Kissing Jessica Stein

I saw it in a theater during its initial run in LA. Yeah, it's not a bad film and I enjoyed it at the time. Usually passion projects like this are unwatchable (the stars also wrote the screenplay, and it was produced by one of their parents), but this one was okay. If anything, it's a love letter to bisexuality. Usually straight people discover that they are inexplicably attracted to a same-sex partner and they turn out gay. But not this one.

Jackie Hoffman was superb in this. Many years later, I caught her on Broadway in the Addams Family. I waited at the stage door to get her to sign my window card and said something like, I have liked you in everything I've seen you in. She stopped and asked me to "name one thing I've been in that you have seen." Immediately, I said Kissing Jessica Stein. She signed my window card and laughed, "So you like frumpy old lesbians, huh?" Funnily, I didn't remember that her character in this was lesbian.

I love Jackie Hoffman's scenes

Those Lez movies are always a beautiful woman paired with a total pig. Maybe for verisimilitude.

I just wish the dark-haired one wasn't so ugly and I don't care if that makes me shallow.

Also with Pre-Mad Men John Hamm, Jim J Bullock, unknown at the time Michael Ealy, Idina Menzel, Seth Cohen from "Gilmore Girls", Skippy from "Sex and the City"

Had no idea this movie existed until it came on the TV one day. I remember enjoying it, but think this gets a mixed reception on the LChat lol

This poor girl is still walking like a cowboy after taking John Hamm's hog for years! She deserves an Olympic medal

R7 Jennifer deserves a medal for putting up with his bullshit for so many years.

Better than most independent gay-themed movies

The only lez film I have ever enjoyed watching and would rewatch again. It's very tight and easy to watch. The cast is superb and the leads have great chemistry.

Do we no longer have Tovah Feldshuh trolls? When this came out there was a disgruntled poster or two that couldn't stand anyone complimenting her performance.

I did and I liked it.

I saw in the theatre multiple times with my best friend and I still have the DVD.

We still quote it.

I love Jackie Hoffman.

Jackie Hoffman’s performance as Billy Eichner’s perpetually seething modern orthodox frau sister-in-law in Difficult People is one of the best comedic performances I have ever seen.

I saw it in theaters and I think I might have the DVD somewhere. I don't particularly love the movie but I enjoyed NYC movies like it. I couldn't tell you who Idina Menzel played but imdb tells me that her character didn't have a name and was simply "bridesmaid."

I thought Tovah stole the movie, personally. I figured most actors were basically playing themselves, and on that note, I wouldn't be able to tolerate Jessica Westfeldt's neurotic ass for more than five minutes. She stutters and shakes like a chihuahua through the whole movie.

no but I've watched it a few times and think it's funny.

grandma who does not think anyone is good enough for her granddaughter makes me laugh.

Agree R15. Hoffman is the best part of Difficult People and Andrea Martin is first runner up.

"My husband wants to buy a white-noise machine. I don't know why. He married one" - Jackie Hoffman

Jessica Westfeldt did the vocals for the answering machine responses after the personal ad:

"You sound like someone special, and I'm hangin on by a thread here, and could really use someone special..."

R19, Jackie Hoffman and Andrea Martin’s Godzilla versus Mothra face off at the poetry reading had me screaming.

“You graduated from a continuing education certificate program and your husband didn’t send flowers? That piece of shit!”

I have it in the gay section of my dvd library so it is a keeper. Unlike Jennifer's later ensemble comedy Friends with Kids which was a stinker.

Someone mentioned LChat above. The reason it's not popular with some lesbians is that Westfeldt's character goes back to a man in the end. I like it, though. The scene between Westfeldt and Tovah on the bench where the mom tells her daughter knowingly that she was always afraid she would have a hard life because she had such high standards and that the "friend" she brought home is a "very nice girl" is heartwrenching.

She wrote another comedy that I thought was sort of hilarious, Ira and Abby.

Yeah, I only came into this thread to say how much I loved Tovah. I couldnt tell you anything else about the movie, but that scene on the bench was amazing.

It was a cute film, and I don't mind that the lead goes back to men. She's portrayed as more bicurious than anything from the start, and her bisexual partner does end up with a woman.

"Go Fish" was another decent independent lesbian movie, written by and starring Guinevere Turner, who was also filmed on hidden camera propositioning her female taxi driver in HBO's "Taxicab Confessions"

Ugh, I hate Go Fish. It's so pretentious while pretending to be "real". While Turner is cute, the other one is vomit-inducing fugly. The whole thing was just the worst of lesbian movies all rolled up into one. They even borrowed the ugly "dude" getting the hot girl crap from hetero films.

Like a time capsule

Lesbos4Lyfe

[quote] Do we no longer have Tovah Feldshuh trolls? When this came out there was a disgruntled poster or two that couldn't stand anyone complimenting her performance.

Maybe they died from Covid.

Actually, I was wondering how many Dlers have died from Covid, and we would never know.

Tovah Feldshuh . What's not to love?

This movie gives me late nineties/early 2000s New York City nostalgia.

I saw it in a movie theatre in Japan. Was there on business and it was the only English language movie playing, Japanese movies didn’t routinely have English subtitles. I thought it was cute but Westfeld is all tics and it’s distracting.

The director's commentary on the DVD (what happened to all the commentaries?) is pretty good. The two lead actresses give a lot of background information about every scene.

The office where they worked was supposed to be like a New York Times newsroom, but all they could get was a nondescript random side hallway with two desks

I agree with R34. That time was really the last shout for romantic, fun NYC.

I saw it on cable. I liked it. I miss simple movies like this.

Tovah's performance is spectacular. The scene when she gives blessing to her daughter, despite the fact that it goes against her belief system, is a wonder to behold--every ambivalent nuance plays across Feldshuh's face.