Jay Leno does a lot of good things with his piles of money. He funds very important work being done to support women and girls in Afghanistan through the Feminist Majority, but as Nancy Franklin pointed out in a recent New Yorker story on his new show, Leno does not employ a single female on his writing staff.
It’s not that he’s alone with this problem. Here are the writing nominees from this year’s Emmy Awards:
The nominees were:
The Stephen Colbert Show (2 women out of 14 writers- but he does have a female executive producer- who had now resigned)
The Daily Show (1 woman out of 16)
Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NO women out of 16)
Late Show with David Letterman (NO women out of 14)
SNL (5 women out of 22)
So pathetic. And don’t get me started on David Letterman (there will be a post on this)
But Jay does good work for women. He should know better. You gotta walk the walk and talk the talk. It’s great to fund women in Afghanistan, but hire a goddamn female comedy writer. It can’t be that hard. I have been told that he had a couple of women writers in late night who were fired before he moved to prime time. Now he has 19 male writers and no women.
Here’s the money quote from the Franklin piece:
In other diversity news, Leno’s and the rest of the nighttime comedy shows are bizarrely lacking in women writers. Did a bomb go off and kill all the women comedy writers and leave the men standing? The other night on the Emmy Awards broadcast, the names of the nominees for best writing on a comedy or variety series were read, and, out of eighty-one people, only seven were women. Leno has no women writers on his show. Neither does David Letterman, and neither does Conan O’Brien. Come on.
I agree with Franklin – Come on!
Leno at the Bat (New Yorker)
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I look forward to the Letterman post – I am kind of getting sick of hearing what a great guy he is.
I guess you work with those who have same talents, interests, humor etc. Whenever The Daily Show wins an award, it’s so awful to watch the stream of white men walk up on stage to collect the award. No wonder I only find the show funny 2% of the time. Jay Leno should “know better” I suppose but he and the other men do what is comfortable and why should they bother to move out of their comfort zones? It would just be way too much effort, their jokes might resonate to a much wider audience and they might be actually funny!
I thought several of the senior execs at Worldwide Pants (Letterman’s production company) were women.
Jay Leno is not funny and the show deserved to tank. I can’t understand why any network, least of all the last place one, would waste the 10:00 slot like this, even if it is cheap programming.
SERIOUSLY, WOULD YOU WANT TO WRITE FOR LETTERMAN? IF I WORKED THERE, I WOULD INSIST ON WEARING MY “I DID NOT BANG DAVID T-SHIRT”. I THINK THE HEADLINE SHOULD BE SEXISM WATCH: WHERE THE HELL IS THE JAYNE, STEPHANIE, DAVINA & CONNIE SHOWS?
lol, Leno is so crazy! I love him.
I was a female writer and apprenticed under the ranks of many established male comedy writers, some mentioned above, and I was treated with calculated disregard while my male interns and assistants were chosen and invited into writing positions and into the guild. Meanwhile, I was sent to get coffee for years, toiled away as a script coordinator and writers assistant. Believe me, I have paid my dues for years and got nowhere, not because I wasn’t good (my jokes would sometimes make it into the show)…the problem was, I was not respected, not even as a human being, and I was treated with some hatred- for being a woman. Also a problem was that some of the male writers’ wives would come to work and glare at me- thinking that I was trying to steal their rich and famous husbands- and they would request that I be fired for being a distraction to their husband (this really happened) and I was the only member of our writing team who was not asked back after the hiatus. This was devastating for me professionally because I was alone in NYC and needed to earn a living. After slaving for a few writers who would not help me up the ladder, I was forced to start over and now work in another area of the film/tv production. Now I write just for myself: comedy shows, jokes, animations. I know- I sound sad- but this is really sad. I have a complex about returning to the unfair competition within the writing world because it did not matter if I was good or not- I was judged by my gender and appearance (another strike against me was that I looked good in my clothes) and I was not allowed to succeed, even if my creative contributions were taken and used. One time, I was taking out the garbage on a Tina Fey project and the producer asked me to interview for the writers’ assistant job, and when I spoke to Tina Fey, she said sorry, that she didn’t know me and instead hired a guy. She didn’t even allow me to submit a writing sample. I was devastated and went back to taking out the garbage. Writing this makes me feel so sad, but this is the truth. Hopefully the culture improves to support women writers. the craft suffers when really smart people are not allowed to compete due to cultural biases and discrimination.
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