Amy Solomon is the editor of the new book, Notes From the Bathroom Line: Humor, Art, and Low-grade Panic from 150 of the Funniest Women in Comedy, just out from Harper Collins. She’s a producer on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and “Barry.” She currently runs Alec Berg’s production company, where she develops content for film and television, and she is the perfect person to speak about the joy of publishing funny women, because she has just published 150 of them. Listen in and read along as I speak with her about that.
Marion: Hi Amy, how are you?
Amy: Good. Thank you for having me.
Marion: I’m so glad to have you. Why do I feel like I’ve waited forever for this book? What I mean is a collection of funny women, and publishing, specifically the top 150 funniest of women. Nothing else comes to mind like this, so congratulations. Why does it seem like we have so few collections of funny women?
Amy: That’s basically why I did it. There’s a book from 1976 that I fell in love with growing up because I was obsessed. I mean, still am obsessed with Gilda Radner. I bought basically anything she had ever been a part of. It’s this big book called Titters. It claims to be the first collection of humor by women, which I think it probably is. It’s Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Candice Bergen, Phyllis Diller, some of the funniest women of all time. Then there was never anything like it again, which was so bizarre to me. Mostly selfishly, I wanted another collection of humor by women because funny women are my favorite thing in the world.
I set out to do it and I think the reason it probably doesn’t exist is because it was very, very hard just wrangling that many gals. I mean, it was also just the loveliest experience, because I got to connect with all of these people that I’m truly a fan of and collaborate with them.
To receive their writing and to give tiny little notes, but very edited as a light term. These women are brilliant, but so it was just my lifelong dream and driven by like, “Why doesn’t this exist?”
Marion: That’s wonderful. A life goal of publishing funny women, 150 women in this case. Give us some names and give us some sense of how you chose who to include in such a humor collection.
Amy: I mean, whenever people are like, “Who’s in it?” my brain just absolutely freezes because there’s so many gals that I don’t know in what order to say them, but okay. Let’s see if I can do it. Lake Bell , Lennon Parham, Sinitta Malone, Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford, Kristen Schaal, Rachel Bloom. I mean, it just goes on and on. If you go to notes from the bathroom line dot com, I often go back to look at the contributor page to get my brain right.
I had people I was fans of. I had friends whose voices I think are amazing that aren’t as well known. I basically just sort of started casting this net and I would ask gal and then I would be like, “Who are your favorite people?” They would tell me, and if they were, they would often connect me to those people, which was so kind. I just started creeping around New York, L.A., Chicago and making all these women be my pals.
Marion: That was you creeping around New York, L.A, and Chicago that we kept hearing about it. I see. That’s great. Yeah. I keep reading in places like The New York Times has these pieces that use phrases like, “Push the envelope” and “new territory,” when they’re referring to where humor and women are going together, I don’t know, but this seems like code for treading into places that have long been reserved for men, is it?
Amy: I mean, I talk about this in the introduction, but it was just like everywhere I went, I just felt like the world was exploding with funny women. College and then coming out…
Marion: I love that idea. I hope it’s true.
Amy: I totally agree. I mean, I think it’s gotten, oh my God, so much better since Titters originally in 1976. If you look at a lot of your favorite shows, those writer’s rooms are often like one woman out of 10 or 15, and it’s just insane. I just think the voices are there and these truly brilliant gals and we just have to make the space and force the boys out.
There’s no lack of talent by any means. They’re all ready. Also, it’s about having women in charge. When you look at a show and it’s like, “Oh, it has a female creator and a female show runner and a female star.” Those rooms are so diverse and amazing. When you look at shows that are male creator, male show runner, male stars, I mean, there’s extreme exceptions, but most of the time they’re not as good about it.
Marion: You would know, you’re a producer, as I said, for HBO’s Silicon Valley and Barry, and you run a production company. As for a living, you develop content for film and television. What of those talents come over to help you curate and edit a collection and publish funny women like this? Then we’ll get into how you actually do it. What do you think is you have in common between those two worlds?
Amy: I mean, it actually was enormous overlap. It was basically in my day job, there’s the times when we’re on set and I’m producing on the shows, but in a larger sense, my job is to really just meet talent, identify talent, think of them, “Oh, we have this idea who might be good to write that.”
There are a lot of spreadsheets and that’s the same thing about the book. So many women that I’ve met through my job, I then got to work on the book with. It was a lot of overlap and that was awesome. It was like, “Oh, I actually have skills I could put to use. That’s great.”
Marion: Spreadsheets, it just such a funny concept. I live in the world of writing and I do have clients that I work with who Spreadsheet out their entire books. They know absolutely everything about their characters before they set a word onto the computer.
Where are the spreadsheets here? I mean, you had 150 women. Are you talking about you’re spreadsheeting cartoonists, writers, standup performers? You’ve got all of those in here, is that what you mean? Are you also spreadsheeting how to put chapters, which chapter goes where? What does it look like?
Amy: Yes, literally all of the above. At first it was, “Let’s make a list of the women that I would love to get.” It’s like, “Okay, here’s how I might get to them. Did I email them? What date did I email them? What date should I follow up if I haven’t heard from them.” Then it transitioned into like, who has said yes, what stage are they at?
I basically wanted to give women the opportunity to set their own deadlines. There was an ultimate deadline we had to, but I often find that if they’re involved in the process of like, “Oh, here’s what I think might be good for me.” They’re more likely to do it and it was always weeks before we actually needed it to be done so that we could be like, “If it doesn’t happen, it’s okay.”
Because I never wanted this to feel stressful to people. This was supposed to be a big fun thing. I didn’t want to be this warlord or ruling all these gals. Then it would turn into, “Okay, have they turned in a draft? What stage are they at with the draft? Have I given them notes? Am I waiting to hear back?”
I wanted to do themed chapters. Now, it’s like family entertainment, the world we live in, socializing, those are some of them. I wanted the pieces to speak to what those chapters should be. I waited until most of the pieces were in. Then my friend, Julia and I, who I owe the world, put the pieces on a million note cards in this insane color-coded scheme.
We put them out on the floor and we basically sorted them into columns. That all went into a gorgeous spreadsheet. We just like every step of the way, there was a new organizational spreadsheet tool. I’m a big dork, you can tell.
Marion: I just love it. I think people forget that there’s this practical aspect to writing and every stage. I have graphs, I have directed people to look at the drawings that some people like John McPhee and Gay Talese all map out their pieces of work before they do. Gay Talese does them on his shirt cardboards, talk about an antiquated thing, but it works for him. John McPhee, does these incredible drawings.
Amy: John McPhee was my college professor.
Marion: So you know. I mean those graphs that he does for The Paris Review on book structure and for the New Yorker on book structure, what a lucky writer you are to have had him. He’s a genius and I love him like mad. May he just teach forever.
Amy: He’s unbelievable. I’ve never been more starstruck in my life in that class. It was incredible. He’s the loveliest man alive. It’s also true in my day job of, we are extremely outline-oriented. I think so much of when you’re growing up and you’re like, “Oh, a writer is such… I don’t know ethereal vocation. You sit at a cafe in Paris and you jot down what you’re feeling and blah, blah, blah.”
In reality, I think for a lot of great writers, I agree. It’s pretty methodical. In my case spreadsheets, in John McPhee’s case those graphs, which are incredible. I’m sure you’ve recommended this before, but his book about writing, what’s it called again? Draft No. 4?
Marion: Yeah. It’s genius. I love the reminder always to people about the practical aspects of writing. It’s not something that drops into your head from some muse that can be seduced through your bedroom window. It is a hard chair, an awful lot of caffeine. Thomas Hardy used to tie himself into the chair. I totally get that.
These assignments take on whatever they need. If it’s spreadsheets and color-coded note cards and a friend who helps, there you go. When you did this, I have to say this assignment just terrifies me as much as like walking into the first floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, with all those perfume samples.
After a few hits, man, you cannot discern floral from green. How do you curate an edit and decide what’s funny after a couple of pieces? Is it because they’re so different or do you take a break? Working with a humor collection, I would think you might lose your sense of smell, but no? Yes?
Amy: That’s such an interesting question. I think it definitely helped by how different the pieces were. I encouraged people, I didn’t want it to just be personal essays. I encouraged people to think outside the box of like, “Is this a collage? Is this poetry?” I wanted it to all feel really different.
Luckily when things were coming in, it would be like, “Oh, here’s an essay, but here’s fiction and here’s a cartoon.” At least they would be pretty different. I think you just have to trust your gut. Then also, my boyfriend was honestly really helpful. I let him read a lot of stuff and he’s not in the business, which is really helpful.
Just getting a second gut check. I try not to like overthink like, “Did that just make me laugh? Okay, great. Then, that made me laugh.” Don’t think through it too hard.
Marion: I do and I think that’s it. I think it’s not gripping the handlebars too hard. It’s a hard one. Humor is such a difficult thing. I think it’s the hardest thing to write also when I’m working. I’ve published a bunch of books.
In the times when I’ve been writing and it has to be funny, I will literally write into the text, “Marion, be funny here in the first draft, because there’s just no way.” You just know it’s time, you know that it has to be funny, but sometimes there’s just nothing there. You say that can be funny here when I can be funny.
Amy: It’s way easier to be funny when you don’t feel like you have to. When you feel like you have to, you’re like, “Okay, maybe I’ve never been funny in my whole life.”
Marion: Not once. That’s it. That’s exactly it on demand. I don’t know how people do it. I just don’t know how they do it. Let’s dissect, one of the pieces. Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong has the perfect piece that made me squirm, laugh right out loud, gasp, put my head down on the desk and moan, and then laugh out loud again. When she tells us about a funeral preference she has. Do you want to take it from there and explain what she does?
Amy: She’s amazing. Well, first off, it has an unbelievable illustration that this amazing artist, Carly Jean Andrews did. That’s a representation of what Cecily’s asking for in the piece. Basically, I didn’t know this about Cecily, but she’s incredibly morbid and thinks about death a fair amount it seems.
She had heard about these funerals in Puerto Rico where they stuff and post your body for a public viewing. She basically became obsessed with that. She was talking about what she might want and she has decided she wants to be on a jet ski with her dog. She’s not into jet skiing. She’s never jet skied, but she feels it would be really cool.
I’m glad you picked this one because a lot of the pieces have this, it’s so funny and insane, but also they’re really like touching moments. I might just read it for a second, but there’s this really beautiful little sentiment that says, that’s talking about, what she wants out of her funeral.
She wants people to laugh and clearly she wants them to miss her. Ultimately, the fact that she could make them laugh after she’s passed would be a great gift. She goes, “So in my thinking, people would initially walk in and be shocked. Then maybe repulsed. Then hopefully they’d laugh.
Then they’d probably cry because I managed to make them laugh at my funeral. I assume that would probably make them remember how much they miss me and how much they might continue to miss me. Then they’ll look up at me doing my stunt and laugh again, or shake their head and say, “God, you fucking weirdo.” As long as they don’t start crying because I really love them a lot too.
I don’t want them only feeling sad. I hope it’s a little reminder that it meant a lot to me to be their fucking weirdo, that my life was made fullest by shocking, and sometimes repulsing, but hopefully most often laughing with these amazing people. My adventures, where the time I spent with them and they made me yelp with delight.”
It’s so funny and goofy, but beautiful. I love that sentiment. She goes on to talk about how much her friends mean to her too. Also, for the record, there’s an audio book of the book and Cecily reads that piece herself and it’s so much better. Listen to that. Don’t listen to my terrible, terrible iteration.
Marion: Yeah. It’s a beautiful piece. She says something, but if you can’t be adventurous in life, why not fake it afterwards, because she’s talked about how she doesn’t jet ski. I mean, there’s this really strong sense of regret and also holding close to the people you love.
Then at the end, she gets this whole thing where she kicks it right upstairs to the answer to what do you want on your tombstone? She says “Cheese and extra garlic.” Wait a minute, it’s a pizza order.
Amy: It’s so good. I love it. She sent this to me, “I maybe made like little nips and tucks,” but that was what she sent. It was unbelievable to just get these emails in and be like, “Hey, here’s the first draft. Let me know what you think.” It was just, I mean also Cecily’s an absolute queen and has her own book coming out in August, by the way. She wrote a memoir that I’m so excited about.
Marion: I’m so excited. That’s great. For writers who are thinking about answering a call for submissions, I know this was something that you devised from scratch. You wanted this book to happen because it didn’t exist. There are writers that are listening now or are searching poets and writers calls for submissions and a whole lot of other places for their dog essays or their childcare essays or whatever.
What’s the thing that you would tell people to do in the piece? They’re answering a very general call, a call for stories on dogs or call for a story on something with humor. How do you distinguish yourself when you know that 300 people are sending their pieces to a place? What would your advice be to writers?
Amy: Part of what I did when I started this, I sent another document of prompts of just, “Here are themes and questions that I think might be interesting, ” because some gals were so paralyzed by you can write whatever you want. Some gals were like, “Oh my God, freedom. Amazing.” Some were like, “That’s absolute paralysis for me.”
For a lot of them, I was just like, “What’s a thing you just like really think about a lot?” I think in life, there are so many things that really occupy our brains, but we never put pen to paper about. Clearly, Cecily thinks about how she wants to be on jet ski at her funeral, but she’s never really had the chance to write this thing.
I think when you’re writing about something that ultimately is really deeply resonant inside of you, that comes out in the piece. Rather than taking prompts that you’re reaching for, if you can wait for the one you’re where you’re like, “Oh, you know what? This actually really matters to me. I think that will always come through.”
Marion: You hit on a couple of things that I really think are true there. One of them is writing from counterphobia. The idea that you think about your morbid and that you think about these… Well, realities, but they are fantasies to many of us, the idea of being stuffed and put on a jet ski.
That’s not something that you might necessarily bring up over dinner to a friend. Maybe she would, but to go to that place that you think, what have I never told anybody, what am I afraid to say? What am I afraid to throw out there? What am I afraid to just ask myself? Well, what do you mean by that? Is a great place to write from.
It particularly in gender’s humor, when you go to the fearful thing, and you can find that in your dogs and your spouses, and your boyfriend and your lover or whatever, it’s all over the place from fear. I think that’s a great place go where you would not necessarily go. Don’t just give us that ham and cheese sandwich version of a humor piece. Give us something that has your stuffed body on a jet ski.
Amy: I totally agree. If you’re a little bit nervous for the thing to get published, I think that’s such a good thing. If you feel like, “Oh, I don’t mind this being out in the world at all, I don’t know that that’s as revealing and as deeply felt as something that you’re like, “Oh, here it goes.”
One of the gals, this amazing gal, Angela Beavers did this piece that’s a Venn diagram of her Dad’s two girlfriends. The other circle is her ideal girlfriend for her dad. His two girlfriends that he’s playing off each other and then her ideal one. She was a little bit nervous about it, because she was like, “My dad will see this.”
We eliminated a couple of the little jokes in it that made her feel a little bit too weird, but it’s so good. You can tell, this is on her mind. She’s a little bit nervous for it to go out in the world. I think that’s where the best stuff comes from.
Marion: That’s such great advice. You’ve got Venn diagrams, you’ve got essays. What else have you got? To give us a sense of their range of what we’re going to find when we pick up this book?
Amy: That was a big thing that Titters inspired me to do too, was Titters has everything. It has recipes. It has a dirty Heloise comic. That’s amazing. Notes From The Bathroom Line has yes, a Venn diagram, cartoons, longer comic pieces. There’s sheet music, there’s a gal who took her diary entries and annotated them and wrote back to her 11-year-old self to which is amazing.
It’s called Bangs + Breasts = Fast, which was something she wrote in her 11-year-old diary entry. I don’t know, there’s just like anything and everything in gorgeous illustrations. I got to ask all my favorite illustrators to do, I would just send them the piece and be like, “Do what this makes you feel.” They always came back unbelievable. It’s big and it’s colorful and it’s so cool.
Marion: It’s such a joy. I think it’s going to be like Titters. I think it’s going to be one of those milestones in humor. I still don’t understand why with women, we have these sort of long desert stretches between these bursts of famous humor pieces. I grew up in the 1970s raiding my friend’s parents record collections.
They always had jazz and they had Frank Sinatra, but they always had a dirty record section, a dirty comic record section, and they always had women. I remember this woman named Belle Barth, who she sold over a million copies of her album. If I embarrass you, tell your friends, this was such a fabulously body irreverent, wildly dirty record.
We just loved it. Then I feel we go to these troughs of nothing. My great hope is this book is one of those great milestones that people refer to. They say Titters and then this one, and it allows us to keep women a forefront in our minds when we think about humor. Do you think that we are here to stay now as funny people? I mean, the movies that we’re seeing and we can all name the movies that, Bridesmaids and et cetera, et cetera, that got that coverage. Have we gotten up on the corkboard where we’re going to stay or are we going to slide back, do you think? What do you think?
Amy: I sure hope so. I sure hope so. I mean, I think when you look at recent casts of SNL and stuff, all of the standouts are Kate McKinnon and Cecily. I mean, I think the funniest people in the world are women, and I hope everybody agrees. I know they don’t, but we’ll bring them over. I don’t know.
That new movie that Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumulo just wrote came out Barb and Star, that’s their follow-up to Bridesmaids, but everybody’s been loving. The Australian Open is on right now. I’ve been watching seven hours of tennis every night. I can only think about tennis right now. I’m like Serena Williams is hilarious.
I sure hope so. That’s what my dream for this book of Titters was this time capsule to me, and all of these were young women at the time Candice Bergen is still an absolute icon. They did a reboot of her show. I don’t know, whatever. Some of these women in this book are already solidified as icons.
Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford. I tried to pick also in a little bit of a younger generation too of people that I know their stars are going to rise like crazy. I hope people discover people in this book that they like, and then they see them absolutely ascend. Hopefully, it’s a time capsule in that way too.
Marion: I hope so. Well, thank you. I just wish you all the very best with the book. It’s a joy to read. It’s a joy to behold and it was a brave and wonderful thing to do, just to take on the spreadsheet aspect of it, let alone the editing and curating aspect of it.
We’re in your debt. Thank you, Amy. I really appreciate you coming on and advise everybody to go get many copies and give them to all their friends so that the women in these books can remain in the spotlight. Good luck with the project.
Amy: Thank you. This was so lovely. Truly, thank you for having me.
Marion: Thank you, Amy. Notes From the Bathroom Line: Humor, Art, and Low-grade Panic from 150 Funniest Women in Comedy is just out. The editor is Amy Solomon. See the book everywhere books are sold. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. Subscribe wherever podcasts are available. QWERTY is produced by over at studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at Overit Studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont. Our assistant as Lauren Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit Marion Roach dot com and take a class with me. Thanks for listening.
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