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Tina Fey does not have many credits to her name. She even has fewer -- a lot fewer -- than recent auditee Dakota Fanning, who has trod this earth less than a third as long as Fey has. And yet there are few who would assert that Tina Fey is not accomplished. Rather, she is proof that it is still possible (if rare) to be a show-business success based on the quality of one's achievements and not their quantity.
Before we really get into our assessment of Ms. Fey, we have to make it clear that we are just as tired as everyone else is of all the press coverage her show, Saturday Night Live, has been getting for suddenly noticing that its female cast members are funny and using them skillfully on the show, as though no one who produced the show knew how to deploy female comic actors until writer/performer Fey; castmates Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph; and director Beth McCarthy Miller came along. However, the fact that this evolution in the show's sensibility is somewhat overreported in the media doesn't mean that those overreporting it are talking out their asses; the show is about as good as it's ever been largely because the women on it are getting to perform good material.
(And not, we should hasten to add, because there has been a dearth of talented female performers in the past; a recent appearance by Cheri Oteri on The Ellen DeGeneres Show reminded us again of how fucking funny she is, and to lament to ourselves what a sin it is that she has yet to become the superstar she so richly deserves to be.)
(We'd also like to add that as much as we love the ladies -- and we totally do, you guys -- one story that is sinfully underreported is how many talented male performers in the show's cast are wasted due to attention-hogging welcome-overstayers Darrell Hammond, Jimmy Fallon, and Horatio Sanz (the latter two of whom are also often wasted in another sense of the word). Dudes, can't you hurry up and start thinking you're too good for the show and leave, and make room for Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Seth Meyers, and Kenan Thompson? I mean, honest to God.)
ANYHOW. Fey -- in a refreshing display of professionalism for someone involved in SNL -- is always very conscientious in interviews that laud her head writership as the reason for the show's sharp sketches to emphasize that she has a co-head writer in Dennis McNicholas, so we'll go ahead and mention him, too. But whatever: he doesn't co-anchor "Weekend Update" (though maybe he should; he couldn't do any damn worse than Fallon), and he didn't write Mean Girls. He may well be extremely talented and write all of Fey's best SNL zingers, but he's not famous at all, except in conjunction with her, and therefore we have no reason here at FAMEtracker to comment on his career. In fact, we've already said too much about him. Pretend we never brought him up.
Fey, on the other hand, is quite famous. She's arguably the most famous current SNL cast member; sure, Rudolph got the slot on Entertainment Weekly's recent list of the funniest people in America, but Fey was the one on the cover a few years back (with Fallon), the one profiled in The New Yorker last fall and in EW a couple of weeks ago, the one gracing the cover of the "Smart" issue of Bust. Fey is like SNL's goodwill ambassador to the media: smart, but not too elitist; pretty, but not too inaccessible; funny, but not too nasty.
The real measure of Fey's fame, however, finally has less to do with SNL than with Mean Girls. In the weeks surrounding the release of the movie -- Fey's very first produced screenplay -- Fey did about as much press to promote it as its star Lindsay Lohan did. Try, for a moment, to think of another screenwriter famous enough to get booked on talk shows when his or her new movie comes out. Writer/directors, maybe -- like Quentin Tarantino -- but screenwriters are generally kept under wraps, away from human eyes, treated like scaly, boil-covered, hideous freaks. Yes, freaks even more hideous than Quentin Tarantino. But Fey has achieved so much fame off her SNL gig that Mean Girls is like her fame coronation. It's the fame cotillion at which she's making her fame début. It's her fame mitzvah.
We say, more power to her. We allow that she'd probably never have gotten the "Update" gig if she were still thirty pounds overweight. We allow that she wouldn't be one of the world's most recognizable screenwriters if she wasn't so cute. Fame can absolutely be contingent on one's appearance. But seriously, we saw Mean Girls, and it's good. We're happy she's famous because we know she's talented. And how often do we get to say that?
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