A few days ago: my mom, dad and I were supposed to have a dentist appointment, but I was trying to help Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey find a bottle of white wine for an upcoming event (if you haven’t seen Downton Abbey, Thomas Barrow is one of the characters in the show who works on the staff at the estate. He is played by an actor named Robert James-Collier.) I said I would help Thomas, and we went up different floors to find the wine. I hadn’t told my dad I was helping Thomas Barrow find the wine. Finally, Thomas found a bottle of wine after we searched for it for a long time.
“Thank goodness,” I said. “Wait, where did you find the wine?”
“The wine cellar is on floor 2 in room 1,” he said.
“Thank you! Can we stay in touch?”
“Sure!”
I wrote my name down on a napkin, but it was barely legible, so I wrote it down with a pen. After thinking about the dream, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in touch with Thomas Barrow or with the actor who played him. I think in the dream, I wanted to stay in touch with Thomas Barrow.
Then my mom, dad and I got to the dentist’s office, and we were waiting for the dentist to arrive, but I had time to kill, and I promised a friend I would come to they’s baby shower (I use the pronouns they because the friend in my dream uses “they/ them” pronouns.) When I arrived, the baby shower was a small gathering with three or so of they’s friends, and they were far along in their pregnancy. Their friends were touching their belly because the fetus was kicking a lot, and so I got super excited.
“Ooh, can I feel it kicking, too?!?” I squealed.
“Yeah!” the friend said, letting me touch they’s belly. I placed a hand on they’s belly, and the fetus was kicking like crazy, and I went, “Oh my gosh, that is so cool.” The shower was in an empty art classroom, and my dad was parked outside. I told the friend I had to leave because I had a dentist appointment, and they understood, so I hugged they and left.
Then I was in a college dorm with some friends, and the actor Elliot Page was in the dorm. I wanted to stay in touch with him, so we exchanged numbers.
“I really love your memoir, Pageboy!” I gushed.
“Thank you,” Elliot said, giving me a bashful look.
“Stay in touch!” we told each other, and we said our good-byes.
Then in my dorm room, I found these two creepy-looking Chucky dolls (I haven’t seen the movies, and I don’t plan too because as a kid I often got scared every time I encountered a Chucky poster at Blockbuster or at the movie theater. They still scare the living shit out of me. I was at the library, and I saw some DVD copies of the recent Child’s Play remake, and it gave me the shivers because it looked really creepy. No offense to any fans of Child’s Play out there.) I really didn’t want to keep them, so I asked my parents if I could give them away.
“No! You have to sell them on eBay so you can make some money.” (*in real life, I told my parents about the dream, and they told me they would have never made me even go near Chucky and told me that they don’t even like that Chucky stuff because it’s scary.)
“I know a girl who would want them, though.”
I had gone up to the next floor because there was a bleach blonde girl who was really into horror movies and heavy metal and alternative music, and I know she would have loved the Chucky dolls. But my parents told me I needed to make money from selling the dolls, so I kept them in my closet and turned them face-down so that I wouldn’t have to look at them. Then there was apparently a fire in one of the dorms, and so my mom had me check on one of my dorm neighbors to see if she was okay. She was an older woman, and when I asked her if she was ok, she said she was fine. My parents also told me they were going to get vegan ice cream from this ice cream store called Van Leeuwen, but because I was too busy, they went without me. I was pretty sad and felt bad for being too busy. (Side note: if you haven’t tried Van Leeuwen’s vegan ice cream, it is PURE DELICIOUSNESS.)
A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called Red Rocket. I watched the trailer, and it looked interesting, especially because it played one of my favorite songs, “Bye, Bye, Bye” by NSYNC. I really love Sean Baker’s movies. I loved The Florida Project and Tangerine, so I was looking forward to seeing this one. It’s a black or dark comedy, so it will make you pretty uncomfortable watching it, but I tend to gravitate towards dark comedies a lot of the time. I don’t consider myself a cynic or anything, but somehow, I gravitate towards dark comedy probably because it gives insight into human nature and the less favorable aspects of human nature. Not everyone is a nice person and not everyone is going to change for the better. I really love Sean Baker’s films, too, because they shed light on marginalized communities that don’t get a lot of great representation, such as trans sex workers in Tangerine and low-income communities that live near Walt Disney World in The Florida Project. I haven’t seen a lot of movies that have empowering representations of female sex workers other than Zola (directed by Janizca Bravo), and I didn’t grow up watching a lot of movies that presented an empowering portrayal of trans people, or even a lot of movies that had trans actresses playing the main characters. The only other movie I saw that shows any empathy or compassion for trans characters is A Fantastic Woman, which came out in 2017 and stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress and singer from Chile.
I also haven’t seen many films that shed light on the lives of sex workers in general, or ones that feature them as the protagonists, other than Zola and Tangerine. Red Rocket was really intriguing to watch, because the main character is a retired adult film actor whose wife also worked in the adult film industry. Mikey Saber, who worked in the adult film industry for two decades, comes back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas to try and make a comeback in his career. I don’t know why he left Los Angeles, which is where he worked in the adult film industry, but it was apparently something really not great that motivated him to leave the city and go back home. When he comes back home, he expects everyone to celebrate him coming back, saying “I’ve missed you!” He wants people to think he is still a glamorous actor, but instead he gets the total opposite. His neighbors and friends ask him, “What are you doing back in Texas?” and aren’t glad to see him, and his estranged wife, Lexi, and his mother-in-law, Lil, are especially not happy to see him come back. Mikey asks if he can move back in with them, but Lil and Lexi don’t want to put up with him anymore. He continues to beg Lexi to let him move back in with them, and finally she gives in, under the condition that he contribute to the rent and help around the house. For some reason, I resonated with Mikey’s story a bit, mainly the fact that he came back to his hometown expecting everyone to treat him like he was famous, but instead it was the opposite. I’ve never worked as a sex worker or in the adult entertainment industry, so I don’t know what it’s like, but I could kind of relate to him coming back with this huge ego. After graduating from this elite liberal arts college on the East Coast, I thought I was entitled to have any job I wanted because of my degree. But honestly, it was so hard to find a job, and it was a total blow to my ego. I wanted a job where I could directly use my philosophy degree, but the only other option was to go to graduate school and as much as I wanted to go, I was super burned out after undergrad and needed time to recuperate, especially because I had some really bad mental health issues. That, too, was really hard because I couldn’t deal with having depression. Every day I struggled to get out of bed and feel motivated to do anything. I auditioned for an orchestra in my hometown and when I got called for the substitute cellist list, I was pretty elated and thought that I should be treated like royalty because I got on the substitute list. But then my dad asked me to vacuum the living room, and I threw a huge bratty tantrum because I thought, They should be celebrating me right now! Why the hell are they asking me, of all people, to do chores? Looking back, I didn’t have a very healthy sense of self, and so much of my self-worth was wrapped up in these past achievements and this music career. I thought about my past experiences with overcoming my ego when I saw how Mikey would go up to people in his hometown and expect them to recognize him and his work, but only a few people liked what he did. Most of the people he runs into don’t know about his work, and so he has to keep shoving it in their faces that he was an adult film star for several years and that he has a very famous account with all the videos and movies he starred in. I wanted to be a successful cellist, but looking back I placed so much of my self-esteem on whether or not I won auditions or whether or not people liked me. At some point, though, I realized that doing that wasn’t healthy and that I needed to develop more self-worth so that I wouldn’t think that I was a loser just because I didn’t play with a famous orchestra.
I think that’s why he falls in love with this 17-year-old girl named Strawberry. Honestly, I really didn’t know how to feel about her and Mikey’s relationship. I know that technically she was of consenting age according to Texas law, but I feel like he was partly using his relationship with Strawberry as an escape from his problems with the people around him. Mikey constantly disrespects the people around him, and he talks down to Lexi and Lil, even walking around naked and grossing Lil out. Strawberry and Lonnie (who knows about Mikey’s work) are the only two people who put up with Mikey’s bullshit throughout the movie. Mikey has Lonnie take an exit at the last minute while driving, and Lonnie swerves and causes a serious pileup accident. Even though Mikey and Lonnie escape, Mikey has Lonnie accept the blame even though Mikey was responsible for telling him to take the exit. Lonnie accepts it, but Mikey doesn’t tell anyone that he was also responsible for causing the accident. Mikey is only focused on running away with Strawberry and having her become an adult film star like him. The ending of the film creeped me out a lot. Overall, it was a really interesting film.
Red Rocket. 2021. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and pervasive language.
I am just going to be talking about a few scenes in this episode. This is just a rough draft.
Gregory goes to see Logan and he greets Logan with a hearty good morning. Logan offers him something to drink and Gregory has this confused look on his face and asks Logan if he means an alcoholic drink. Gregory asks for a rum and coke, but he is at first joking around, but Logan takes him seriously and asks Kerry, his assistant, to bring him a rum and coke. Gregory says that Kerry doesn’t have to do that, but Logan says “What Greg wants, Greg must have.” Greg is very nervous throughout his discussion with Logan because Logan is an intimidating man, and Gregory is in hot water because Kendall went against the Roy family and talked about a lot of corrupt practices that the company did for many years. Gregory still works for Logan, so Logan has Gregory sign a non-disclosure agreement, but Gregory wants to know what is in it for him. Logan tells him that is not how things work with him, and so he makes Gregory sign the agreement. The scene where Greg wonders if Logan means to offer him alcohol reminded me of the scene in Mean Girls, where Cady Heron goes to Regina George’s house for the first time, and Regina’s mom, who is a permissive parent who lets her daughter do whatever she wants, brings them drinks. Cady asks Regina’s mom if there is alcohol in the drinks, and Regina’s mom tells her “Oh, honey, no! What kind of mother do you think I am?” But she tells Cady that if she wants alcohol, she has it in the house and Cady is welcome to it, but Cady politely declines. Greg reminds me of Cady before she became a Mean Girl because he is polite and awkward. They both remind me of me when I was growing up because I am awkward and introverted, and I remember people would always joke that I was too polite.
There is another scene where Tom approaches Greg in Greg’s office about how he, Tom, might go to jail. Greg is excited because he might be transferring to another department, the Parks division. Tom is not happy for Greg because all he can think about is his lawyer telling him, Tom, that he might go to jail after he testified for Congress about the Cruise documents. Tom tries to beat up on Greg and starts hitting him and telling Greg to fight him, but Greg tells him to stop hitting him and that he doesn’t want to fight. Tom and Greg have a very toxic relationship. I wouldn’t even call it a friendship because Greg just tries to do whatever Tom says because Tom intimidates him. I really do love the acting between these two characters. Somehow Greg’s office got cleaned up pretty quickly. At the beginning, Tom offers Greg the office and it is very unkempt and messy and there is stuff everywhere, and there is no room for Greg to have a space to work. But by the time Tom comes back, he sees that Greg has a desk and space to work, and there is a basket of large croissants and other pastries on the desk. Honestly, those pastries looked delicious. I am vegan but I would have loved to enjoy a pastry or two with Greg and Tom at the moment.
There is another scene where Logan gets heat exhaustion. He, Josh and Kendall are talking about the shareholder deal with Josh, who is a major investor (I was really pumped to see Adrien Brody playing Josh’s character because I loved his work in Cadillac Records, The Pianist and The Grand Budapest Hotel), but Logan has health problems and can’t walk that far, and Josh is taking them on the hike way too far. Logan refuses help when Kendall offers to call a doctor, but then he starts vomiting on the side of the road and then has a heart attack, prompting Josh and Kendall to get him to a doctor immediately. Kendall asks Josh about the deal, but Josh thinks Kendall should focus on taking care of his dad. Roman tells Kendall that Josh pulled out of the deal because Logan’s heart attack scared him.
In junior year of college I was pretty depressed to be honest. I had moved into a new dormitory and thought I would be so happy to get my own single-occupancy room, but I didn’t realize I had depression until that year. It was a huge battle with myself and my inner darkness, and I didn’t understand how important it was to seek professional help when in crisis. During this time I chanted a lot to make it through, and one thing that helped me get through this painful time was watching a lot of Saturday Night Live sketches. I don’t remember the exact first time I watched SNL, but I definitely remember that and the web series Awkward Black Girl became my comedy go-to’s that year. During the holidays, when I felt lonely and depressed, I watched some of these sketches and they helped bring some light to me in my time of darkness:
“White Christmas”: The sketch came out in 2013 and I don’t think I saw it until my junior year. Of course, the sketch didn’t come without its controversy, and frankly after finishing the sketch I don’t remember if I laughed or was just really confused. In summary, the sketch is a trailer about a white woman (played by Cecily Strong) who has all kinds of stress in her life, including her house being foreclosed on. The Black realtor (played by Jay Pharaoh, a former SNL cast member) tells her her house is being foreclosed on, and the woman is desperate. She packs up her car and goes with her white son, Rasheed (played by Kyle Mooney), to her Mama Ruth’s house for the holidays. The voiceover person says that the movie is a Black holiday movie for white audiences, featuring tropes such as women snapping peas at a table and laughing, a gun-toting grandma spun off of Madea (played by Paul Rudd) and a white guy wearing a necklace over a turtleneck. The scene cuts to a group of white women talking and one of them (Aidy Bryant) takes a line straight from a Black holiday movie that men will leave Black women for white women. The waiter at their table (Kenan Thomson) looks into the camera and gives a side-eye, like “You are white. This is laughable that you would even say such a line.” The trailer also features white people singing in a gospel choir, led by the hilarious Mike O’Brien (the guy wearing the sweater over the turtleneck) with Bobby Moynihan doing the most passionate singing out of all the other white gospel singers. And there is a scene where a group of white men in black clothes and Fedora hats dances to New Kids on the Block, and the white women watching them at home are screaming and one of them throws a red thong at one of the dancers (this is a parody of a dance scene from The Best Man Holiday where the men dance to “Can You Stand the Rain.” Up to that point I hadn’t seen The Best Man Holiday yet so I had to look up the trailer to understand the reference.) The voiceover person reads the critic reviews; one says “Finally, a holiday movie for white people.” Another says, “For the first time I talked to the screen and it felt great.” The third review is from Vibe magazine and it says “Can’t we have anything?” And the last review calls White Christmas, “the Macklemore of movies.” (if you don’t know the reference, Macklemore is a white rapper from Seattle.) The sketch ends with the voiceover person saying the actor’s names; they are all Paul Rudd, and the scene cuts to Jay Pharaoh looking in the camera with a deadpan expression as the person introduces him as Paul Rudd, when clearly he is not Paul Rudd. Jay Pharaoh throws his hands up to the ceiling and asks “Are we gonna get in trouble for this?”
“Sump’n Claus”: the sketch opens up with Pete Davidson and Jay Pharaoh talking about their Christmas. Jay asks Pete if he is excited for Christmas, but Pete says he doesn’t think he will get anything from Santa since he hasn’t been on his nice list, but Jay says he can always expect something from Sump’n Claus. Sump’n Claus (Kenan Thompson) is Black Santa, and he is out to make sure every white person who does crazy shit gets what they want for Christmas. Along with the help of his lovely backup elf singers (Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata) he raps first about a woman named Sheila (Vanessa Bayer) who got in a fight with her husband (Kyle Mooney) and slashed his tires when he left her. Sump’n Claus hands her money even though she did something bad. He then sings about a man named Marcus who is dealing with so much stress at his job and then blows up at everyone, smashing his computer and then getting fired and arrested. When he leaves the elevator with his stuff packed in a box to leave the job, Sump’n Claus goes up to him, and gives him free cash. Sump’n Claus jokes that he can’t tell where he got the money from, and then tells a story about how he worked at the North Pole for Santa, and one day Mrs. Claus (Aidy Bryant) started flirting with him and Santa caught them in the act. Honestly this sketch was hilarious.
I didn’t know much about this movie before watching it on Netflix, but I’m glad I finally got a chance to see it. I also didn’t know too much about Rudy Ray Moore before watching the movie, but I’m really glad I saw it because the acting was incredible, and the screenplay was amazing.
The film starts off with the song “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye playing at a radio station in the 1970s. Rudy goes to Roj, the DJ of the radio station (played by Snoop Dogg) and asks him if his records are going to get some air time. The DJ tells him that his records aren’t going to sell well, and Rudy finds himself at a deadlock. His comedy shows bomb and the owner of the comedy club doesn’t like his shows. In short, Rudy is struggling to make it in his career, and every time he tries to do something, he falls short. This prompts Rudy to meet with a guy who he kicked out of his record store, and he has the guy and other friends tell some jokes. Rudy then imitates the jokes they made later on at home and records himself improvising on those jokes. He ends up creating an alter ego for himself called Dolemite, and his catchphrase becomes “Dolemite is my name, and f*cking up motherf*ckers is my game!” He releases a series of albums and sells out a lot of his shows, and he recruits Lady Reed, a woman whose man just cheated on her. She doesn’t believe in herself, but Dolemite sees potential in her, and he asks her what she did for a living. She tells him she used to be a backup singer in New Orleans, and he recruits her for his comedy show. When she is reluctant, he tells her that she just needs to create a character for people, like he did. In real life, he is Rudy Ray Moore, but onstage he is the character, the alter ego, Dolemite, who tells raunchy jokes and curses a lot. She ends up joining him and they make a really hilarious duo, singing goofy raunchy songs and making audiences laugh (it kind of reminded me of the time my then-partner and I were sitting together one time, and he had me listen to “Hand Job, Blandjob, I Don’t Understand Job” by the folk duo Garfunkel and Oates. I think I almost peed my pants laughing so hard when I heard the song.)
Then, Dolemite meets Jerry Jones, a playwright (played brilliantly by Keegan-Michael Key of another hilarious duo, Key and Peele) and approaches him for a movie he wants to make. At first, the guy he works with at the record store, Theodore (played by Titus Burgess of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) says that he can’t just up and make a movie, but Rudy won’t take no for an answer, and he approaches Jerry and asks if he can work with him. After giving into Rudy’s persuasion, Jerry meets back at Rudy’s place to write the screenplay with him. Rudy comes up with all kinds of wild outlandish ideas, and Jerry tells him to be practical and “write what you know.” Rudy gets sad for a moment and then thinks up all these different characters in the film because he thinks that his average everyday life won’t be interesting enough to put on the big screen. Jerry hears these ideas that Rudy says and then thinks it’s brilliant, and him and Rudy churn out the screenplay. Then Rudy finds an old beat up hotel to film the movie in, and recruits Nick and some other white film students to direct the film.
Before doing that, he meets with D’Urville Martin (played brilliantly by Wesley Snipes), a distinguished director who has done countless well-renowned movies. When Rudy pitches his idea to him, D’Urville is offended that Rudy would approach him to work on such an outlandish movie, but he does it anyway because Rudy keeps persuading him to work on the movie with him. D’Urville directs it and is absolutely frustrated, trying to impose his own ideas about how the movie should be onto Rudy and the crew members. But they still end up making the movie, even with all the twists and turns. Rudy tells them on the way to the midnight premiere of Dolemite that even if the movie gets booed, they still won because they had fun during the filmmaking process.
It kind of reminded me of this movie I saw called Be Kind Rewind. If you haven’t seen Be Kind Rewind, it’s starring Jack Black and Yasiin Bey (he is listed in the credits by his stage name, Mos Def) who work at a movie store that is about to be closed down. Jerry, played by Jack Black, gets the idea of remaking movies that people don’t like and making these movies with him and Mike (Yasiin Bey) playing the characters in the movies. They charge the movies for high rental fees, and when someone angrily comes in saying the movie they gave them was a ripoff Jerry tells him that the film is “sweded,” and that it is expensive because the tapes came from Sweden. Then they recruit a young woman, played by Melonie Diaz, to star in their movies, and in the process they end up having a brilliantly fun goofy time. Danny Glover’s character reminded me of D’Urville because at one point while making the remake of Rush Hour, Danny’s character quits because he thinks that the two of them are just silly amateurs for making these movies. However, many people end up coming back to the movie store to watch the films. As someone who wants to make a movie myself, I needed to watch both Be Kind Rewind and Dolemite is My Name to remind myself to be serious about my creative work, but to not take myself so seriously and to appreciate the moments when I do have fun.
Here is the trailer for Dolemite is My Name:
Dolemite is My Name. 2019. Rated R for pervasive language, crude sexual content, and graphic nudity.
This is one of the few times I have seen a movie without reading what it’s about or watching the trailer for it. But I’m glad I saw it at any rate. Late Night is a brilliant film about a late-night show host named Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson plays her so well) who struggles to keep viewers interested in her show. Her writers’ team, all white and male, doesn’t have any original ideas and she has fired quite a few people from her staff because they do not live up to her high expectations, so they feel intimidated and threatened just because she’s a powerful woman in charge. Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling) is a recent transplant from Pennsylvania who used to work at a chemical plant but applied to be a writer for Katherine’s show and got the job even though she lacks the qualifications for it. When she first walks into the writer’s room, the men assume she is Katherine’s assistant and ask her to fetch them food and do other administrative things. But Katherine has her be a part of the brainstorming process because people have criticized her for not having a woman on her writer’s team even though she is a woman. All of the men on the team, once again, feel threatened that a woman has joined their boys club.
This film reminded me somewhat of The Devil Wears Prada because like Katherine, Miranda Priestly runs the show and does not suffer fools on her Runway magazine team, so it’s no wonder that everyone keeps telling Andy Sachs, one of the applicants for the job as Miranda’s personal assistant, that so many other young women want that position just as much as she does. Andy, however, doesn’t take Miranda seriously, and in one famous scene of the film Miranda is examining two belts and Andy laughs out loud from the corner, telling Miranda that the belts look exactly the same, so there was no point in fussing over them. Miranda calls her out for thinking that she knows everything about fashion when she has no idea how to properly dress for the job. Like Andy, Molly tries to impose her ideas on Katherine in just her first few days on the job, giving her ways to improve the show and outwardly criticizing it in the writer’s meeting to Katherine. Katherine then tells Molly that she’s not going to take advice from her since she is inexperienced with being a writer.
However, unlike Katherine, Miranda continues to disrespect people throughout the film and still maintains her distance from Andy even when Andy starts dressing nicely and losing weight to impress Miranda. Toward the end of the film, Emily doesn’t get to go to Paris with Miranda because she gets sick and falls short in her work, even though she’s been Miranda’s assistant longer than Andy has, and so Andy goes to Paris and meet these famous fashion designers. But when she starts letting Miranda’s demands take over her life, she loses touch with herself and even storms off on her friends when they make fun of Miranda. Toward the end of the film, Miranda says that she sees herself in Andy because like Miranda stepped over Nigel (she promised him a job at a new fashion magazine, but devised a plan so that someone else got it and not him) Andy stepped over Emily by becoming better than her at her job. Andy realizes that she’s not cut out for this job anymore because while she got to work for this really prestigious person, she still never got treated with genuine respect and was just acting like this cool person so that she could keep her job. When Andy leaves, Miranda still treats her with disdain, no reciprocating Andy’s hello when Andy waves at her.
In Late Night, Katherine fires Molly after she tells her and the other writers that she has to go to a gig and can’t stay for the meeting, but then realizes that she’s better off going to Molly’s show instead of sitting in the writer’s room while her team pitches unoriginal ideas to her. When she goes, she hears Molly talking about how she was fired and how Katherine hates her, and volunteers to go up after Molly. When she starts off her sketch by calling Twitter stupid, her audience doesn’t laugh, but when she changes the topic and jokes about her age and being a woman, she gets laughs and her show soon makes headway. One of the guests on her show got famous for her videos of her pretending to sniff her dog’s butt and Katherine made fun of her for it, and the girl stormed off in the middle of the show. After Katherine starts using Molly’s material and letting go of this need to be distant from people, she starts respecting her guests, and even gets a hug from a girl who appears on her show. This shows that while it’s important to work hard and take your job seriously, it’s important to learn from other people even when you are the boss and not always take yourself so seriously. Katherine at first wouldn’t tell any of Molly’s jokes, but when she does the audience likes her more.
Another reason I love this film so much is that it addresses the issue of diversity in the business of late-night show writing (and comedy in general) in a way that recognizes that the conversation around diversity is more than just dropping a person of color into a room and saying “yay, we’ve fulfilled a quota.” I was really excited when I read that Mindy Kaling wrote and produced the film, and Nisha Ganatra directed it. It’s one of the few comedy movies I have seen produced, written and directed by women of color. Even though progress has been made, diversity and other social justice issues can’t just be settled by one movie. It’s about having these frequent conversations about diversity in the entertainment industry, because when we stop talking about, we get the same majority-group people produce and write these films, leaving young women of color with no role models who look like them. Even though Katherine is a woman, she is white and as time goes on she understands how she benefits from being white, even producing a sketch where she hails a cab for two Black men and jokes about being a “white savior.” Molly is the only woman of color on the writer’s team and the staff members treat her like a token when they first meet her. However, through her hard work and willingness to learn new things, Molly proves to the staff and Katherine that she’s not a token and she got the job because she actually was excited about it. The film addresses sexism in the workplace, but also the intersectionality between race and gender because Katherine and Molly’s experiences as women are just as different as they are similar.
The movie also showed the amount of work that goes into being a writer for late night shows. Molly stays up well into the night at the office during her first few weeks there because she is determined to keep her job at the show, even when Katherine doesn’t recognize her hard work. When she first starts, the writers tell her that in order to stay on the team, she has to not assume she knows everything and that she needs to write a ton. She comes to the first couple of meetings with an agenda detailing what improvements Katherine should make for the show, and Katherine flips through it, but then tosses it on her desk in boredom and tells Molly that she doesn’t care about her silly agenda and to do her job and write, even if the jokes don’t all make it to the show. This taught me that getting a job is hard, but the hardest part is taking criticism. I always go back to that quote by Ira Glass about doing a lot of work as a creative. He said that even though creatives have good taste, when we first start writing or creating this work it’s just not that good and not everyone’s going to like it. The solution to not beating yourself up and quitting your career as a creative? Keep creating. Just show up and do the work. None of the writers on Katherine’s show (or any late-night show for that matter) had the time to wait for inspiration; they just had to write the jokes, give them to Katherine, let them get dumped and then write some more. And of course, when you get overwhelmed, it’s important to take breaks (then again, everyone’s situation is different, and not everyone gets to take that break time from their writing.)
I thought it was kind of cool that Seth Meyers appears in the film. When Katherine fires Molly, Molly goes to Seth Meyers looking for a job as a late night host writer for his show. He hires her after she tells him how she worked for Katherine, but Katherine hears about this and dissuades her from working for Seth because Molly taught Katherine to not give up and she really needs her for the show. I thought this was interesting because unlike Katherine, Seth Meyers actually has women of color on his writing staff, and they even get their own segments on his show. Amber Ruffin, who is Black, and Jenny Hagel, who is Latina, star in a segment of Seth’s show called Jokes Seth Can’t Tell, where Amber and Jenny each take turns telling jokes about race and gender that Seth, being a straight white male, does not feel comfortable telling. The sketch always ends with Amber and Jenny convincing Seth he should tell a joke and then after finally giving in, he tells an offensive joke and Amber and Jenny pretend to be offended. Amber and Jenny also have their own separate segments when they address social issues going on in the news.
But overall, I thought this movie was amazing and I would love to see it again. #WomenofColorRockComedy. 🙂
Late Night. 2019. Rated R for language throughout and some sexual references.
Roy Wood, Jr. is a comedian who is part of Trevor Noah’s team on The Daily Show. In honor of Black History Month, I decided to post six of his most hilarious sketches. Contains strong language.
“Desegregation and Chipotle”: honestly, it would be cool if more rappers talked about how cool kale is in their songs. Of course, there are exceptions, such as this song by Dead Prez.
“Starbucks Shuts Down for Racial Bias Training”: As a former barista whose store didn’t get to participate in the racial bias training, this was truly hilarious.
“The Daily Show: The Oscars Reach Peak Blackness”: Yep, the Oscars did in fact reach the ultimate “amalgamation of black excellence” that evening.
“Roy Wood Jr. Can’t Walk Out of Best Buy Without a Bag”: In this video, Roy discusses why films about the Civil Rights movement really make him cry, and why he needs a plastic bag every time he purchases something from the store.
“Teachers Take To The Streets and Kanye West Says Slavery Was a Choice”: Roy Wood Jr.’s part doesn’t happen until the 3:19 mark in the video, but Trevor Noah sets up the context for why Roy’s parody on West’s poor choice of words is so brilliant.
“Black Eye on America: What Is Black Twitter?”: I heard about Black Twitter from friends, but hadn’t been on it since I don’t use Twitter. This was an interesting take on the platform.
The Arts Are Life 