JustErin said:

i just listed a bunch, but

sandra bernhard is one of my all-out favorite comedians.

many of the classic SNL performers - gilda, jane curtain, lorraine newman...cheri oteri (for god's sake), molly shannon...remember melanie hutsell from the crappy 80s years? probably not, but she couldn't do anything that didn't leave me cackling (she used to play jan brady)...jan hooks and nora dunn (oh my GOD, their lifetime "attitudes" skits were perfect)

julia louis dreyfuss was brilliant on seinfeld, i thought

dawn french and jennifer saunders - joanna lumley, for that matter

judy davis is hysterical in woody allen's movies, and mia farrow had a great comedic timing in his comedies back in the day.

shall i go on?

Anxiety said:

i think french & saunders have guy like qualities

Anxiety said:

Most (yes, I know not all) of those women are reading other people's material - men's material.

JustErin said:

you're right with judy, mia and to varying extents the SNL gals and julia...though jan hooks and nora dunn mostly wrote their own skits, which was a big coup for women on SNL.

which reminds me: tina fey. rachael dratch. funny.

parker posey. funny.

andrea martin and catherine o'hara from SCTV.

jennifer coolidge. hilarious.

i guess you could make the "men's words" argument with them also, even though if you consider the christopher guest films, parker, catherine and jennifer were all doing improv.

and, ya know, as a male who has written for the stage, i think women are a lot more fun to write for than men, because i feel like an actress is going to go a lot farther with her interpretation of my writing than a man will.
[Edited 6/20/08 7:30am]

JustErin said:

you're right with judy, mia and to varying extents the SNL gals and julia...though jan hooks and nora dunn mostly wrote their own skits, which was a big coup for women on SNL.

which reminds me: tina fey. rachael dratch. funny.

parker posey. funny.

andrea martin and catherine o'hara from SCTV.

jennifer coolidge. hilarious.

i guess you could make the "men's words" argument with them also, even though if you consider the christopher guest films, parker, catherine and jennifer were all doing improv.

and, ya know, as a male who has written for the stage, i think women are a lot more fun to write for than men, because i feel like an actress is going to go a lot farther with her interpretation of my writing than a man will.
[Edited 6/20/08 7:30am]

Anxiety said:

did you see their movie?

Anxiety said:

I'm just being contrary. I know that there are some funny chicks out there but I think they are definitely the exception and not the rule.

JustErin said:

not everyone can be dane cook.

Anxiety said:

Oh shut up.

JustErin said:

i just listed a bunch, but

sandra bernhard is one of my all-out favorite comedians.

many of the classic SNL performers - gilda, jane curtain, lorraine newman...cheri oteri (for god's sake), molly shannon...remember melanie hutsell from the crappy 80s years? probably not, but she couldn't do anything that didn't leave me cackling (she used to play jan brady)...jan hooks and nora dunn (oh my GOD, their lifetime "attitudes" skits were perfect)

julia louis dreyfuss was brilliant on seinfeld, i thought

dawn french and jennifer saunders - joanna lumley, for that matter

judy davis is hysterical in woody allen's movies, and mia farrow had a great comedic timing in his comedies back in the day.

shall i go on?

JustErin said:

ok, now I'M being contrary.

i think there are a lot of great male comedians, sure. but most male comedians i like make me grin and think, "oh that's clever" while most female comedians punch me in the gut and get the reflexive bellylaugh from me.

i think my biggest problem with male comedians is a fear of vulnerability. for every crispin glover or brother theodore who are willing to look completely bonkers and go over the edge, you have 10 or 20 dane cooks or carlos mencias, who come across as smug and condescending and would sacrifice the funny for the sake of looking cool. that doesn't make me laugh. women comedians don't seem as caught up in that to me.

JustErin said:

ok, now I'M being contrary.

i think there are a lot of great male comedians, sure. but most male comedians i like make me grin and think, "oh that's clever" while most female comedians punch me in the gut and get the reflexive bellylaugh from me.

i think my biggest problem with male comedians is a fear of vulnerability. for every crispin glover or brother theodore who are willing to look completely bonkers and go over the edge, you have 10 or 20 dane cooks or carlos mencias, who come across as smug and condescending and would sacrifice the funny for the sake of looking cool. that doesn't make me laugh. women comedians don't seem as caught up in that to me.

Anxiety said:

Excellent list of funny ladies!

I would like to add Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball.

JustErin said:

ok, now I'M being contrary.

i think there are a lot of great male comedians, sure. but most male comedians i like make me grin and think, "oh that's clever" while most female comedians punch me in the gut and get the reflexive bellylaugh from me.

i think my biggest problem with male comedians is a fear of vulnerability. for every crispin glover or brother theodore who are willing to look completely bonkers and go over the edge, you have 10 or 20 dane cooks or carlos mencias, who come across as smug and condescending and would sacrifice the funny for the sake of looking cool. that doesn't make me laugh. women comedians don't seem as caught up in that to me.

WHY PERIODS ARE NO JOKE
http://www.guardian.co.uk...mtisnojoke

When female comedians strive to address issues that 'concern women', they quickly stop being funny

The assertion that Tina Fey may well be the most powerful woman in US comedy is wholly depressing, coming as it does after Baby Mama, Fey's latest dreadful offering.

Baby Mama follows the nauseating and cliched 2004 Mean Girls, which, apparently sans irony, defied expectations by being - amazingly - a movie about bitchy, shallow teenage girls.

And now, yet again, Fey ostensibly tries to break new cinematic comedic ground - with a movie about fertility.

We had Knocked Up; we had Juno; and now we have Fey's Baby Mama, which may well have performed at the box office but has merely proved Christopher Hitchens correct when he makes the claim that women just aren't funny.

Yep, women really aren't funny - especially when they decide to act in a movie about chicks, for chicks, written by a dick.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey can be hilarious - particularly Fey, with her excellent (self-written) 30 Rock. But a movie such as Baby Mama establishes them as funny only in the way in which you snicker at a friend's PMT-stricken bitchy girlfriend, grateful that you don't have to go home with her and shut her up with an hour of tedious oral sex.

Although I find the whimsical Sarah Silverman, with her revoltingly kitsch drivel, less desirous to please her female audience (she would play only with boys in the schoolyard, you can tell), she is entertaining in her place, too. The problem with bad female humour is that it seems to derive from a need for unattractive, bitchy women to be liked by their female counterparts and to address issues that "concern women".

It is predominantly a feminine pursuit, a little bit like dressing up on a Friday night. We pretend it's for our own self-esteem or for attracting a life partner/weekend shag, when we all know a man couldn't care less whether you're wearing Chanel or H&M - unlike our girlfriends.

Women check out other women more than men do. If men had their way, we would all be wandering around dressed in minimal, Page 3 attire.

Fey et al are so much funnier when they stop trying to "dress" for other women. As much as I would like to stand up for my sex on this one, I have to say that Chris Rock, Richard Pryor - and over on the other side of the Atlantic, Ricky Gervais, Mitchell and Webb et al - are funnier than women such as Tina Fey and Catherine Tate, who rise to the top of the pile initially because of talent, and then lose it because they want to be liked.

Women's humour derives from a kind of ironic self-deprecation that is never wholly self-deprecating and always carries an edge of prickliness to it: ("Laugh, bitch, or you can't be m y friend. Please laugh ... please...)

Chris Rock nails the state of female comedy with his hilarious and devastating observations on marriage "You have to share the same focus," he yells out to the audience. "And what's that focus? HER!."

Female comedians make this ever more explicit. If they are as funny as men, they rapidly lose it with some saccharine offering for the female contingent who probably, like me, prefer it when they are being themselves, as I think Fey is with 30 Rock, and Tate with The Catherine Tate show.

I'm so bored of hanging out with my own PMT-ing, bleeding self several days a month, the last thing I want to do is hang out with anyone else's. Fertility, babies, best friends, fashion, teenage girly cliques, hormones, menstruation, menopause ... Do you find it funny? Laugh anyway - otherwise you're playing in the sandbox alone at recess.

As women, we all know what it's like to churn out the sycophantic laughter for our fellow (cooler, more attractive) females in the school playground, or for the really dumb, unfunny hot guy who's trying to be Chris Rock (and failing). And yet, with the absence of anything better out there, we cling on to the myth that women such as Fey and Silverman are as funny as society tells us they are - even when they screw up - because we are crying out for female "role-models" to even up the balance in this male-dominated arena. Surely it is more beneficial to give it to 'em straight. Ladies, the laughter has left the room. Try harder.

As a male friend who is an ardent admirer of Fey and Poehler puts it, "They can be really funny - 30 Rock is total genius - but it seems more and more that they're just pandering to a chick lit crowd, being 'nice' to get women audiences in."

The launch of the female-friendly website Jezebel again reiterated this pattern. Ostensibly launched as "a smart, feisty antidote to traditional female magazines", it descended into the kind of bitch-slapping sesh we all associate with women trying to be funny, and funny and funnier, and eventually turning into addled, bitter, snidey wenches, and doing it so goddamn well.

Jezebel has now banned nasty remarks on its site, the New York Times reports. Yet surely it got to where it is - half a million unique visitors a month - after it was name checked on the Gossip Girl site, precisely because of those hilariously mean remarks.

Is this, too, what happens to female comedians? Once they reach the pinnacle of their talents and are assured of our friendship, they bale out and start wanting to be David Tennant's nice, inoffensive girlfriend? Once they've made friends with the popular, hot girls they always felt intimidated by and like to poke fun at, they turn around, get nose jobs and become those same girls.

Is the realm of female comedy ruled by just as much clique-iness, bitchiness, backbiting and need to be liked as the 100 minutes of total drivel outlined in Mean Girls? Did Fey ... have a point?

I dunno. But I sure as hell hope her next offering returns to the genius of 30 Rock and bypasses the bloopers of her movies, which only provide fuel for the likes of the pompous Hitchens. Incidentally, was someone trying to be funny when they commissioned him to write that piece?

G0d - are you male, female or ambidextrous?