My Mother's Laugh

One of my drawings from when I was a kid.

For some reason, I’ve always loved seeing women laughing.

Maybe it was my mother’s laugh. Or my Aunt Helen’s snarky comments, or my cousin Kate’s humorous quips. I just always thought women’s views of the world to be so interesting, and if it involved laughing, all the better. I could feel the power of their humor.

My mother loved the writer and humorist Dorothy Parker and would quote her verse to me. Her favorite was: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” I’ve worn glasses since age 7, and when she would say that to me with a devilish smile, I was never sure what to make of it. It worried me somehow, but knowing that my mother found it funny made it okay. I think it propelled me into being an independant young girl. I grew up to love all of Parker’s work, her verse as well as her short stories.

The origins of the documentary I am producing and directing come from those feelings. It’s called Women Laughing.

I am excited to let you all know that the fundraiser for the film is 67% funded with 18 days to go! We’ve made huge progress, thanks to so many of you wonderful people here at Seeing Things. When we get to the 75% marker, we plan to share with backers of the kickstarter never-before-seen footage from our filming thus far. During that filming, I did some drawings on my iPad. Here we are on set the day we filmed New Yorker cartoonist and my friend Roz Chast.

And I also did one on actual paper.

I will be drawing the filming process going forward. One of the rewards in our kickstarter is to join live-remote on a shoot this summer and watch me draw it.

It wasn’t until about ten years into my career that I started to consciously draw women being funny in my cartoons. My editor at The New Yorker at that time was Tina Brown, and she encourged my snarky woman drawings, like this one:

Why had it not ocurred to me before?

A lot of this kind of observation about humor and women and drawing— of my own work and the work of other women cartoonists— will be in the film. What is the creative process, what is voice? How do you find your voice?

During the filming, I will draw with my colleages, I can’t wait.

If you feel motivated, I would love for you to share our fundraiser. It’s kickstarter, and if we don’t reach our goal of 50K, we don’t get the money! So we gotta get there! Thanks to all of you who already donated, we are extremely grateful.

Here is a video I just did of me drawing people laughing. Thank you for being here, see you tomorrow!