I Don't Fucking Care If You Like It
Amy Poehler, Love Lies Bleeding, and the Bi/Pan Canon
I remember reading this story in Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Amy Poehler was new to SNL and saying something dirty in the writers’ room. Jimmy Fallon, kinda the star of the show at that time, didn’t like it and told her it wasn’t cute. According to Fey, Poehler went “black in the eyes for a second,” and said to him, “I don’t fucking care if you like it,” and then went back to whatever she was saying.
The story resurfaced a few months ago when Fallon’s staff accused him of creating a toxic work environment.
I have thought of it often since reading Bossypants. I also read Amy Poehler’s memoir when it came out, Yes Please, which I didn’t like quite as much as Fey’s, but still enjoyed. I regularly steal Poehler’s co-parenting divorce joke with all divorcing parents, which goes something like, “I hate you. We’re getting a divorce. See you tomorrow.”
“I DON’T FUCKING CARE IF YOU LIKE IT.”
It’s a fun sentence to say out loud. Go ahead. Try it. Preferably really loud. Shout it even.
I thought of this when I read Richard Brody’s review in The New Yorker of the new queer KStew movie, Love Lies Bleeding. He was unimpressed and used it as vehicle to complain about movie characters having no back story anymore. It’s a fair point for movies in general, but have you talked to anyone trying to make anything lately for the marketplace?
I think of this sentence any time Anthony Lane (also at The New Yorker, please will one of them retire so we can have a woman, queer, trans, BIPOC, and/or disabled reviewer, anybody who isn’t a straight white man?) reviews almost any movie I like.
I have thought of it many times when otherwise very smart people tell me that they don’t like The Barbie Movie because it was one big advertisement. Oh really, you don’t say? Try going to that movie on opening day in the West Village with your queer teen and her queer friends and every queerdo you’ve ever dreamed of dressed in Barbie drag and then get back to me. There was some magic there that day, even in the midst of an advertising blitz. Yes, I understand what a slick fucking package that movie is, and I still love it. I’ve loved Greta Gerwig since Frances Ha.
I thought of this sentence when my last boyfriend took one of my novels out from the library (I shit you not, he did not buy his own girlfriend’s book), and then read a page or so once a week maybe during his ten minute subway ride to work. At some point during this diligent reading, he said to me, “It’s kind of meandering.”