Joke of the Day (Tina Fey, on a New Form of Plastic Surgery)

“There's a new procedure I'm doing a lot where they freeze your fat off you, then make it into a whipped dessert, and you eat it again.” — American actress and screenwriter Tina Fey, quoted by Dan Snierson, “Tina and Amy Boss Us Around (And You Love It!)”, Entertainment Weekly, Dec. 20, 2013

Theater Review: ‘Mean Girls’ (The Musical), From the Pittsburgh CLO

It’s hard to believe that the film comedy Mean Girls is two decades old now. Somehow, it had escaped my attention that screenwriter Tina Fey had also written the “book” for a musical adaptation that premiered on Broadway in 2018.

Maybe because it came out in January 2024, when audience attention traditionally turns to Oscar hopefuls, but not many people paid much mind when the musical itself became a big-screen vehicle. It did decent but not great business. 

Critics noted sourly that Fey’s original tart observations were now more likely to become lost in the musical collaborators’ heavy-handed moralizing about wicked high-school cliques.

I wasn’t really prepared, then, when earlier this month, I saw the high-energy production mounted by the Pittsburgh CLO as part of its summer season. (The other Broadway imports were Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, and Snuffs.)

It’s not necessarily remarkable that, Mean Girls, like the other two shows, was put together in only about a week. But it is astounding that a production with roughly 20 speaking parts and vigorous choreography was produced with none of the seams showing. So much credit goes to director Mara Newbery Greer.

The main character, Cady (adeptly played by Abigail Isom), is a home-schooled transfer from Kenya, but nothing she has seen in Africa with her parents prepares her for the jungle that is American high-school life. (One of the show’s tongue-in-cheek props is a lion’s head, a stand-in for the school’s athletic nickname.)

A fish out of water, Cady is initially courted by a pair of school misfits, Damian (Jack Haroutunian) and Janis (Lyda Jade Harlan), but at their urging begins spying on a clique of popular girls, the Plastics—until she becomes every bit as bad as this trio of “shiny, fake, and hard” teen tormenters.

As Regina, the “Apex Predator” of the Plastics, Landry Champlin was a formidable presence, lording it over her hangers-on and seething with resentment—at the parent who desperately styles herself a “cool mom,” at a boyfriend whose affection she squandered, and at the clique kingdom from which she finds herself exiled through an embarrassing incident aired on social media. She turned her big solo, “World Burn,” into a sizzling revenge tale.

Sydni Moon endowed Regina acolyte Gretchen with an aching desire to belong and matter in her number, “What’s Wrong With Me?” Rounding out the original Plastics trio, Kaley Bender took Karen from mere shallowness to an avatar of the Blonde Bimbo.

Harlan and Haroutunian may have played characters who didn’t fit into the school’s fabric, but this show certainly provided the actors with multiple opportunities to shine, with the show’s intro number, “Mean,” and Janis’ defiant assertion of self-respect, “I’d Rather Be Me”—and Haroutunian, under the guidance of choreographer Dana Solimando, displaying quite a talent for tap.

The show I attended featured a post-show “talk-back” with cast members and other creative talent. One highlight was cast member Jennifer Lybarger, who, though she took on three adult adult roles in the show—Mrs. George, Mrs. Herron, and Ms. Norbury—could have been forgiven for identifying the most with the last of these figures, the teacher who serves in effect as Ms. Fey’s mouthpiece.

Ms. Lybarger, it turns out, spent the last several years directing at the Pittsburgh CLO Academy—and was justifiably proud that five of her former students found spots on this expertly executed production.

Joke of the Day (Tina Fey, on How Her ‘Restless Leg Tour’ Differed From ‘SNL’)

“This really feels just like S.N.L. Except that we will be in bed by 10. And I don’t have to go to a weird Tuesday night dinner with Lorne Michaels and Rudy Giuliani.” — American actress, comedian, writer, and producer Tina Fey, on her “Restless Leg Tour” with Amy Poehler,  quoted by Jason Zinoman, “Between Friends, an Endless Barrage of Jokes,” The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2024

I wonder how late Fey and Poehler had to stay up in the week before the SNL 50^th anniversary special?

Well, at least she didn’t have to attend dinner with the one-time “America’s Mayor.” Which brings up the question: which was weirder—a dinner conversation with Giuliani or the fact that so many once did consider him “America’s Mayor”?

(The image accompanying this post, showing Amy Poehler and Tina Fey at the premiere of Baby Mama in New York City at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, was taken Apr. 23, 2008, by David Shankbone.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘30 Rock,’ With ‘Country Jenna’ Foreshadowing ‘Country Carter’)

Jenna Maroney [played by Jane Krakowski]: “Did you hear what happened? I am so upset.”

Liz Lemon [played by Tina Fey]: “Oh, no. Okay, let me explain...”

Jenna: “I came in here to shoot these tennis promos, and they had blue gels on the lights. You know that makes my teeth look see-through. You weren't here to do your job, Liz.”

Liz: “Okay, well, Josh quit.”

Jenna: “Who? Jack's counting on Country Jenna to save the show, but I just want to understand what it is that's distracting you from the one thing you've been told to do.”

Liz: “Really? You wanna know what I've been doing?”

Jenna: “Yes, Liz. Enlighten me.”

Liz: “Jack is hiring a new cast member.”

Jenna [Screaming at the top of her lungs]: “If it is a blonde woman, I will kill myself!” — 30 Rock, Season 4, Episode 1, “Season 4,” original air date Oct. 15, 2009, teleplay by Tina Fey, directed by Don Scardino

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Mean Girls,’ on How ‘Fetch’ Won’t Fly)

Gretchen (played by Lacey Chabert): “That is so fetch!”

Regina (played by Rachel McAdams): “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It's not going to happen!”—Mean Girls (2004), screenplay by Tina Fey, based on the nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman, directed by Mark Waters

Ten years ago this past week, Mean Girls premiered. While some of the movie’s gains were ephemeral (notably, Lindsay Lohan’s status as an “It Girl”), it did confirm that Tina Fey’s writing talents extended further than Saturday Night Live skits. (Indeed, I have a hard time thinking of this as a “Mark Waters Film,” though proponents of the auteur theory of the director’s primacy would assuredly think of the movie in this way.)

Lindsay Lohan’s Cady comes from Africa, but that background prepares her in no way for the tribal customs of American teenagers. One of these mores depicted in this scene is the teen propensity to create slang. In this group, slang terms arise spontaneously, and in such plentitude as to make one wonder if each teen tries to create his or her own. That was certainly the case for the not-so-mean guys I hung around with nearly 40 years ago. Words like “run” and “chooch” became our own private language—fiercely used for a while, and now, I suspect, last employed so long ago by any of us that the usage might as well have been in another lifetime.

“Fetch” is Gretchen’s ill-starred attempt to replace “Cool.” My friends and our older siblings used an offshoot of this, “Cool it,” in urging someone to calm down. That phrase, such an example of hip slang in Plaza Suite, sounded utterly dated by 2000, when playwright Neil Simon wanted to fuse his 1968 comedy with successors California Suite and London Suite. By the millennium, he realized not only that the plays’ architecture needed to be reconfigured, but also their interior decoration—the one-liners that had set audiences roaring with laughter in the Sixties and early Seventies. And so, for his 2000 play Hotel Suite, “cool it” was dropped in favor of another term more contemporary, but, in tone, not unrelated: “Chill out.”

A retrospective on Mean Girls last week in The New York Times indicated that, despite the dictate of Queen Bee Regina, “fetch” has indeed “happened,” largely because of the film’s success. Let’s see where the usage stands in another 10 years.

TV Quote of the Day (’30 Rock,’ in Which Jenna Insults Liz)

''And maybe you ought to look in the mirror before leaving your house in the morning because you look like someone's been slowly poisoning Sally Field.'' —Jenna (played by Jane Krakowski), to Liz Lemon (played  by Tina Fey), on 30 Rock, Season 7, Episode 2, “Governor Dunston,” written and directed by Robert Carlock, air date October 11, 2012

Quote of the Day (Rob Sheffield on Tina Fey, ‘Oprah With Librarian Glasses’)

“As ’30 Rock’ gets off to a rip-roaring start this season, the question looms larger than ever: Is Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon the most bizarrely nonimitated sitcom character of our time? It’s a mystery that gets stranger as Fey keeps blowing up as a cultural icon. Given how she’s turned into such a fiercely revered, identified-with, hero-worshipped presence, you’d think someone would at least try to duplicate the formula. At this point, she’s practically Oprah with librarian glasses.”—Rob Sheffield, “Television: She’s Gonna Make It After All,” Rolling Stone, March 1, 2012

TV Quote of the Day (“30 Rock,” on Liz Lemon’s Choice in Clothes)

"Good God, Lemon. Those jeans make you look like a Mexican sports reporter."—Network exec Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) to head comedy show writer Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey), in 30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 7, “Brooklyn Without Limits,“ air date November 11, 2010, written by Ron Weiner, directed by Michael Engler

TV Quote of the Day (“30 Rock,” on a Boss’s Juggling of Girlfriends)

“You’re going to juggle them? No! Even you can’t pull this off, Jack. Mrs. Doubtfire shimself could not do this.”—Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey) to boss Jack Donaghy (played by Alec Baldwin) about dating two women at once, on 30 Rock, quoted in “Sound Bites,” Entertainment Weekly, May 7, 2010

Quote of the Day (Tina Fey, on Leno and O’Brien)

“It’s not rain. It’s just God crying for NBC.”—Tina Fey, on the preshow before the Golden Globes, linking meteorological and theological speculations on the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien talk-show war, quoted in “Tina Fey: Golden Globes’ Rain Is ‘God Crying for NBC,” The Huffington Post, January 17, 2010

TV Quote of the Day (“30 Rock,” on “The C-Word”)

Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey): “We need to fire Lutz.”
Pete Hornberger (played by Scott Adsit): “What? Why? What happened?”
Liz: “He called me the worst name ever.”
Frank Rossitano (played by Judah Friedlander): “What did he call you?”
Liz: “I'm not gonna repeat it. That's how much I hate it.”
Pete: “Fat can?"
Liz: “No.”
Frank: “Mouth hooker?”
Liz: “No.”
Frank: “Monster bitch.”
Pete: “Hatchet face.”
Liz: “No! The one that rhymes with the name of your favorite Todd Rundgren album.”
Frank (utterly confused): “It rhymes with Hermit of Mink Hollow?” –30 Rock, Season 1, “The C Word,” written by Tina Fey

(Now that Frasier has gone into Syndication Heaven, 30 Rock has become my favorite sitcom. You could, I suppose, say it harkens back to two great situation comedies starring Mary Tyler Moore: The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Both of the latter shows take at least some time out away from the workplace to focus on the characters’ family and/or nutty neighbors and friends. 30 Rock, however, allows Liz Lemon, head writer for a Saturday Night Live-type sketch comedy, virtually no life outside the frenzied studio--even her social events feel like work--making her all the more crestfallen when she discovers that some co-workers really don’t like her.

Two other differences with the earlier MTM shows:

1) Rapid dialogue. All three shows feature brilliant ensemble casts, but the words in 30 Rock seem to fly out at supersonic speed, mirroring the manic, stressful environment of the show-within-a-show. Even the quote above doesn’t hint at how sharp it is—and by multiple members of the cast. It’s like the cast sat down and watched a “Screwball Comedies of the Thirties” Festival. Saying that every member of the cast has to be at the top of his game doesn’t indicate the intensity involved—it’s more like every cast member has to attack the net.

2) Pushing the censorship envelope. You have to see this scene within an even larger context. It begins with Lutz about to say the “C” word, only to have the camera cut away to guest Rachel Dratch speaking about her “runt” (the same trick used in the "Austin Powers" movies). Then it’s on to this scene, which goes to the edge again, only to pull back with a clever pop reference (reminding many of us Baby Boomers of Rundgren’s pop prime in the Seventies, when fans—including more than a few at the Wollman Ice Skating Rink, where I saw him—held up signs reading, “Todd Is God.”

Oh, by the way: My favorite Todd album is still Something/Anything?)