Oh, Jennifer, this book is coming out right at the perfect time.
My god. One of the biggest movies in the theaters right now is Mean
Girls, and people need to know this story. That's right, that's right.
It's very exciting. Was it timed out like this on purpose? Or
is this just oh boy, wow, look what's happening. I so want
to lie to you and say it was all part of a master plan,
but it was a coincidence. It's very strange though. It's one of those
things where you know, because I've seen both of them, I've experienced both
both different versions of it in the way that I think the musical side of
it gives it even a deeper story into what's going on within our own chapters
because we all like to sing. Let me sing in Mean Girls. Absolutely,
And I mean I'm a musical theater nerd too, and I always feel
like the great thing about musicals is they can like let you into a character's
soul, right, they can sing something they would never necessarily say, What
was it that drew you to this book? Because it's almost like one of
those you know, the wizard behind the curtain and you're taking us with you
to take a sneak peek. That's right. I'm always looking for things,
you know, things pop cultural phenomena. Let's say that, first of all,
resonate. And obviously it's twenty years and this has been you know,
we're still talking about it. So I'm always interested in why, why there's
something that lasts and other things, don't you know, And also just kind
of having a bigger effect than just oh we like this movie. It's that,
you know, you it really infects our everyday lives. So we're still
quoting this movie. There are characters in this movie who inspired people, changed
people's lives the way that it kind of you know, invaded the internet at
a key moment. We still use the memes every day. We use it
when we talk about politics, we use it when we talk about our friendships.
And so I think that's the kind of stuff that I'm always looking for.
When I'm looking for something to write about. There has to be something
to say for three hundred pages. There has to be a story to tell,
and so this, you know, kind of lived up to that.
Do you think the relatability is because Tina Fey had her ear on the ground
and she knew the vibration of what the generation was doing. I do,
I do think so, which is you know, she it's this happens a
lot, right with any kind of movie like this, Like obviously she was
older than the people in the movie. She was around thirty, but I
think, you know, it also is so timeless that she related to the
material herself. You know, she remembered her teenage years and being awkward and
in her case, she's talked about you know, kind of like making jokes
as a defense mechanism in her case, and you know, that's just she
felt like there hadn't been a teen movie that did that, and she was
right, and it was a huge gap that there was to fill, and
she did it in this way that is so fun and funny. You know,
that's the part. It's like a kind of serious subject if you think
about it, girls bullying each other, but it's she made it fun and
funny and gave us an uplifting message in the end. I'll tell you the
thing that I've always loved about it is that she didn't have to go the
dirty route like Porkis did and movies like that. You know, those were
teen movies too, and even Fast Times at Reachmond High. They still went
that route. Tina didn't have to do that, and look she's still just
as strong today, exactly exactly. They actually really deliberately wanted this movie to
be fourteen girls. This is a huge it's like a huge plot point in
my book. But their PG thirteen rating was like, this is what we
have to have because young girls need to be able to go see this.
And so they did so much work. She actually had a slightly dirtier original
script and then they cleaned it up, and then they actually had to clean
it up one more time in post production and change some lines that were key
to get that PG thirteen rating. This was like, you know, it
just felt like life or death to them to have that rating. And I
think in the end, like it's still incredibly funny. Like you said,
I kind of like that this isn't about sexy, dirty stuff. It's just
this like clean, you know, clear story that still has incredibly funny jokes.
I think the jokes are hilarious, So we didn't lose anything. You're
gonna think I'm a freak, but I think this new version of Me and
Girls is the grease of this generation. It's really it's like, I mean,
it does kind of combine the original I think with the stage musical and
so that it kind of like brings it all together and it's gotten new stuff,
right. They updated some jokes. And by the way, I was
a huge Grease fan the books like foundational for me, so I love that.
You know, one of the things that listeners need to understand is that,
I mean, I realized this is a book from you sharing the story,
but you physically sat down with the directors, the crew members and everybody
else that was involved. You're really giving us a good inside peek here.
Yeah. I was especially pleased to talk to the director, Mark Waters.
He did such a wonderful job and maybe you know, doesn't always get recognized
because people are so focused on Tina Fey, but it's so tightly directed and
tightly edited. And he also was so good with the kids. I mean,
they were young adults mostly through old teenagers, young twenties, but still
that's pretty young for a whole cast for the most you know, except for
the teachers and parents. He was he had this huge cast of very young
people and everyone talked to me about how good he was with them. He
allowed them to have fun and play and improvise, and he would just have
them do like a million takes and keep them going and keep their energy up.
He was in every single audition, even for all of those high schoolers
you see kind of in the background or who had one line. He was
in every single audition to pick these kids. Often was picking kids with almost
no experience because he just liked their vibe and wanted to work with them.
And I loved being able to kind of talk to him about this and also
just kind of give him credit. You talk about those people in the background.
That's one of my weaknesses, or it could be a strength when it
comes to movie watching. I love watching the background because I think there's Easter
eggs in everything there is. And this must have been I would think one
of your favorites for that, because they really created a high school. You
know, they went through the trouble like Mark Waters again, he named every
character. He would talk to each person about their character and be like you
would be into this and this, and you'd want to be friends with her,
but she, you know, like he had a whole idea for every
one of these characters, and they all have their own clicks. Each of
each click has their own like little Regieta George in it in the background.
And they were played all by Toronto Canadian actors because it was in Toronto,
and I think it helped a lot because they all knew each other, or
that all, but a lot of them knew each other from other auditions and
just being around, and so it really gave this feel of like an actualized
goal that was surrounding the Mean Girls, which was important because Regina needs like
a kingdom to rule over right, you have that feeling, and a lot
of them got some of those amazing one liners that remain really famous to this
day, both because we like to quote them and because we like to meme
them. Yeah. Yeah, the book we're talking about is called so Fetch
The Making of Mean Girls. Here's how big this movie is still in our
life. I don't know if you caught the Real Housewives of Utah, but
at the end, did you see that they brought out a burn book.
Yes, it's so crazy. It's really everywhere. I had a Google alert
on Mean Girls for this book, and it's fascinating to see how all the
places that this phrase shows up, I mean, every realm of life,
politics, definitely. Reality TV is just some girls time. It's just it's
incredible to see. Wow. So do you think that people have burn Books?
I mean, because I mean, my god, I mean, just
to watch it come back to life in the new movie, you know,
you still have that emotion you're going, oh my god. Oh yeah.
And you know, I love how the burn Book still looks the same.
It's like it is so it just what they just nailed it with the way
it looked in the original, and it's like we cannot I mean, we
built my book cover on that, Like it is just this iconic look that
we all go like, oh yeah, I know exactly what that is.
I never had a burn Book, I you know, I hope people don't
really have them to this day. I still have a photo album that I
had when I was a teenager, and so when I saw the burn Book
and I saw the way they put the photos and stuff in there, I
was like, my god, that is almost like my my book of photography
as a kid. I mean, from when I was a hockey player to
the band and all that kind of stuff and a time I'll never get back,
but it's still fun to look at. I did have that I had
a lot of photo albums like that that I lovingly like, put the foot
right, like all that stuff. So I did I did I do really
to that part? Did you keep anything in there? Because I have a
dollar bill in there that was signed by Leife Garrett to this day, I
hold on to that thing. That is amazing. I definitely had some like
I had a lot of stuff that was like, oh, this card that
this boy gave me or whatever, right like that kind of thing. When
did you know that you were going to be a writer? And I realized
that. You know, even when I talk with authors, I still call
them writers only because writing, to me is so deep into the soul.
You are a writer and that that is an author. That's right. And
I usually I think I say writer only because I do a multiple things,
right, and some of them marketing, some of them are writing a book.
I mean always, but definitely. By the time I was about eight
or so, I was I had like an electric typewriter, an old electric
typewriter my mom gave me, and I would just sit there and I wrote
these little short stories. And then I started writing plays that I would make
my friends do in the garage with me and it kind of just went from
there. I you know, and I was interested in all different kinds of
writing. I wanted to be even a freelance writer. Specifically, since I
was quite young, I would take out books from the library on like how
to be a writer, yeah, and just learn the business and definitely always
I loved the library, so I really dreamed of being an author own that
freelance writer. What I love about that is the fact that it's like,
because people go, you need you need to go take some lessons and get
some better technique. I don't want to write like them. I want to
write like me. Yeah. Absolutely. I think practice is the big Practice
in writing is always what I say. I do teach writing classes, but
I feel like, in the end, like I'm not sure that they're that
useful. Maybe getting feedback is the other part of that. But if you
just write and practice a lot, have other people read it and you read,
I think that's all you really need. All right, miss writing teacher,
I've got a question for you. Do you think that sometimes we use
too many run on sentences and sentences are too long, because if we were
to write the way we speak, there'd be a lot more periods in commas.
That is very true. But I you know, I one of the
big idols of my life was the author Tom Wolfe h And he was the
king of the long sentence among and the crazy situation, among other things.
And I thought he was he was such a genius at doing kind of what
you're talking about, which is like he could mimic the way his thoughts came
out or the way he spoke. But also like, this is a you
have to know the rules to break the rules thing, right, You have
to know the way to do it, and then you have to find the
way, the kind of right way to express the things the way you want
to express them. And we all know that's a lot harder than it seems
like it should be, because otherwise everyone would do it all the time.
Every editor has one spot in a book that they go, man, I
like where you were going, but it didn't reach me. We're going to
have to remove it. Did you have one of those in this book?
We definitely cut a lot of stuff. We did, h I have.
I had good stuff on the cutting room floor, for sure. I just
you know, I love it. It's hard because especially if you do interviews
and stuff like that, you just get attached. You kind of want to
put Like if somebody bothered to talk to you, you kind of want to
put it in. So I think maybe I just had too much to work
with, which is great. But yeah, we definitely had a few things
where it was just like, let's keep moving forward instead of going this side
journey. Yeah, but there was just it's like, I guess that's a
good thing. There's too much good stuff these interviews you're talking about. We
are all communications specialists these days. Are they going to are they going to
sit on a hard drive in your computer forever? Or are you going to
share those real conversations with the rest of us. I was I've been working
on trying to figure out. I actually had a list of some of the
stuff that I that I cut from the book that I really liked that I
was like, oh, I got to figure out because I've been doing like
TikTok, I'm like, should I do it there? I'm not sure where
I going to do it yet, but we'll figure out something to do with
my bonus material. What did you learn from this from this particular journey?
Oh, that's such a nice question. I mean I think that I just
really came away with an even better appreciation of this movie and of it's the
way that it took its audience seriously even while being very very funny, right,
I think being very very funny. That was my takeaway, Being very
very funny as a way of taking it on it seriously. It gave this
audience this incredibly quotable, genuinely funny, kind of dark, sometimes edgy movie.
It allowed the girls to be flawed. I really love that, and
so I kind of came away with this new appreciation for humor as a way
of kind of taking an audience seriously. Even though it was written about the
girls, to me, it represents all people. There so many people represented
in this story. Absolutely, I totally agree. I mean I've been saying
this that I think that mean girls, the you know that kind of concept
at the center of this, The ways that the girls kind of operate and
you know, try to take each other down and want to be but also
want to be a part of it. All of that is all of us,
right. It goes across genders, it goes across age. A friend
of mine was recently telling me how you know her the way she said it
was her grandmother was dealing with a mean girl's situation at the nursing home over
a Mojoh game. So like you don't, it doesn't ever go away it
you know, you'll hear people use it even in politics to apply to all
genders, you know what I mean, Like, you'll just always hear this.
And it gave us this way, I think, just the mean girls.
The title gave us a way of referring to this sort of situation where
we all understand. And it was something that in the original source material of
the book called Queen Bees and Want to Be As which is a nonfiction book
that it was based on, she called it relational aggression. But that's a
pretty that's a hard phrase to used in every day life. And so I
think relational aggression becoming just like when you say it's a mean girl's situation or
she's such a Regina George, it's like, we know what that is.
What I've loved about this with Tina Fey is that she hasn't tried to outdo
this this movie. It's like, you know, like when Fleewood Mac did
Rumors, the next one had to be better than Rumors, or the Eagles
with Hotel California. It had to be better than and Tina Fey just keeps
being Tina fan She's I mean, she's extraordinary. I think her just like
inherent humor and wit is so unbelievable. I used to interview her like in
the two thousands, when I always say kind of the I covered like the
Rise of Tina Fey and you know when she was doing this, and then
thirty Rock and then you know, Sarah Palin and kind of Exploding. I
used to talk to our fair amount and it was always striking to me how
we'd get on the phone and even if we had ten minutes, it's like,
okay, you got to talk about your new book, let's go.
We just rattle on. Like she'd say like all the perfect things that you
needed her to say in the ten minutes, and it'd be like, we're
good, We're good, right. And what also was striking is so many
times I would go read the other stuff, all the other interviews she did
for that, and it would be different, and I was like, most
of the time, if you get really good jokes like that, it's like
they're saying it over and over again. She would just she was just always
kind of able to be on and rattling off jokes, and it is just
incredible when you say that it shaped a generation. Do you think it's because
it kind of identifies the snobs of life and that in reality that if we're
we're so easily influenced to become a snob ourselves. Absolutely, And it gave
us a way to talk about all this, like I was saying, and
kind of all the quotes right, the way that we can quote it,
I think defines the generation. The way that I think, you know,
I was talking to somebody else, and it's like the way you can kind
of like say it to a person and if they know what you're talking about,
you know that you're their kind of person. Right. It's just it
kind of gave us this language among people who love this movie to talk about
this stuff and became memes and gifts and all of this other stuff kind of
morphed into its own thing. I don't think this could be a guys movie
in the way of replacing the girls with guys, because I just think the
relationships between guys and girls are just so different, for sure. And actually,
the author of Queen Bee's and wannab is Roslin Wiseman actually end up writing
like a second book that was just about because she felt like it was different
enough. And I think that just has to do with It's not like gender
essentialism. It just has to do with the way we raise girls versus boys
is just different, and so they have different kind of tools at their disposal
and roles that they might play. Wow, Jennifer, you got to come
back to this show anytime in the future. The door is always going to
be open for you. Thank you so much. This was fun. Will
you'd be brilliant today? Okay, thanks to too,