'The Daily Show,' which was created by women, Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, has earned quite a bit of ink for the fact that it's written mostly by men.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It used to be only on TV that women could lead, that a show could be based on a woman.
'The Daily Show' is a cultural phenomenon.
Male critics and men in the publishing industry want from their women writers what they want from their wives. I'm interested in presenting characters that are more challenging, threatening, complicated and unpredictable.
As a male writer, women are always what men pursue, and their world is always a mystery. So I always tried to present as many views as possible on women's worlds.
I was interested in working on a show that was driven by women.
Women's stories are valid, and they need to be developed in a way that appeals to a broader audience. And what is 'women's television' other than TV that women would enjoy watching?
Ben Karlin is a friend of mine and was a writer on 'The Daily Show.' He's just put out a book and asked a bunch of writers from various disciplines to contribute. It was called 'Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me,' and of course I agreed, and then I actually had to sit down and write it. God, writing fiction is terrifying.
What is interesting to me is looking at how male and female writers depict men who, come in behind to fill those domestic duties, deal with personal and cultural lack of respect for doing what is lingeringly perceived as 'women's work.'
I'm not an especially male novelist, but I think men are better at writing about men, and the same is true for women. Reading Saul Bellow is a revelation, but he can't write women. There are exceptions, like Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead,' but generally, I think it's true.
Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.