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I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the ISN’T SHE GREAT by Elizabeth
Teets Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours.
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Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
ISN’T SHE GREAT: Writers on Women Led
Comedies from 9 to 5 to Booksmart
.Author: Elizabeth Teets (Edited By)
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Pub. Date: January 16, 2024
Publisher: Read Furiously
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 142
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Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, Indigo, BAM, Bookshop, Powell’s, Blackwells
A love letter to women-led comedies.
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Based on Elizabeth Teets’s program series called “Isn’t She Great” at the
Hollywood Theater, this anthology is a collection of the most beloved
female-centric comedies and the audiences who adore them. From 9 to 5 to
Romy and Michele to the iconic Elle Woods, the essays in this
collection build on our devotion to these films and continue the
conversation around funny women and how these characters have shaped so
many talented writers.
As Elizabeth Teets reminds us, there is a specific power in a funny
woman. A woman who dares to laugh at the world and at herself. These
movies made us strong and smart and sexy (and bend and snap a lot). At
the end of the day, we remind ourselves when the world only tries to let
us have a little – a little money, a little confidence, a little joy – to go
out and get the whole enchilada.
Isn’t She Great is for anyone who loves movies and feels the glamour in pink. Cult
cinema and film criticism will never be the same.
Guest Post:
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Top 5 favorite books
Weetzie Bat – Francesca Lia Block
My cat is named after this spectacular little novel that changed my life forever. A punk rock fairy tale with all the glitter, magic, and fashion a girl could dream of. The essential Los Angeles novel. Francesca’s prose sticks to my rib cage like toffee. Every year I go back and read it like it’s the first time. It is a literary crème brulée. It just keeps getting better and better.
Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. – Eve Babitz
Eve Babitz made me a writer, with her honesty and fearless take on the world. Allegedly she wrote this breathtaking collection to impress a guy she wanted but couldn’t pin down. Whoever he was, she was too good for him because this is a masterpiece. But I also love a woman who knows her talent and ambition are tools of seduction.
My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un)Popular Culture – Guy Branum
There are plenty of pop culture essay collections but I truly believe this one is the best. Branum gives his reader so much permission to enjoy life and all its frivolities. It has so much passion and pizzazz and reads like an honest conversation with a friend. I revisit the audiobook often for road trips.
Cometbus (Zine) – Aaron Cometbus
Aaron Cometbus is probably the greatest American writer nobody really knows anything about. I collect as many copies of his zine as I can get a hold of and have since I was a teen. I originally started reading for the punk band content and then because of Aaron’s skills as a writer and interviewer, I realized I did want to know about the history of kosher dairy restaurants. A good writer can pull you into any world and make it interesting. I have many copies in my collection but my favorite will always be “The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah.”
Valencia – Michelle Tea
Is there anyone better than Michelle Tea? I honestly don’t think so. She may be the most interesting woman alive with the best turn of phrase. Every single sentence on the page stands alone and makes you cry, laugh, or fills you with the desire to set your insides on fire. Valencia has the most powerful prose and is so full of heart. Books should be a moor in the storm and Valencia has gotten me through hurricanes.
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Enjoy this peek inside:
“You Must Always Have Faith in Yourself – Legally Blonde, and My Mommy, and Me”
Legally Blonde was the first movie I saw my mother truly love. This was not to say she didn’t love other movies – there were many she did. Growing up, my mother had a small collection of VHS tapes she loved that she would let me watch regularly. But none of them compared for how much she seemed to love Legally Blonde.
Despite her very refined palette for cinema, I don’t think she ever considered film an interest of hers. And although she may not have realized it, my mother had curated in our living room a sophisticated collection of the finest 90s and early aughts cult classics. We had copies of Mermaids, She’s All That, A Very Brady Sequel, and Tommy Boy. But Legally Blonde, oh she loved that movie.
At ten years old, I took notice of how Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, Legally Blonde’s perky sorority girl, made my mother laugh. I love anything that makes my mother laugh. After seeing my mother latch onto a piece of candy pink cinema filled with outfits, I too became obsessed with the film. As a future comedian, I paid attention to anything that made my favorite person laugh.
I also love Legally Blonde – it is undoubtedly my favorite movie. I know every line, every outfit, and every major decision I have ever made in my life has been while driving in my 2006 Kia Optima while listening to the absolute banger of a soundtrack. Elle Woods is the best character within modern cinema. She is layered, complicated, fabulously styled, unable to be bamboozled and full of grit. I was lucky enough to grow up with my own Elle Woods, my mom..
…At my mother’s beginning, or at least the beginning as it concerns me, her daughter who watched her every move, she was a single mom who had me at nineteen. This meant as a child I got to see her early twenties, her own Elle Woods years. Although she was never a member of a sorority with a tiny dog, I can’t imagine people talked to her that differently. Aren’t all stereotypes we put onto women pretty much the same?
“The Whole Enchilada”
It [Isn’t She Great film series cohosted with Anthony Hudson] has been the project I have been most proud of in my time as an artist. Not only for the opportunity I have been able to give the performers (for many it is the first time they have performed for a sold out theater), but for the connections I have made with the audience. By showing my favorite films, I have been able to connect with them in a new way; I hear the audience howl at a joke I have heard so many times I no longer recognize it and get to laugh again. I often see that the struggles and challenges the women face in the film are the exact same struggles and challenges of the audience. By seeing Elle Woods or Andy Sachs overcome, it feels like we too can carry on, maybe all we just need is to dress a little better and hold our heads up a little higher. Or maybe like Bridget Jones, we are already perfect exactly as we are.
In 2018, prior to the start of my own series I went to the Hollywood Theatre to watch a sold out screening of 9 to 5, the 80s workplace comedy starring Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton. In the iconic film, exhausted by their toxic work culture, the women form a plan to get back at their sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot of a boss. Naturally, their original plan goes horribly wrong, and a comedic adventure ensues. Throughout the wacky eighties hijinks, together with their skills, cunningness, gingham blazers, and the power of female friendship, they are able to get back at their boss and make a more pleasant and equitable workplace. And live in corporate capitalism happily ever after.
It is a movie they rarely let women make. Each actress plays a truly unique and fleshed out character, none of them have love interests that are relevant to the main plot, and no one dies or goes to prison or falls in love with someone they originally thought was an asshole. For once women are allowed to go on a journey and this time we can also bring our friends. The movie addresses sexual harassment, the unpaid extra roles women play in the workforce, and the glass ceiling in ways even movies made today shy away from.
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About Elizabeth Teets:
Elizabeth
Teets is an Oregon born writer, comedian, screenwriter, and fashionista.
Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Repeller,
Catapult, Reductress, and more. She lives in Los Angeles where she is
waiting for her group chat to respond.
Subscribe to
Elizabeth’s newsletter! (scroll
to the bottom of the page)
Website | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok | Goodreads
Isn’t She Great Contributors
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Megan J. Kaleita is an essayist and memoirist living in the PAC Northwest. Her debut essay collection,
This Book is Brought to You By My Student Loans is available through Clash Books. Her work has appeared in Ravishly, Hello Horror, Daily Drunk Mag, Luna Station Quarterly, and Lady Spike. Do not ask her for coffee. She won’t get it for you.
Samantha Mann is a Brooklyn based essayist. She is the author of Putting Out: Essays on Otherness.
She edited the anthology, I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy.
Meg Walters is a Canadian-British writer currently living in London. Her writing has appeared in
GQ, The Daily Beast, Vulture, Cosmopolitan, Glamour and others. She is a great lover of classic films, rom-coms, period dramas, pop culture, books and style and tries to write about them all as often as possible. Find her on Twitter @wordsbymeg
Toju Adelaja is a Nigerian-British writer and chick-flick connoisseur. Her work has appeared in
publications such as Glamour U.K. and Black Ballad.
Ella Gale is a writer, director, and comedian in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in
McSweeney’s, Reductress, and the Hard Times.
Michele Theil is a journalist focusing on culture, race, LGBT+ issues and investigative pieces.
She has been published in VICE, Insider, Glamour, and others. She watches all the Bring It On movies at least once a year.
Lana Schwartz is a writer who was born and raised in New York City, where she continues to live
today. Her work has been published on The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Shondaland, Glamour, InStyle, and more. Her book “Build Your Own Romantic Comedy” was released by Ulysses Press in March 2020. For more about Lana – as well as instructions on how to pronounce her name – visit www.lanalikebanana.com.
Yaël Krinsky is writer and comedian based in Boston, where she works in TV and Film Production.
She holds a writing and performance degree from Bard College. She currently lives with her dog Midge.
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1 winner will receive a finished copy of ISN’T SHE GREAT, US Only.
Ends January 31st, midnight EST.
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a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
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