While Will Farrell is allowed to make mediocre comedy after mediocre comedy, Jan Hooks hasn't worked since 2004. Yes, SNL has launched the careers of countless male superstars, but what has it done for the women? Pretty much bubkas. There are a few notable exceptions—Tina Fey, Gilda Radner, Amy Poehler, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for instance—but whither Ellen Cleghorne, Victoria Jackson, and Julia Sweeney? From the show's original cast, Jane Curtin may have gone on to several sitcoms, but Laraine Newman has been doing little more than guest spots and voice work for the better part of the decade.

Luckily Ana Gasteyer and Christine Ebersole went on to find steady work on Broadway, but that's kind of like being the chastest girl at a Sex-aholics Anonymous meeting. Why can Jimmy Fallon get his own late-night talk show, when Nora Dunn and Cheri Oteri are at home waiting by their phones? And for every Janeane Garofalo — who fled 30 Rock after one season, allowing her to escape with her career intact — a dozen Siobhan Fallones or Mary Grosses float out of sight. Maybe they should have taken the Maya Rudolph route and married a hipster director and done a drama. Now people are talking about how she's an "actress" instead of a comedian.

And it's not that these women aren't funny; they did scale to the very pinnacle of their trade by earning their places on the show. Hollywood doesn't know what to do with funny women. After all, it would rather have an attractive but bland actress playing the female lead on a sitcom rather than someone who has actual comedic timing. Look at who is starring in this season's romantic comedies: Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Aniston, three ladies who never let themselves get pigeon-holed as "funny."

Don't worry, Casey and Michaela, just remember that there was a little girl named Sarah Silverman who got fired from SNL after one season too. She went out there and did her own thing, and in the end talent won out, and now she has her own show on basic cable! Look at how far you can go!

The person I most want to meet before I die, Meryl Streep, will be honored yet again, this time by the Rome Film Festival. Italians will grin and puff cigarettes and clap a lot for the grand dame as they give her their funnily named Marcus Aurelius lifetime achievement prize. You'd think that getting the same kind of prize at the Coolidge Corner Theatre would be satisfaction enough in life (it should be! place is awesome!) but I guess it's not. [Variety]

Oh, that's nice. People are still giving 90's driftwood Stephen Dorff movie work. He'll play a "legendary" (read: old) porn star in that Adam Sandler-produced movie about a guy (Nick Swardson, he of the rollerskates on Reno: 911!) who finds out that his parents were in the adult (read: sweaty teen boy) film business. [Variety]

Remember when Robert Rodriguez was maybe going to be this bigtime director, this whiz-bang creative mastermind in the vein of his buddy Quentin Tarantino? Well, that never really panned out, and so he made Spy Kids and then that horrible Grindhouse installment (the thing about funny homages? They need to be funny), and now he's making a movie based on a fake trailer that aired during that schlockathon. Machete is about an ex-Federale who has a beef with the gubmint. Danny Trejo will probably not star in this one. Oh, and he's also doing a Predator reboot. So. [Variety]

Oh she must be hitting it big! The actually quite funny on SNL Michaela Watkins will be playing that coveted by comediennes best friend role in a romantic comedy. She'll buddy up to Jennifer Lopez (who's still making movies! good for her! A for effort!) in The Back-Up Plan, about a lady and a baby and sperm donoring or something. [THR]

Swoon. The ridiculously attractive (if charmingly pretentious) Joseph Gordon-Levitt has replaced the ludicrously attractive James Franco in Christopher Nolan's next film, Inception. Pic stars Leo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, and lesbian Hollywood's vice-president, Ellen Page. The funny thing is, I want him to get more famous? Because he's great? But also? I don't want him to? Because then my embarrassing crush will be shared by millions? I'm a sad person? [THR]

First, we have 21-year-old Abby Elliott (above left), daughter of Chris Elliott (let's hope her tenure goes over better than her dad's brief, mid-90's SNL stint). Abby may be familiar to fans of UCB's Midnight Show, but we discovered her at Defamer back in 2006! Here's Abby playing a quavery-voiced Kirsten Dunst in the impression that won our hearts:
SNL's other addition is Michaela Watkins, a Groundlings main company player who can currently be seen as the Hamish Linklater-romancing Lucy on The New Adventures of Old Christine.
Kudos on the gig, ladies — though we're still surprised that there's no one being added to the cast who could conceivably play Michelle Obama (or even Sheri Shepherd!). We hope Maya Rudolph enjoys all those JetBlue miles she's bound to rack up.

• Two more reasons to turn on SNL: Abby Elliott and Michaela Watkins join the cast! [The Comic's Comic]