Before the release of "Late Night Show", the two leading actors came to the podcast The Guilty Feminist as a guest, and held a screening + after-film discussion. Both Emma and Mindy made appearances, but Mindy only stayed for a short while, mainly the hosts Deborah and Emma were chatting, of course, the theme was comedy and women. Here is a brief translation of Emma's part. Except for some comments in parentheses, all content in this article is from the podcast The Guilty Feminist, Ep.152, 06/03/2019.
Emma started by talking about her experience doing comedy at a young age. She started doing standup, and when she was 25, she thought, if she kept doing stand-up, she would be scared to death by the stage before she was 30. Later, I did a sketch TV show on BBC4, but the production process of the show was not smooth. The leaders of BBC4 read the script and felt that it was not funny. As a result, Emma ran to his office and performed it from beginning to end, and finally succeeded in amusing the leaders and was approved for production. However, the media's evaluation was not good. Everyone said that she hated men. She thought it was no problem. It is normal for the audience to have different opinions when a show is made. The Independent commented that this show is very important, it is expanding the boundaries of comedy and providing a different voice for comedy, but the Guardian directly said who the fk gave this woman the money to make this shit? The Guardian article is full of subjective colors 's comments made Emma feel malicious, and then decided to switch to a drama. But she doesn't fully agree with the statement that the entire system at the time was rejecting female comedians. After all, there were already producers who were consciously helping women and minorities at the time.
Host Deborah specifically mentioned the issue of mutual help among women. She believes that women from all walks of life have experienced isolation and that when these women try to help other women, the men around them start to distrust her. This is also reflected in the movie, when Katherine sided with Molly. Emma said that men entering any industry are like driving on a highway, with road signs and guidance everywhere; while women usually have to walk to the edge of a cliff to know that the road is blocked and need to turn back, because no one reminds her along the way. This is especially true in the comedy industry, where women are generally considered to have no sense of humor. And men are used to making fun of women, such as the classic old joke "How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?" It's not funny, but it's been circulating down. Many men naturally assume that women simply lack a sense of humor. Emma says if women didn't have a sense of humor, we'd be dead. Katherine, an older woman in the comedy industry who is part of Molly's lead on "Late Night," appreciates the setting. But (dialectical thinking again) she also admits that being unleaded in her career is also a good opportunity to play. For example, in her stand-up comedy at the age of 23, STDs are often brought to her lips. This is actually from her real experience. At that time, her Australian boyfriend infected her with inflammation through sexual behavior, so she often asked questions during the performance. The men in the audience, "Do you usually wash your hands well?" The men who are asked usually hesitate, while the female partner beside him will be nervous and say, "Yes, he will wash! Emma will ask, "Don't answer for him. Have you washed a few hands from the inside out, from top to bottom?" She is very keen to discuss personal hygiene issues with the audience. People in the 1980s treated this disease. They didn't have that many pieces of anti-inflammatory drugs. They would use cotton swabs dipped in yogurt and put them in to help kill the fungus (I checked this, there really is), and Emma wrote this. The joke is that once she asked her boyfriend to bring her some yogurt, the Australian was very particular about choosing a tropical fruit flavor.
Mindy tailored the script of "Late Night Show" for Emma. In fact, Emma was more than overjoyed when she heard the news at first, because the kind of "written for her" thing she had received was probably about a medium. She is tired of listening to the touching stories of a young man, a geography teacher, who finally discovered love when she was a few decades older, and gained the courage to insist on being herself. But 48 hours after she received Mindy's script, she was like a chicken blood, and she immediately decided to do this drama. This script was written by Mindy while he was working. He wrote a little every Saturday for three years. The film is based on the life of Mindy who is a comedian. She is both the only minority woman in the office and the boss who rushed into the office and scolded his subordinates before leaving. Therefore, the two protagonists in the film are both has her shadow. Deborah thinks of Molly's experience of being rejected by her male colleagues in the movie. Many of the men she has met in the workplace are very eager to say "I'm a good person", which means "I'm not like Weinstein." bad guys", but none of them acknowledged the advantages they had taken. Whenever a woman and a person of color enter an industry, such a so-called pro-equality white man acts like he is generously giving away his pie, which seems to be ingrained in white males , but in fact, this cake should not be theirs alone, but all kinds of people have the right to share a piece, and they are not even the one who should take it first for granted. And the script of "Late Night Show" shows the importance of the diversity of the team. Just as Katherine let Molly into the team, she just doesn't want the whole team to think in the same way. This diversity is not only symbolic Recruiting a minority woman into the team (token and representation diversity) is a diversification of thinking.
Emma explains what she understands as the difference between "male comedy" and "female comedy", which she discussed many years ago with Ben Elton, her co-star at the Cambridge Footlights (also on the Late Buck Bear Show). ), associating the pleasures of comedy with sexual pleasure. Men who do comedy are accustomed to accumulating material little by little, and finally come to a punch line (equivalent to making a burden and shaking a burden in Chinese). This process is very similar to ejaculation. Emma recalls going to the rehearsal room where her mother worked a long time ago to watch a man speak a stand-up. Even if her mother was not amused at all, she would smile politely when the burden came out. And women's comedy, with its loops of laughter, brings a constant euphoria, and when the whole thing is over, the audience is greatly satisfied. Then Emma started running the train: "Those moments that make people laugh and cry, are actually happier than sex. People are always reluctant to admit that there are happier things in the world than sex, always feeling that saying that makes them happier than sex. It's not cool enough, but I can, because I'm sixty years old. But since my husband was there today, let me just say this, for me there's nothing happier in the world than sex with my husband, but Laughing and crying is more fun than having sex with other people." In addition, there is an affair between Katherine and a young man in the movie, which is contrary to the general movie setting. Generally, the sixty-year-old man and the young and beautiful man are in the movie. The girl sparks, and his wife is made to be very alienated, to bear the humiliation alone, and to forgive her husband generously - just like Stanley Tucci in the "Children's Act", after cheating can say "I love from a distance. following you". This is also the exact opposite of Emma herself. Now if a young and beautiful little boy came to show her favor, she would definitely run away. Here Emma uses the podcast's fixed sentence: I'm a feminist but - she still has trouble calmly accepting that she is being pleaseed.
Deborah also mentioned that although there are many male characters in "Late Night Show", and they do have a place in the story, and they also bear the comic effect, the audience does not need to use their eyes from beginning to end. If you fire the squid, you will fire the squid, and the story before and after does not need to be explained. Once they interact with the two heroines, they will leave the audience's sight. Such roles are usually assumed by women in traditional films. Traditional film narratives are so accustomed to seeing the world from the perspective of white men that everyone is very good at empathizing with white men (characters), and "The Late Night Show" has managed to get out of this trap. At the same time, it did not let the frustrated Molly go to India to wash her soul, be redeemed by the white man loser she met on the road, and then be with him happily, nor did it try to "cure" Katherine's workaholic. These are the special features of The Late Show. Emma also said that she was interviewed by many reporters during the film promotion period. These reporters from all over the world were all keen to capture the issues discussed in the film, but in fact these are not just issues, this is the female profession life that people face every day.
Talking about the production of the film, the filming has been postponed all the time. There was an accident at Emma's family, and then Mindy was pregnant. It was delayed again and again. Finally, last year, the filming was completed in 25 days in New York. No one was paid during the whole process. Emma said that maybe there will be female late-night show hosts in the future, but she can't because she's going to bed at ten o'clock, except for SNL's "Saturday Night Live". Speaking of SNL is also interesting. First of all, the writing room is indeed mixed, with men and women of all skin colors; secondly, the work schedule of the program team has been used since the 1970s and now, everyone sleeps and fools around during the day, and only comes to write at night; There are people who are unwilling to appear in a sketch written by a woman, which is the late actor John Belushi, but Gilda Radner can write an exception; Emma asked everyone to try to write during the day, but the group of young people were all sleepy, and the old man Emma sighed: That kind of schedule really isn't necessary; she's being dragged around the stage during rehearsals, pulled down and thrown up. Everything made her feel the hardships of women in this industry twenty or thirty years ago. Deborah shared an experience written by American actor Amy Poehler in the book. At that time, she wrote a joke about sanitary pads in a comedy group. Since half of the population will understand this joke, why must you judge whether it is funny or not? The audience's reaction proved that the joke was a success. Emma agrees, arguing that many people have learned to pretend they find "male comedy" funny. Playing Katherine gave her a chance to ruthlessly shut up male writers, something she would never have done in real life. Stand-up actor Hannah Gadsby also said that she was not upset at all when she was mistaken for a man at times, instead it seemed like a relief to her.
There's not too much wit in the comedy Late Night, its wisdom is in the deeper plot. Deborah urges podcast listeners to buy tickets to the movie, because if a film made by a man doesn't do well at the box office, people will say he didn't do well; and such a female movie doesn't do well, people will simply conclude that women no. If you want to see more comedy centered on a female perspective, you have to prop up the box office.
In the end, Emma volunteered to cooperate again.
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