Important Work

Bossypants Tina Fey makes you think and laugh at the same time

Tina Fey's new book, "Bossypants," will make you laugh, again
Fey, at the SAG Awards with "30 Rock" co-star Alec Baldwin
Photo by Christopher Polk/WireImage.com
In an "SNL" promo shot. She will host the show May 7.

I’ve felt an odd, almost proprietary pride about Tina Fey’s work since I first saw that sly, knowing smile from behind the Saturday Night Live news desk 11 years ago.

It’s partly because of her freakin’ hilarious, possibly slightly abnormal, view of the world in both big philosophical strokes and tiny anthropological detail. And it’s because she trades on her smarts, not her looks. Tina Fey is this very pretty woman who often pretends she isn’t. She’s also a wildly intelligent woman who acknowledges that she is.

Another reason I feel pride in award shows acknowledging her brilliance is because she gets being a woman and is fairly honest about the man-woman thing. In her new book Bossypants (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown & Company, $26.99), she writes with great humor about discrimination in the comedy workplace, breast feeding, bad haircuts, having crushes on boys who told her about their crushes on other girls, and about how men keep cups of pee in their offices but women don’t so much.

Tina Fey has made me think and guffaw at the same time. So far no one’s been hurt. Sometimes I just chuckle and then later, I’ll get the rest of the joke. Her comedy river runs deep.

Bossypants is a delicious gift from its cover of her airbrushed face juxtaposed with burly, hairy man hands, to the last chapters about turning 40 and suddenly needing to take her pants off as soon as she gets home. BTW, I read it on my iPad2 because I’m a Boomer who is cool, even though when I watch SNL now I often have no idea who the musical guests are. They might consider bringing back Paul Simon for the 846th time to keep us from worrying about that.

Anyway, Fey is Generation X, meaning she was born a few years after bra burning and around the time Ms. Magazine was born. One of my favorite tributes to Fey was when her freakishly-perfect-for-his-role 30 Rock co-star Alec Baldwin lauded her as the Elaine May of her generation at the 2008 Emmys. May was born during the Great Depression, not exactly when comedy was king, and despite enormous talent is most famous for her routines with Mike Nichols.

In Bossypants, Fey has collected essays about her life in a Dave-Barry-if-he-were-a-woman way. We learn about her suave father’s run in with a carpet shampooer, her super cool gay friends from summer theater, her disastrous fire- and fear-laden honeymoon cruise to Bermuda, breaking the rules at Chicago’s Second City improv troupe, getting to the comedy Mecca of SNL, being the boss at 30 Rock, changing venue on an in-law Christmas, doing her wicked good Sarah Palin, having a baby who is good for many things, including blaming for farts.

There’s a lot in the book about being a woman. I’m thinking she can’t help that because of her gender. There’s also a repeated understanding that coal mining and active duty military service are the real high stress jobs, even more than working at NBC. She has a chart comparing her job stress to the life of a baby and both are miniscule compared even to the manager of a Chili’s on a Friday night.

The book also contains bits of scripts and lifted SNL and 30 Rock jokes. There are amusing footnotes too, some that I missed in the beginning because I am not actually cool and hadn’t figured them out on the iPad2’s Kindle.

Fey’s SNL news was worth staying up for (Boomer time). Her movie Mean Girls was on-target funny. 30 Rock has so many layers of humor-filled quirkiness I’ll bet nobody ever gets everything there. And this Bossypants business is more of the same. Life through the eyes of an observant, ingenious, sometimes shameless woman who left to her own devices claims to dress like someone coming to clean the aquarium; but left to other peoples’ devices happily endorses having her portraits Photoshopped.

In my family, where humor is a basic currency, we reserve the term “important work” for anything that makes us really laugh. Tina Fey does some of the most important work of several generations, Bossypants included.

Mary Flood is a Houstonian who has asked both then-comedian Al Franken and then-law professor Archibald Cox to sign baseballs for her brother’s sports-comedy-Watergate memorabilia collection.

unspecified

Movie Review

Timothée Chalamet cements star status in new movie Marty Supreme

Courtesy

Timothée Chalamet

In a time when true movie stars seem to be going extinct, Timothée Chalamet has emerged as an exception to the rule. Since 2021 he has headlined blockbusters like the two Dune movies and Wonka, and also earned an Oscar nomination for playing Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown (his second nomination following 2018’s Call Me By Your Name). Now, he’s almost assured to get his third nomination for the stellar new film, Marty Supreme.

Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a world-class table tennis player living in New York. But reducing Marty to his best skill doesn’t do him justice, as he’s also a motormouth schemer who will do almost anything to achieve his dreams. He doesn’t have any qualms about wooing married women like neighbor Rachel (Odessa A’zion) or actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), or hiding his true ping pong skills to win money in scams with friends like Wally (Tyler the Creator).

Marty is seemingly on the go the entire movie, whether it’s trying to convince Kay’s millionaire husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) to fund his table tennis ambitions; or trying to track down the dog of Ezra (Abel Ferrara), a man he accidentally injures; or trying to avoid the ire of the boss at the shoe store where he works. Just when you think he might slow down, he’s off to the races on another plan or adventure.

Directed by Josh Safdie and written by Safdie and frequent co-writer Ronald Bronstein, the film is an almost continuous blast of pure energy for 2 ½ hours. So many different things happen over the course of the film that the story defies conventional narratives, and yet the throughline of Marty keeps everything tightly connected. His particular type of brash behavior turns much of the film into a comedy as he does and says things that are both shocking and thrilling.

Another thing that makes the movie sing is the fantastic characterization by Safdie and Bronstein. Almost every person who is given a speaking line in the film has a moment where they pop, which speaks to airtight dialogue that the writers have created. Characters will be introduced and then disappear for long stretches of time, and yet because they make such an impression the first time they’re on screen, it’s easy to pick up their thread right away.

Safdie, as he’s done previously with brother Bennie (Uncut Gems), calls on a host of well-known non-actors or people with interesting faces/vibes to inhabit supporting roles, and to a person they are crucial to the film’s success. O’Leary (of Shark Tank fame), rapper Tyler the Creator, director Ferrara, magician Penn Jillette, and fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi each deliver knockout performances. The relative unknowns who play smaller roles are just as impressive, making each beat of the film feel naturalistic.

Leading the way is the powerhouse performance by Chalamet. For one person to believably play both the famously reserved Dylan and also a firecracker like Marty is astonishing, and this role cements Chalamet’s status as his generation’s movie star. A’zion is a rising star who gets great moments as Marty’s on-again/off-again love interest. Paltrow pops in and out of the film, lighting up the screen every time she appears. Fran Drescher as Marty’s mom and Sandra Bernhard as a neighbor also pay dividends in small roles.

Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial effort is unlike any other movie this year, or maybe even this century. Thanks to its breakneck storytelling, a magnificent performance by Chalamet, and countless intangibles that Safdie employs expertly, the film smacks viewers in the face repeatedly and demands that they come back for more.

---

Marty Supreme opens in theaters on December 25.

movies film