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Jenny Slate: ‘Ivanka Trump is a fake feminist and should be ashamed’

June 18, 2017TheGuardian

The US actor, standup and author on her new film, Gifted, rescuing her career after being fired from Saturday Night Live, inspirational women and the terrifying situation in the White House

Jenny Slate, 35, is an American comedian, actor and author. The middle of three sisters, with a ceramicist mother and poet father, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. While at Columbia University, Slate performed standup and improv. Moving to Los Angeles with then-husband, director Dean Fleischer-Camp (they’ve since amicably divorced), Slate joined Saturday Night Live in 2009, but accidentally swore in her first episode and was fired after one season. A stop-motion short animation made with Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, became a viral hit, leading to New York Times bestseller children’s books and plans for a feature-length movie.

With her distinctive voice, Slate featured in Zootopia and The Secret Life of Pets. On television, she appeared in Parks and Recreation, Married and Girls. Her performance in Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, playing a comic navigating a pregnancy termination, won her awards including the Critics’ Choice award for best actress in a comedy. Slate stars in another Robespierre film, Landline, due out in the summer. In her latest film, Gifted, she plays a teacher who becomes involved with a man (Chris Evans) caring for his maths prodigy niece (Mckenna Grace).

Dying Laughing review – savagely funny documentary about standup

June 16, 2017TheGuardian

Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Stewart Lee, Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood feature in this film about the craft and catharsis of comedy

A murderer’s row of standup talent has been assembled for this documentary on the craft and catharsis of comedy. Chris Rock, Steve Coogan, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman and Stewart Lee are among the many faces providing testimony to the euphoria and agony that telling jokes to a group of strangers can bring. The film is stronger on the latter point, with some savagely funny accounts of the many ways that comedians deal with hecklers, and one devastating account of a gig going horribly wrong.

The endless conveyor belt of talking heads does rather lose its lustre over time, and some actual standup would have been welcome, but there’s a dizzying amount of insight, not to mention a real poignancy to some of the contributors: including Garry Shandling and Victoria Wood, both of whom died in 2016.

The 10 best things to do this week: Machynlleth festival, Arca and Mindhorn

April 21, 2017TheGuardian

Britain’s best standups hit the Welsh town, the Venezuelan producer plays London and Julian Barratt stars as a washed-up former TV cop

From Cradle to Stage
Mum’s the word! Literally, actually, as Foo Fighter Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia, has gone around the world to interview mothers about their famous offspring, from Pharrell Williams’s ma Carolyn to Amy Winehouse’s mummy Janis for a new book. It’s out on 25 April.
From Cradle to Stage by Virginia Hanlon Grohl is published by Coronet, £20

Why I love… Dave Chappelle

April 15, 2017TheGuardian

I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism

Back when easy streaming was a twinkle in some young executive’s eye, some TV was just… unavailable. If you were desperate to watch that US TV show, you could try the dodgy VHS guy down the market (ahem). So for a long time, I just heard about US comedian Dave Chappelle’s legendary show. When I finally got to watch, on a grainy DVD copy, I laughed so hard I cried.

Dave Chappelle, 43, moved to New York as a teen and was soon on stage at the world famous Apollo theatre. By 19, he was cast as Ahchoo in the spoof Robin Hood: Men In Tights. The 90s were good to him (more film and TV work, and his first standup special) but it was the 2000s that cemented his legacy: he co-created Chappelle’s Show in 2003, influencing a new generation of TV comedians in the process. The sketches and characters are iconic now (professional hater Silky Johnson and Chappelle as Prince are my favourites) and still relevant. His standup style is warmly sly and anecdotal: he’s your best friend but, like, 2,000 times funnier. I will never not laugh at his bit on chicken and racism, or applaud his incredibly nuanced “how old is 15, really?” bit on how black kids are perceived.

Whoopi Goldberg to Secret Cinema: top things to do in the UK this week

February 10, 2017TheGuardian

From the actor’s rarely seen character comedy to an immersive version of Moulin Rouge: your at-a-glance guide to the best in culture

Whoopi Goldberg
A brilliant one-off: the award-winning actor brings two performances of her character comedy to the London Palladium for the first time on Saturday 11 February. Her standup deals in alter-egos, so expect to meet Fontaine the career dope-smoker or Lurleen the southern matriarch.
At London Palladium, W1

Bridget Christie and Drake: top things to do in the UK this week

February 3, 2017TheGuardian

From the super-sharp standup latest set to the hip-hop megastar’s mammoth tour: your at-a-glance guide to the best in culture

Bridget Christie
The queen of feminist comedy continues her two-week run in London, with a new show that faces up to our EU exasperation, before heading out on tour.
At Leicester Square Theatre, WC2, to Saturday 11 February; touring to Thursday 22 June

Why aren’t female comedians funny? You asked Google – here’s the answer | Ayesha Hazarika

February 1, 2017TheGuardian

Every day millions of internet users ask Google life’s most difficult questions, big and small. Our writers answer some of the commonest queries

We live in a time of profound change and challenge and even though we think we know it all, there are still some big existential questions that plague mankind. And I do mean man.

Having a fanny isn’t a barrier to being funny

Whitney Cummings: ‘The scariest place to perform standup is America’

January 12, 2017TheGuardian

The outspoken comic talks about directing a ‘science comedy’ on the female brain, overcoming her battle with co-dependency and the cult of celebrity grief

At only 34, Whitney Cummings has packed an enormous amount of success – and a few notable failures – into her career. Named one of Variety’s “Comics to Watch” a decade ago, she went on to become a regular at Chelsea Lately and at the Comedy Central roasts. In 2011, she exploded – her sitcom Whitney premiered on NBC to withering reviews, only lasting two seasons; a short-lived talkshow would follow. At the same time, she was creating and executive-producing CBS’s 2 Broke Girls, a bona fide hit now in its sixth season.

Get ready, here I come: 20 talents set to take 2017 by storm

January 7, 2017TheGuardian

The singer who stunned Pharrell, the writer to rival Pynchon, the son of a stone carver making art out of his body … we choose 20 names to watch in stage, film, books, art, design, music and TV

More on the unmissable culture of 2017

Beyoncé to Black Mirror; the culture that defines 2016

December 30, 2016TheGuardian

How better to make sense of this turbulent year than through the art and literature it has produced? Our critics choose the works that sum up the last 12 months

If there is one film that holds a political key to understanding 2016, it is Ghostbusters: that funny, good-natured, easygoing female remake of the 1980s original. The movie, and the way it was received and viciously attacked online, told us something vital about the hive mind of the US’s reactionary right. It starred Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones. Wiig and McCarthy were already well known; McKinnon was the upcoming SNL superstar who was later in the year to become famous for her Hillary Clinton impersonation – but it was the African-American comic Jones who became the particular object of unpleasant abuse, reminiscent of #gamergate vitriol, naturally with a racist slant, though everyone was attacked, and all for daring to remake and allegedly “spoil” the original with a gender switch.

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