Olive And Mocha

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF COMEDY about the actress Anna Faris. The mechanism that makes Anna Faris Hollywood’s most original comic actress—a face as diagnostic as a polygraph pen—starts to quiver whenever she sees herself act or feels an ambient skepticism. It’s a curiously private thing she does, mixing a jigger of Judy Holliday, a dash of Goldie Hawn, and a pinch of Sid Vicious to brew a winsome bubblehead. The question driving Faris’s new film, “What’s Your Number?,” is not the usual romantic comedy teaser of “Will girl get boy?” but rather, “Did girl get so many boys she won’t get her man?” As it happens, bets on bawdy female-driven comedies are being placed across the board. What’s at stake is not merely a tenable marketplace for “hard” female comedies but a fresh vantage on romance and, perhaps, a fresh way of seeing men and women. Onscreen, Faris is fearless. Her trademark is the power-through: after her character has done something incredibly stupid or embarrassing, she doubles down. Mentions Mark Mylod, Ryan Reynolds, Amy Pascal, Seth Rogan. The Bechdel Test is a way of examining movies for gender bias. The test poses three questions: Does a movie contain two or more female characters who have names? Do those characters talk to each other? And, if so, do they discuss something other than a man? An astonishing number of light entertainments fail the test. This points to a crucial imbalance in studio comedies: distinctive secondary roles for women barely exist. For men, these roles can be a stepping stone to stardom. On the other hand, relatively unraunchy female-driven comedies have all done well at the box office. So why haven’t more of them been made? The answer is that studios, as they release fewer films, are increasingly focused on trying to develop franchises. Female-driven movies aren’t usually blockbusters, and studio heads don’t see them as repeatable. Men predominate in Hollywood, and men just don’t write much for women. Mentions Judd Apatow, David Zucker, and Keenen Ivory Wayans. Describes a music video shoot with Faris and Topher Grace for their film “Take Me Home Tonight.” Mentions Chris Pratt, Faris’s husband. Faris grew up in Baltimore, and later, in Edmonds, Washington. After graduating from the University of Washington, in 1999, she landed a part in Keenen Ivory Wayans’s “Scary Movie.” Relatability for female characters is seen as being based upon vulnerability, which creates likability. So funny women must not only be gorgeous; they must fall down and then sob, knowing it’s all their fault. Ideas for female-driven comedies are met with intense skepticism, and it’s even more intense because Faris isn’t aiming at the familiar Type A roles played by Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl. She said, “I’d like to explore Type D, the sloppy ones.” Mentions “The House Bunny” and “Observe and Report.”