Foster Pussycat: Yep, I’m Boring

Bless her heart, she tried to be funny. But when you bite off your consonants the way Jodie Foster has for a half-century, here are the two things you cannot be:

1.) funny

2.) in the closet.

I’m just wondering what all the flap was about. (Oh, yes, I went there.)

Listen, I like and admire her as an actress, a writer, and director. As a spokesperson for the LGBTQIA!5-underscore-lightningbolt community, not so much. Guess what: not her job. Public speaking is hard – and I know because I do it all the time. Sometimes without even realizing it, as I wear headphones on the subway and forget that I’m not just thinking.

I know a lot of funny lesbians, and I know a lot more who aren’t. I mean, they might be funny in a Dance of the Vampires way, but comediennes (bet they hate that!) they are not. I was trapped once in an elevator with kd lang — I mean, it was working, but, well, you know. She was surrounded by gasping sycophants who doubled over hysterically at her every utterance. Fact: not one thing she said was remotely funny. I am guessing this is why she is not a comic, or a speechwriter. But listen to Ingenue or Shadowland – not a laugh on ‘em, but man, do those records hold up, twenty-plus years later. When you look at her actual work, you can forgive her not being a Judy Gold, or Jessica Kirson, or even Lennie Watts (ask him about Korea).

If you want to hate on Jodie Foster, check out Sommersby. But if you’re looking for something to admire about her, don’t look to her incoherent comedy stylings, or how she handles her celebrity, or whether she’s a role model for your brother’s kids who probably already know which way is up anyway. What she will eventually leave behind for our (using the term loosely) culture to pick over will be an astonishingly large body of solid, good work. Y’know, her job. See The Accused, or Little Man Tate, or that Afterschool Special where all she wanted was to play baseball (dingdingdingding!!!!). Hell, she even did a good job on that recording in the planetarium where she walked us through the Big Bang.

Now that was funny.