During her acceptance speech at the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards on Monday night, Tina Fey honored the great Jan Hooks, who recently died at the too-young age of 57. Like Kevin Nealon’s ode, Fey’s speech was sweet and sad; unlike Nealon, however, the 30 Rock star used the tribute as an excuse to make fun of Rob F*cking Schneider’s unlikely (and almost uniformly awful) film career.
“She was another woman who meant so much to me. When we were doing 30 Rock and we needed to cast Jane Krakowski’s estranged Florida dirtbag mother and I thought, ‘My God, do you think we could get Jan Hooks?’ Because she’s an idol of mine, from the Sweeney Sisters to the Miss Self Esteem Pageant. Just the funniest woman ever. And I was like, ‘Do you think we could get her? And the answer was like, ‘Yeah, you can get her.’ She was living in Woodstock. And the phone was not ringing.
We called her and said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And she was like, ‘OK?’ She was actually a little shy about jumping back into the game. And she came down and she was so funny. We did a scene where Jenna and her mother are reunited and they’ve been estranged, but they decide to sing their duet that they used to sing in pageants when Jenna was a child. And it was a mother and a daughter singing to each other: “Do that to me one more time…” And it was so funny and the crew was so mesmerized. It was all at once the most ridiculous and heartbreaking and beautiful, this weird mother-daughter relationship. And I’m so proud of it.
It made me sad when she passed, and it made me mad at the time how available she was. Jan should have had a bigger career. Jan deserved a big movie career. Certainly as big as Rob Schneider’s f*cking career. She was a bigger star on SNL.” (Via)
No film career is better than Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. Also from the ceremony:
Fey joked, “Amy [Poehler] and I talk about longevity. And we talk about what projects that we can line up that we can age into. I know Amy has optioned a graphic novel about a lunch lady,” which could be an SNL movie (hopefully without Rob Schneider).
