![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() We talked about how difficult oral histories are as a format, how tricky people’s memories are, and how badly she now wishes she had talked to Tig Notaro. Not only did she want to lay out the vast variety of comedic styles and resist clumping these women together-itself a big feat-but she also wanted to chart how comedians like Roseanne Barr or Ellen DeGeneres made the jump from obscurity to ubiquity. With this oral history of women working in comedy, spanning an enormous cast of characters, she wanted to track how they grew on stage and changed how they related to their audiences. “First of all,” Kohen recalls thinking, “I’m shocked that you turn on E! at that hour, but, second of all, you’re watching Chelsea Handler? Really?” His reason: “I feel like when I watch her, that’s exactly who she is.” That closeness is something Kohen unpacks in We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy. ![]() Letterman? I hate him! She’s the only one who’s funny.” Recently he pointed to a magazine she had in her house and asked, “Who’s that?” It was Chelsea Handler. Yael Kohen’s dad, a sixty-something Israeli guy who watched Rita Rudner with his kids, probably is to blame for how unaware Kohen was of the time-worn trope of women not being funny. ![]()
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