Michael Eisner: The hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman
Michael Eisner has always been a jerk. He was CEO of Disney from 1984 to 2005, and he had a reputation as a fire-breathing, temperamental micromanager. He was also accused of sexism in his hiring practices (which was nothing new for Disney) as well as what stories/films he greenlighted and promoted. This new story will probably go a long way to explaining his thought process at Disney, and hell, his thoughts on “funny women” will probably reflect the thoughts of many men with power within Hollywood.
Eisner was doing a Q&A with his friend Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is part of The Aspen Institute. During the conversation, Eisner was – I think? – trying to compliment Goldie for being a beautiful and funny woman and the whole thing just went sideways. Either that or Michael Eisner truly believes that attractive funny women are the rarest jewels in the world.
Just when we thought the debate over whether or not good looking women could be funny had finally been put to bed (thank you, Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, and way too many other talented ladies to try to name here), former Disney CEO Michael Eisner decided to reignite the retrograde argument during a discussion with Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week, reports The Atlantic.
“From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman,” Eisner told the Academy Award-winning actress. “By far. They usually—boy am I going to get in trouble, I know this goes online—but usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny.”
When Hawn credited her own sense of humor to being a self-described “ugly duckling,” Eisner continued: “You didn’t think you were beautiful. I know women who have been told they’re beautiful, they win Miss Arkansas, they don’t ever have to get attention other than with their looks. So they don’t tell a joke. In the history of the motion-picture business, the number of beautiful, really beautiful women—a Lucille Ball—that are funny, is impossible to find.”
There are some people who believe that when faced with some misogynistic prick like this, that we shouldn’t even dignify there stupid words with a list. But I can’t really help myself. Sofia Vergara, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Julie Bowen, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Mindy Kaling (yes, she’s beautiful), Cameron Diaz, Anna Faris, Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy (yes, she’s beautiful), Rose Byrne, Ellen DeGeneres, Amy Schumer, Aisha Tyler, Allison Brie, Wanda Sykes, and I haven’t even gotten to the beautiful women who have pioneered comedy for decades, like Mary Tyler Moore, Bette White, Carol Burnett, Marilyn Monroe and on and on and on. This is ridiculous.
I hate this idea that SOME men have that “beautiful women never learned how to tell a joke.” Nope. Beautiful women HAVE to learn how to tell a joke because society tells them that the only way for a beautiful woman to function in society is by not taking herself, her needs, her desires too seriously, by tailoring her personality to the Cool Girl/Manic Pixie Dream Girl personas invented as ideal by men. Beautiful women tell jokes all the time, but men are too busy staring at their boobs to notice.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
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