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Tina Fey

Netflixed: 5 Binge-worthy Books for Netflix Junkies

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Last week, Shonda Rhimes announced that she’s officially moving her production company, Shondaland, from ABC to Netflix. While her already-established shows (like Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal) will stay on ABC, all of her new original content will be developed specifically for Netflix. It’s a huge move, proving once again that streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu are powerhouse content creators who more than rival the established networks. We’re excited about this news for two reasons. One, it means that Rhimes’s juicy brand of storytelling will now have a home on a more progressive platform (we’re expecting lots of, well, scandalous scenes). And two, in addition to being one of our favorite show producers, Rhimes is also one of our favorite authors.…

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Are Celebrity Book Deals Killing Literature?

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Back at the dawn of my career I interned for a romance author who was forever being considered by publishing houses only to be rejected. Finally I contacted a friend at one of these houses and she explained that editors had a limited budget for new work and were reluctant to take a chance on an unknown unless they could be sure of sales. And this was before the phenomenon called the Celebrity Novel on which publishers pin hopes of jackpot dividends. Alas, for every Tina Fey whose $5 million advance produced a book that sold out within six months, there’s a Graham Nash whose $1 million advance barely sold 31,000 books. However, the trend continues. Actors, musicians and reality…

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Melissa McCarthy’s “Spy” is a boon for women in comedy

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Shouldn’t the hardest part of comedy be having to keep a straight face? Not fighting to climb the sexist career ladder. There’s nothing funny about gender inequality. Despite many strides made for, y’know, basic human rights, women are still treated like second-class citizens. This gender gap (more like a gender Grand Canyon) has always been enormous in professional comedy to the point that people asked if women even have a sense of humor. Is it any wonder that the early pioneers—Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers—weren’t allowed to attractive or confident? Luckily, along came intellectual comedians like Elaine May and Lilly Tomlin in the early 60s, followed by the badasses of Saturday Night Live, and finally today’s Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler,…

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Bright, bubbly and indomitable — meet Kimmy Schmidt

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If you haven’t seen the new Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt yet, you need to go watch it. Seriously, right now. I’ll wait for you. Finished? Still can’t get that theme song out of your head? Good. For those of you who didn’t just step away from this article for seven hours of TV marathoning, here’s a breakdown: Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) and three other women are kidnapped and held in a bunker for 15 years by a charismatic preacher (Jon Hamm) who convinces them the world has ended. The show begins with their liberation and what happens when they’re thrust into a world they barely understand anymore. Kimmy heads to New York City, moves in with an aspiring Broadway star…

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Live, from New York! It’s 40 years of SNL

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Forty years ago, Saturday late-night television was a wasteland, the realm of bad movies and sports highlights and Johnny Carson re-runs. If you were home watching TV late on a Saturday night, it was because you had no life and literally nothing better to do. That changed on October 17, 1975, when shortly after 11:30 p.m., an unknown comedian named Chevy Chase looked into a camera in Studio 8H in Rockefeller Plaza and exclaimed, “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” On Sunday, February 15, a battalion of SNL regulars, guest hosts, and musical guests including Eddie Murphy, Robert DiNiro, Alec Baldwin, Dan Ackroyd, Betty White, Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, Emma Stone, Paul McCartney, Melissa McCarthy, Tina Fey and Amy…

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Lessons from 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon, junk food enabler

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We all know her. She shotguns slices of pizza with an unmatched fearlessness. She isn’t afraid to ask the cashier what time the old doughnuts get thrown away. She uses her oven for one thing: warming up her jeans. She is driven by her love of sugar, fat, and efficiency. She is the food-loving anti-foodie. She is 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon. She is also, unfortunately, me. Look, I know this sounds like a humblebrag. Underneath all that self-deprecation is an undeniably cool lady. Lemon writes a TV show, dates men who look like Jon Hamm, and is creative, hardworking, and side-achingly funny. Her, er, crumbier (high-fiving a million angels) shortcomings—the kind that cause her night terrors about giving birth to…

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