SXSWORLD

Mythbuster Rachel Sklar Takes On the Chauvinists by Amy Benfer zine and organized the law follies. As a media critic, she made comedy her beat. And then, while working as a sketch comedian in New York, she was confronted with the prevalent attitude among certain comedy dudes that women just aren't as funny as men. To be fair, few men have the audacity to say so out loud. But back in 2006, Christopher Hitchens saying just that in a column for Vanity Fair magazine prompted a "snipfest" between Sklar and publisher Graydon Carter. ("Can you imagine anyone publishing an essay that said, 'Black people aren't funny?'" asks Sklar, "It would never happen.") And while Betty White and Tina Fey may have been the most cele- brated comedians of last year, there has been widespread chatter on the relatively few women represented on-screen, on-stage and in writers' rooms around the comedy world. Besides being both funny and female, Sklar knows a thing or two about gender advocacy. "I am the 'Woman and Blank' Woman," she says. Last year, riled over the lack of women on the board of major tech companies, Sklar founded Change the Ratio, an organization working to promote more opportunities for women in the field. At SXSW 2008, she moderated a panel that looked at why lady bloggers seem to invite a disproportionate amount of online vitriol. This year, she returns to moderate "The Female Funny: Is it Different for Girls?" and recently shared what attendees might expect from the panel. B efore Rachel Sklar became a well-known New York media critic, she was a lawyer. However, the Toronto native has always been funny. As a law student, she edited her campus humor maga- What has been your experience as a woman working in comedy? Rachel Sklar: I just want to be afforded the same opportunities as dudes. My whole life I've been competitive with them —to great effect. I was always the funny one, in any group of friends I had. When I started doing comedy, I was thrown into the environment and I was subtly and not-so-subtly given cues that my stuff wasn't as good. Like I would say something, and no one would respond, and then two sec- onds later, a guy would say something and everyone would laugh. That is something that women in comedy report happening all the time. This panel is specifically about women in comedy, but a lot of what is going to be said could also be applied to women directors, women entrepreneurs, women on tech boards ... Famously, even Tina Fey didn't end up in front of the camera until after she'd lost weight. Is there too much pressure on women to be conventionally attractive? Where is the female equivalent to Seth Rogen and Zack Galifianakis? RS: Colette Burson, co-creator of Hung, once said, "It's incredibly difficult to find a beautiful, talented, funny woman over the age of 35." I was like, "Really? Really?" I've come back to that quote again and again. Because it's not hard to find that kind of woman at all. Just to start with, you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Mann, Kathy Griffin ... These are all super funny, super fabulous women who are not eschewing their gender in order to be funny. 40 Rachel Sklar funny, including Olivia Munn, who, some suggested, only landed her position as one of the few female correspondents on The Daily Show because she is conventionally attractive. Other ladies have been criticized for being too pretty to be RS: I think Olivia Munn is pretty funny. I wrote a rave review of her first segment. But I definitely understand why it caused some people to raise an eyebrow and say, "OK, out of all the potential women out there, why this one?" And then you turn around, and there's this sense that if you are a beautiful girl, you can't be funny. When Michaela Watkins was let go from SNL, Tom Shales of the Washington Post said that it might be because she was too beautiful to play funny. Are you kidding me? What are the burning questions on women in comedy that you hope to answer on your SXSW Film panel? what's funny, who will be funny, who understands funny, who can reach the desired audience for funny and who gets to be the desired audience for funny? Comedy is everywhere, but this kowtowing at the altar of the 18-to-34-year-old dude seems silly. Everybody is a potential market. I don't want to segregate the funny. I want to be able to laugh RS: How does the comedic sausage get made? Who gets to decide at a dick joke just the same as anyone else. n Rachel Sklar will moderate "The Female Funny: Is It Different For Girls?" panel at the SXSW Film Conference. Check sxsw.com/film for more details. SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2011 DAN FOGARTY

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