Erik Griffin, who plays Ralph in Showtime's new series "I'm Dying Up Here" about life in the 1970s Hollywood for a group of comedian, brought up the dearth of women in comedy today during a recent episode of "Salon Talks."
Griffin insisted that funny females still don't get a fair shake. "No, I don't think it's fair," he said.
"It's not like every male comic you meet is funny, like a lot of them are not funny," Griffin said. "So if you don't have a lot of female comics even doing it in the first place — not every female comic is going to be funny. We need more female voices to come out there and do comedy."
To his view, it's not a question of whether woman are as funny as men, as some men would argue. "That's not the issue at all. Women are hilarious. The real issue is, do we [as men] want them to be? Sometimes comedy can be like negative and just the worst parts of ourselves coming out. . . That's just a male perspective, 'well I don't want a woman talking about that.'"
Said Griffin: "We're the problem. We have to just let . . . more of these voices out there. Have these different perspectives."
Citing the new "Wonder Woman" movie, with a female director, as fostering change, he threw shade at the Hollywood machine for taking too long to notice the power of a female superhero-driven comic franchise. "Wonder Woman is going to change the world right now."
"Check this out. That was the best movie of the DC franchises," he said. "So [they're] going, 'This is what we gotta do, get more women!'"
Said Griffin: "Isn't it crazy? This worked." So now female movies are going to "come out of the woodwork," he said. "They just figured it out? Come on!"
Catch more of the conversation about "Wonder Woman" and female comics on Salon.
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