Archives|Television; Women in the Locker Room At 'Saturday Night Live'
https://nyti.ms/29aWopL
Television; Women in the Locker Room At 'Saturday Night Live'
By EVE KAHN FEB. 16, 1992
February 16, 1992, Page 002030Buy Reprints The New York Times Archives
"Women aren't funny," or so John Belushi often howled on the set of "Saturday Night Live" in the late 70's. Back then, the show's male writers were fond of saying that possessing male genitalia made comedy writing easier. The producers offered little consolation when the women complained that they received too many subordinate, straight roles.
Such raging sexism is well documented in " 'Saturday Night': A Backstage History," the 1986 book by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, and the situation has not improved in the show's 17-year existence. "It's always been hard for funny women to carve out the parts," said Lorne Michaels, the longtime executive producer of "Saturday Night Live." "The traditional comedy revue has five men and one woman." But now the program's gender imbalance may be beginning to shift.
While the pool of writers remains only slightly less male-dominated than Congress -- 2 women, 12 men -- the 18-person cast has acquired a record number of women: 6. And their impact is already obvious. The number of skits featuring women, sometimes only women, is rising, although the NBC show (on Saturday nights at 11:30) and comedy in general are still primarily men's worlds.
"It's been hard, but it's getting better," said Christine Zander, a writer for the show. Her recent skits have included one about a highly evolved female race (with eyes on their breasts, the better to meet men's gazes) from the Planet Zandar that sends envoys to Earth to save the planet. Ms. Zander and Bonnie Turner, the other female writer, have both been on staff since the mid-80's. "If you don't have a lot of women to bounce ideas off or back you up," said Ms. Zander, "it can get a little crazy around here. None of the men are individually sexist; it's just hard for them to have faith in something from a woman's point of view." Now, she added, "we can do armies, we can do baby showers, we can do locker rooms."
Since the women writers joined the show, a new group of comediennes has come aboard. Victoria Jackson, the relentlessly ditsy blonde, has been appearing since 1986. Julia Sweeney signed on in the fall of 1990 and has earned laughs for playing Pat, a mewling boss whose gender is unknown. Bess Cahill, Ellen Cleghorne, Siobhan Fallon and Melanie Hutsell, all of them in their 20's or early 30's and veterans of repertory theater groups and stand-up comedy, joined last fall.
The four neophytes are still feeling their way on camera. "It takes a couple of seasons to get good at this show," said Mr. Michaels. "We're in a transition."
He hired four women at once, he said, because he was trying to replace Jan Hooks (who quit the cast last summer to join the cast of "Designing Women") and got carried away. It was "an accident," he said. Ms. Cleghorne and Ms. Fallon appealed to him because they were "more formed; they had more characters they'd developed," whereas Ms. Cahill and Ms. Hutsell, both petite blondes, filled his need for women who looked the same age as the new young men in the cast (like Mike Myers, co-host of the segment "Wayne's World," and Chris Farley, who is heavyset and whose shtick includes feigning heart attacks).
The show has been attacked for its treatment and portrayal of women in the past, and not just by Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin, the original female cast members. Its most infamous moment came in 1990, when the misogynistic comedian Andrew Dice Clay was host and Nora Dunn, one of three women on the show at the time, along with the scheduled musical guest, Sinead O'Connor, boycotted the program. Ms. Dunn, who is working on a one-woman show, has few kind words for her former employer.
"I feel a certain amount of -- not bitterness, that's not the word, but I wish it didn't have to be such a struggle, week after week, when your talents weren't utilized," she said. "Women are hard to write for, that was the anthem I heard for five years."
The producers never hired enough women, she said. "We couldn't even play bridge." And she describes the writers as "a boys' club" dominated by a "Harvard white male attitude."
Ms. Hooks, however, regards her time on the show as "an adventure."
"I entered as a girl and left as a woman," she said. "Regardless of sex, you had to prove yourself. All the weaker little chickens get pecked to death." She winced at the memory of the time she was asked to play an inebriated Kitty Dukakis (she declined) and she compared her move to "Designing Women" to "jumping from a pool of testosterone into a pool of estrogen. It's very nurturing, very supportive here."
But, she said, she does not think that "Saturday Night Live" should tone down its harshness. "The show depends on taking chances," she said. And, she added, the program has no reason to be different from the rest of the male-dominated world. In mocking politicians and media figures, it cannot help but use more men than women.
What's more, men dominate comedy. "The show is about hard comedy -- and how many hard female comics are there?" said Ms. Tyler, the writer. "You can count them on one hand. Hard comedy is a choice women don't make. If they want air time, if that's a primary concern, they go to prime time." Besides Ms. Hooks, Jane Curtin and Julia Louis-Dreyfus have moved from the show into sitcoms: "Kate and Allie" and "Seinfeld," respectively. (Mr. Michaels scorns such shows, which he calls "warmedies.")
Finding substantial roles for the newcomers on "Saturday Night Live" will not be easy. Only a few skits so far this season have focused solely on women: barflies punching each other in jealous fits over muscle tone, sorority sisters panicking over minor crises. But in selecting the new women, Mr. Michaels deliberately chose different types, to allow each woman an opportunity to stake out at least a small territory of her own. Ms. Sweeney, for instance, has played not only Pat but also an aged British actress mired in nostalgia and a 30ish concertgoer incensed at a rowdy teen-ager blocking her view of the stage.
Ms. Cleghorne handles over-the-top characters like Queen Shenequa, a chatty Afrocentrist, and a page in NBC-issue uniform who snags guest hosts backstage and accuses them of arrogance. Ms. Cahill often plays the straight, pretty girlfriend, but she has also adopted a Chicago twang to play the swaggering daughter of a devout Bears fan.
Ms. Hutsell is a ham, rolling her eyes, dancing crazily or impersonating a righteous Jan Brady. Ms. Fallon is something of a chameleon, having posed as a jittery sorority member and as a smooth-talking haircut therapist reassuring her patients that, yes, someday, their tresses will grow back.
When the show is assembled each week, providing a showcase for the women is not a priority. On Wednesday afternoon, the cast reads up to 40 sketches aloud to the staff and crew. The dozen funniest pieces are culled from the pile, and of those perhaps eight run. The goals, said Mr. Michaels, include using the host, covering current events, avoiding repetition and eliciting laughs. He sees no point in running women's skits for their own sake: "If it's not funny," he said, "it doesn't matter if it's well intentioned."
All the new women are now frantically trying to write skits for themselves and have been studying the old pros in action; but for the moment, they still appear only briefly on each show, and they may never dominate the skits, the way the tenured male comics -- Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey -- do.
Ms. Jackson, the lone female veteran, says she is comfortable at the edge of the limelight. "If I only have a few lines in a show and Dana has dozens," she said, "then I'm getting paid maybe $10,000 per word and he's only getting $500." So who laughs last?
A version of this article appears in print on February 16, 1992, on Page 2002030 of the National edition with the headline: Television; Women in the Locker Room At 'Saturday Night Live'. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe