Anna Faris, Hollywood the New Yorker

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ANNALS OF COMEDY

FUNNY LIKE A GUY Anna Faris and Hollywood’s woman problem.

by Tad Friend

APRIL 11, 2011

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ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF COMEDY about the

actress Anna Faris. The mechanism that makes

Anna Faris Hollywood’s most original comic

actress—a face as diagnostic as a polygraph

pen—starts to quiver whenever she sees herself act

or feels an ambient skepticism. It’s a curiously

private thing she does, mixing a jigger of Judy

Holliday, a dash of Goldie Hawn, and a pinch of

Sid Vicious to brew a winsome bubblehead. The

question driving Faris’s new film, “What’s Your

Number?,” is not the usual romantic comedy teaser

of “Will girl get boy?” but rather, “Did girl get so many boys she won’t get her man?” As it

happens, bets on bawdy female-driven comedies are being placed across the board. What’s at

stake is not merely a tenable marketplace for “hard” female comedies but a fresh vantage on

romance and, perhaps, a fresh way of seeing men and women. Onscreen, Faris is fearless. Her

trademark is the power-through: after her character has done something incredibly stupid or

embarrassing, she doubles down. Mentions Mark Mylod, Ryan Reynolds, Amy Pascal, Seth

Rogan. The Bechdel Test is a way of examining movies for gender bias. The test poses three

questions: Does a movie contain two or more female characters who have names? Do those

characters talk to each other? And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man? An

astonishing number of light entertainments fail the test. This points to a crucial imbalance in

studio comedies: distinctive secondary roles for women barely exist. For men, these roles can be

a stepping stone to stardom. On the other hand, relatively unraunchy female-driven comedies

have all done well at the box office. So why haven’t more of them been made? The answer is

that studios, as they release fewer films, are increasingly focused on trying to develop

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franchises. Female-driven movies aren’t usually blockbusters, and studio heads don’t see them

as repeatable. Men predominate in Hollywood, and men just don’t write much for women.

Mentions Judd Apatow, David Zucker, and Keenen Ivory Wayans. Describes a music video

shoot with Faris and Topher Grace for their film “Take Me Home Tonight.” Mentions Chris

Pratt, Faris’s husband. Faris grew up in Baltimore, and later, in Edmonds, Washington. After

graduating from the University of Washington, in 1999, she landed a part in Keenen Ivory

Wayans’s “Scary Movie.” Relatability for female characters is seen as being based upon

vulnerability, which creates likability. So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must

fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault. Ideas for female-driven comedies are met

with intense skepticism, and it’s even more intense because Faris isn’t aiming at the familiar

Type A roles played by Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl. She said, “I’d like to explore

Type D, the sloppy ones.” Mentions “The House Bunny” and “Observe and Report.”


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Tad Friend, Annals of Comedy, “Funny Like a Guy,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2011, p. 52

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Anna Faris, Hollywood the New Yorker