The wonderful Nell Scovell, who helped Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg write Lean In
and is now working on a screenplay based on the book, has an excellent essay in Time about the talented women who appeared on “Saturday Night Live” but never transitioned to the kind of high-profile careers that some of their male peers did. Her list includes Nora Dunn, Ana Gasteyer, Julia Sweeney, Molly Shannon, and Maya Rudolph. “Very few women from SNL have gone on to “a big movie career.” Of course, Fey did, along with Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig. And in TV, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in a class all her own, with 18 Emmy nominations and five wins for three different roles. Still, their success stories are the exceptions to Hooks’s rule.” She documents the difference in the numbers of male and female performers over the years. I think one additional reason also has to do with numbers — the way Hollywood treats men and women differently as they get older.
Critic Ann Hornaday made this point very tellingly in the Washington Post:
“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”
That line from Richard Linklater’s classic 1993 comedy “Dazed and Confused” came back with an ironic vengeance this week, and die-hard fans of the film will know why: It’s spoken by a 20-something stoner named David Wooderson after a cute-looking teenager walks by. Wooderson is played by Matthew McConaughey, and the girl is a young actress named Renee Zellweger.
