In the film industry, you have the new Funny Boy Club.
Its President is Judd Apatow, the VP is Michael Cera, with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen splitting the Treasury and Secretarial duties and Jason Segel in charge of coordinating events. (Oh, and Jonah Hill on the phones.)
They have funny naked suites.
They have funny movies with fart and date rape jokes.
They're just so funny.
(OK. They are funny. But just not in a "Hey, I want to hang out with you and be your friend" sort of way. Which I feel is important.)
Everyone is so in love with this Funny Boy Club that they don't even know what to do with themselves.
Lets be honest. The Funny Girl Club doesn't seem that accessible, does it? Baby Mama sucked. Charlie's Angels was really a movie for guys. And the women of SATC are...well...having younger women house their spawn twins or whatever it is millionaire actresses in their 40s do.
Silverman and Chelsea Handler are great, but you'd never catch them in a bar together, would you?
The Funny Boys Club gives the impression that they're all in Apatow's living room, drinking Bud Light and watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall with the commentary on every night.
But, ladies, The Funny Girl Club does exist. And they hang out. And they're awesome and smart and you totally will want to hang out and be their BFF when you hear about just how awesome they really are.
So what is this new group of funny women that, like, hang out and shit?
The Fempire.
The Fempire was featured in The New York Times in March of this year, and despite being a huge fan of one of The Fempire's members, Diablo Cody of Juno, Oscar winning fame, I somehow missed it.
So what is The Fempire, exactly?
It's a group of LA based, successful, creative, 30ish, shit-hot female screenwriters who are best friends:
Diablo Cody. Lorene Scafaria. Liz Meriwhether. And Dana Fox.
Just listen to the way The New York Times describes their kinship:
"You can find them at work in their Laurel Canyon homes in their
pajamas, or sitting next to one another at laptop-friendly restaurants.
To see them gathered amid the dinosaur topiary around Ms. Fox’s
swimming pool with their dogs (they all have dogs) is to see four
distinct styles of glamour that bear little resemblance to traditional
images of behind-the-scenes talent."
Jammies? Dogs? Laptops?
If The Fempire were a club, I'd sleep with the bouncer if I had to. And I doubt I'm alone in this.
While it does seem a little weird to want to be in an obviously very real, very genuine group of (famous) friends (in LA)... they just sound and are so refreshing.
In the Funny Boy Club that is LA and the world of screenwriting - how many female screenwriters can you name off the top of your head? - a group of women who could easily see each other as competition, like, actually support each other and stuff.
As Cody puts it:
"There are so few slots for us in Hollywood. Sometimes you hear the lobsters-in-a-pot
metaphor — if the lobsters cooperated, they could get each other out.
We’re cooperating. We refuse to just lie there and boil.”
What a fucking concept!
Even more exciting than their glorious existence, is that the work that these women do is fucking awesome. Take Liz Meriwhether, the youngest and newest member of The Fempire, who just landed a major deal with Paramount.
Cinema Blend and Variety report that Paramount have just picked up Meriwhether's pitch for Honey Pot, which is - get this! - a comedy about a "female action duo in a world of international espionage."
HOT.
Meriwhether describes Honey Pot as being about what happens "when a bunch of hot, funny women get their 'Bourne' on".
In short, we can't fucking wait.
Also, Cody? Meriwhether? Fox? Scafaria? Call me.
Image via Amy Dickerson for The New York Times