Chris Rock, George Carlin, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Johnny Carson, David Brenner, Rodney Dangerfield… famous enough for you?
mind you, I’m not arguing talent.
I always hated her. I believe she was the one that would do the drag-on/add-on thing, like:
I got in trouble for having sex with my boyfriend…
…At McDonalds.
She would squeeze in that last bit after a second so that you would be a little shocked, but it quickly got old.
What’s really bad is that I didn’t recognize her name, but immediately made the Full House connection. Child of the 80’s, who me? :rolleyes:
Sara, that was Wendy Liebman, with the add-ons at the ends of sentences. You didn’t like that shtick? I thought it was hilarious. Still do, actually.
All these posts, and not one mention of Janeane Garofalo. Bunch of philistines, all of you. Considering Janeane has had a number of lead roles in movies, I think she fits your definition of “famous”.
Or how about Joy Behar, who has a fair-sized audience as a co-host of “The View”?
Kathy Griffin? Caroline Rhea, maybe?
My own wild, speculative, gender-based stereotypical theory about why we don’t see so many female comedians: comedy is a difficult field to break into, and it’s not an easy way to make a living, what with the lack of a steady paycheck. Women (more so than men) tend to prefer jobs with greater security. Women may also not like the extensive “traveling alone” that doing standup comedy requires.
Dammit, I can’t remember this woman’s last name, but the first is Margaret. She’s mid-40’s, maybe. I saw her on Comedy Central a few times, and she killed me. About George Foreman: “You know when he gets punched in the gut, he pees a little.” I nearly wet m’damn self.
But, yeah, there does seem to be a dearth of famous female comedians. For non-famous ones…watch that BET comedy thing. Lots of women there. I think it’s just a matter of time.
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*Originally posted by tsunamisurfer *
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Neither am I. Are you saying that Joan Rivers, Rosie O’Donnell, Phyllis Diller, et al, don’t fit your classification of famous?
Two of my favorites who haven’t been mentioned yet are:
Monica Piper: haven’t seen her act in a while, but she cracked me up. She’d have this bit where she’d describe some situation that happened to her and say “Has that ever happened to you?” There would be silence, and then she’d say, “Why no, Monica, just you.” It became kind of a running gag. Guess you had to be there.
But my favorite comedian of either sex is Maryellen Hooper. I’ve seen two of her shows, and she is just hilarious. Sample: (she’s talking about a zit she got just before a date)
So I got a black marker and colored it in, thinking “It’ll look like a beauty mark!” (three-second pause) It didn’t. It looked like I had a tick sucking on my face.
As to the OP, yes, comedy is a hard field to break into, and it’s harder for women (like many aspects of society) because people think they can’t be as funny (or competent) as men. Just another example of the sexism of American society, folks. That’s about all there is to it.
A lot of the really famous ones got thier own tv shows… but they sucked. So they’re gone… forever.
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*Originally posted by kunilou *
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Um, Kuni, when attempting to demonstrate that famous female comedians “abound,” using “et al.” doesn’t exactly strengthen your case.
("…" does, however, if only for men.) grin
I think what you’re looking for is the $20 mil per movie comedian, that kind of famous; comedians like Chris Rock, Jim Carrey, Dana Carvey, Chris Farley and so forth. The people who make movies in Hollywood however tend not to promote female comedians because they know they can make more money by promoting Julia Robert’s tits or Jennifer Lopez’s butt or some other female with a hot body (if you want famous females like that we can fill the entire Straight Dope hard drive). However I cannot recall a single heavily promoted movie that revolves around a female comedian. There have been a few SNL movies like “Superstar” and there was also one about Pat (it’s time for andgrogeny) which seems like people should have seen that as a bad idea from the get go. Is the Blues Bros. the only successful SNL character movie? But they never gave them the proper backing. That’s probably why there are no famous women comedians, because no one wants to promote them. And some of them are really funny. I love Poundstone’s cat bit. Liebman is hilarious. Man I’d love to see a film studio give Poundstone or DeGeneres an $80 mil. budget and let them run with it, I think it would be WAY funnier then that dumbass dog-mailman movie or another idiotic Jim Carey movie. But will the do it? Noooooooooooooo