So I was listening to Making It with Riki Lindhome, a podcast I blogged about here, last night. On the episode I was listening to, the guest was actress Shannon Woodward.
If that name seems familiar to any of you, it's because almost five years ago, I was saying that I thought she was the very image of my character Keitha. I can still make the case.
But anyway--
One of the things they were talking about was that they think now is great time to be a woman in comedy.
Not only because of the sisters who are doing it for themselves, but because of a whole new generation of male writers who like writing for funny women. And who just like funny women, period.
(Speaking of sisters, an aside having not much to do with the main point of this entry: I'm still stunned by how "once bitten, twice shy" at least one whole generation of women seems to be about feminism. Woodward brings it up a couple of times in the interview, but always then to conversationally scurry away as if she's afraid of being beaten with a phallus for even speaking the word. Which come to think of if, given some of the things that the GOP's been up to, she might have a point. And speaking of points, that brings me back to mine.)
Now, you'd think this--it being a good time for women in comedy and the men you love them--might be a sign of encouragement for me; that there's a place in the world for the kind of writing I like doing. (Or even, maybe especially, that an actress I can see playing one of my characters might actually be interested in doing so if she ever got the chance. Or I did.)
But it doesn't work like that. Or I don't. Instead, what I see in my minds eye when I hear things like that is a fleet of boats...all blowing right past me, jumping through a closing window (yeah I know, mixed metaphor, bite me).
It's like when Amber Benson came out with Race You to the Bottom, which is about a mostly-gay guy and a mostly-straight girl who are having an affair. But again, I didn't see that as a positive sign for my Keitha/Annabel/Colley story because it's about love (and, in this case, sex) outside of definition. As that story is.
I saw it as making anything happening with my characters less likely--it's not gonna happen for me, because it already happened for them. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying it's how I feel. Of course, it didn't help that I didn't feel that movie worked.
I'm the same way about Susan Boyle or any of the other "miracle discoveries" which seem to go viral at the drop of a hat. I'm not inspired by them; I do not think, "See, anything is possible!" I think that there's now just a little bit lesser of the finite amount of magic in the world, making it more unlikely that I'll be struck by even a bit.
