on, what are you going to do, honey?’ And they would wrestle him.

“I actually thought, in hindsight, that Andy was having us on. Now that I know everything about him, it’s not out of the question that Andy got a woman, got her a costume, gave her a big package with nothing in it, and had her act like a U.P.S. person.”

He says the best way to thrive in Hollywood is to not focus on all the jerks and talentless hacks and insecurities.