Pretty Funny Women
A film that will make you cry with laughter.
Directed by Deirdre Allen Timmons
Starring Lisa Sundstedt
Growing up near the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in Oceanside, Calif., Lisa Sundstedt learned to laugh in order to survive.
“There were a lot of black, Filipino, and Samoan students. I was the cute white girl that the other girls didn’t like,” says Sundstedt. “But I was so silly and ridiculous that I’d instantly get them on my side. ‘Lisa, I dare you to run down the hall, drop your books and fall.’ And I’d say, ‘As long as you don’t bust my ass, I will.’ I learned to be the silly girl to have other girls like me.”
And so began a comedic journey that carried Lisa through her father’s untimely death, alcoholism, and numerous other dark episodes that have comprised her life.
“Comedy equals tragedy plus time,” says Lisa. “You can take an event that happened -- and if enough time has gone has gone by -- you can make fun of it. One of my mom’s boyfriends hung himself in our garage. I know. Seems funny now.”
“No she did not,” you think to yourself. And then you laugh.
Since 1995, Lisa has been helping other women make light of their own trials, tribulations, and joys, as a coping mechanism and a way to bond through laughter. Her stand-up comedy school, Pretty Funny Women, has put hundreds of women on stage to the delight of thousands.
But her groundbreaking instruction not only teaches women the art of holding a microphone, structuring a joke, and finding their own unique points of view. She encourages her students to buck the longstanding practice of looking like a slob on stage, instead celebrating their femininity and sexuality.
“Typically in comedy women will downplay their sexuality and look androgynous. I am about looking like a woman,” says Lisa. “Femininity is very threatening to men when a woman is beautiful and funny. It’s the most powerful combination on the planet. Control a whole room of people and be beautiful to boot. Guys don’t know what to do with that. I encourage women to empower themselves by looking their best.”
Hence, the Pretty Funny Women.
Beginning Jan 6, Lisa will instruct her latest round of funny girls. In this heartwarming and hilarious documentary, we will meet ten women of diverse ethnicities, sexual orientations, professions and backgrounds. All of it will be true. And all of it, perhaps against your will, will make you laugh.
Standup routines from PFW graduates and female comics will give audiences a glimpse into the successful world of female comedy and pierce questions of what is funny, how is female different from male humor, and what happens when a woman allows herself to be pretty and funny at the same time?
This gut-busting documentary ends as the fledgling comediennes confront their pasts, presents and futures with a routine that will perhaps make you cry with laughter.