Pop Culture Fix: Kate McKinnon Will Obviously Be Playing A Witch In Her Very First Very Own Movie

Welcome to your Pop Culture Fix, the place where I write about queer entertainment news while wearing pajama pants tucked into duck boots and wait for my new Dead Lesbian Society enamel pins to arrive. 


Movies

+ Your girlfriend Kate McKinnon is finally getting her very own movie. She will, of course, be playing a witch. A Lunch Witch. Per Deadline:

It will be intriguing to see what she does with The Lunch Witch, as Grunhilda. For generations and generations, the women in her family have stirred up trouble in a big, black pot. Grunhilda inherits her famous ancestors’ recipes and cauldron, but no one believes in magic anymore. Since her only useful skill is cooking up potfuls of foul brew, she finds herself uniquely qualified to hire on as school lunch lady. Grunhilda delights in scaring the kids until she meets a timid little girl named Madison with a big set of glasses who becomes an unlikely friend. Madison needs help at school and at home, but helping people goes against everything Grunhilda’s believes in as a witch. Will she stir up trouble with her brood?

+ Desert Hearts sure is getting a sequel. NBC Out spoke with Donna Deitch when the film screened last Friday at the MoMA. She opened up about the unusual way she funded and advertised for her first groundbreaking lesbian film. It’s bananas and so inspiring:

In 1986, a bad review from The New York Times was a death sentence for a small indie film with relatively unknown stars, according to Deitch. So the lesbian director again took matters into her own hands with an unorthodox solution: She made leaflets advertising the film and walked around the city with her brother, handing them out to people waiting on lines outside of movie theaters.

+ The next Pixar film, Coco, will feature an all-Latino cast!

+ Kristen Stewart made a short film called Come Swim. St. Vincent scored that film.

+ Elizabeth Banks has optioned Lindy West’s book, Shrill, for television.

TeeVee

+ Tumblr knows your life. They have released their 2016 Fandometrics year in review and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear it’s basically the gayest lists in history. Biggest ship? Clexa. Biggest animated TV show? Steven Universe. Top actress? Alycia Debnam-Carey (Lexa). Most discussed social issues:

1. Feminism
2. Black Lives Matter
3. Police brutality
4. Equality
5. Terrorism
6. Representation
7. Disability
8. Diversity
9. Refugees
10. Reproductive rights

+ I love The Weather Channel starting a feud with Breitbart, I really do.

+ Masters of Sex is done. We’ll never know what happened to Betty or her baby or the ghost of her dead beloved Helen. I’ll get Stef to make up an ending for you.

+ If all you want for Christmas is a Sense8 Christmas special, you are in luck!


Queer Humans, Out and About

Could Angelina Jolie Become Secretary-General of the UN?

+ Gaby Dunn’s Bad With Money podcast made NYT’s best of 2016 list.

https://twitter.com/gabydunn/status/806216990373224448

+ Caity Weaver, who has written some of the best profiles and blog posts the world has ever seen, interviewed Sarah Paulson for GQ. It’s pretty great.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1719 articles for us.

31 Comments

  1. Still waiting on any sort of an apology or acknowledgement of being really transmisogynist in the past and anyone other than trans women to care about her apparent unrepentant transmisogyny.

        • I agree that Kate rocks! And yes I do believe the first person is referring to one sketch from about ten years ago. But just because Kate is awesome and making stuff we identify with now, it doesn’t mean she didn’t upset people in the past.

    • I’ve seen a few people demanding that she apologize but I have to ask, when/where should she do so? She has no social media & this is never brought up in interviews.

      Also, does that skit really make her transmisogynistic? I understand that its hurt some feelings and I really do sympathize with that. But transmisogyny seems like a more serious accusation. But maybe I’m just not completely clear on what transmisogyny actually consists of? (I hope this doesn’t come off as dismissive; I’ve seen this opinion of her around & I really do want to understand where it’s coming from)

      • Does she currently harbour bigoted opinions about trans women? The cast of Friends made homophobic jokes for years, which doesn’t necessarily speak to personal bigotry as much as their participation in a homophobic culture. I don’t know if they were ever confronted on it but it seems fair. It’s possible that she would recognize that the sketch was shitty and see how it functioned within a context of cis gay people using trans people as a joke. The relative obscurity of that show (I’d never seen it until AS comments about her transmisogyny sent me on a google mission) has probably also contributed to the lack of discussion with interviewers.

        She can’t take it back, but she could comment on it. There is a larger conversation happening about trans representation; she could easily embark on a conversation with trans advocates, and figure out how to jump in to say ‘I’m sorry that I wrote/performed a character who hurt people, cis GLBQ people owe it to trans people to do better.’

        • She wrote the character and has much more recently said it’s her favorite character she’s acted or created. She’s also said cissexist shit in more recent interviews. The lack of attention to transmisogyny has to do with the reactions that occur whenever a trans woman points out that somebody’s fave might be a bit of a bigot.

          One of the first responses to someone pointing out bigotry on the part of this particular fave had someone responding to say that they “keep seeing this,” and that despite trans women and allies to trans women apparently pointing out to this person that Kate McKinnon is a transmisogynist this person still thinks that “Kate Rocks!” is an appropriate response to someone pointing out that Kate is a bigot, or has at least done some really bigotted shit in the past and has never made amends with the community hurt by her actions

  2. Fosters did its first promo. Mortal danger all around. Except for Brandon who has a hang nail and a bucket ‘o male tears.

      • Yo, it’s really unfair for him as a white boy to be held accountable for the insane number of fuck ups he’s committed.

  3. A bunch of the links in this article are wrong and instead link to an article about Angelina Jolie…

  4. In other news, Cassandra, from The Librarians, got hit on by a woman, a frost giant woman! :D

  5. Kate McKinnon starring in her own movie is both ‘What took you so long??’ and ‘I wasn’t expecting it to land now now!’ and it is glorious and a dream come true.

  6. “Because if there’s anyone in the world I could be like, it would be like Marcia Clark.”

    I fall more and more in love with Sarah Paulson every day.

  7. When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher recommended Desert Hearts to me. I rented it (how? Blockbuster, I guess?) and got about 10 mins in before declaring it boring and weird and never finishing it. In hindsight!, lovely bisexual high school teacher was clearly trying to help about a young gay. I will def give it a shot now. This one’s for you, lovely chemistry teacher.

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