Funny girl: Park native finds the
hometown can be a humorless place

Megan Grano has been receiving some hate mail lately.

Most of it is from residents of Southeast Michigan, said the Los Angeles-based actress and comedian. The backlash is the result of a satirical news report she did this past summer. In the video, she pokes fun at how the dwindling economy is affecting prospering communities like Grosse Pointe.

"The failure of GM and Chrysler has caused suburbs like Grosse Pointe to face unprecedented economic hardships,” Grano reported in the video. “Average household income has declined anywhere from zero to $200 per year.”

That’s a made-up number, and the fact the “report” was posted on a website called funnyordie.com should have been a clue she wasn’t to be taken seriously. But lots of people have lost their sense of humor.

Grano finds the hate mail hilarious. Her favorite letter signs off with, “Plus, you’re really ugly.” (“I’m certainly not trying to be hot,” she laughed.)

“What I feel is actually really funny is the amount of people who don’t get it at all,” she said. “I’ve responded to some of (the hate mail) saying, ‘I’m very sorry you don’t understand satire.’”

Grano is a native of Grosse Pointe, which she refers to in the video as “a modern-day India.” She was inspired to do the video not by her hometown, but where she lives now in California.

“It’s not just Grosse Pointe. Here I am in L.A. where there are similar things. There’s a lot of really wealthy areas of L.A. and a lot of really depressed areas.”

In California, she works with homeless people and foster children through programs that are struggling to stay afloat.

“They’re facing huge cutbacks in staff and services that are critical to their survival. Meanwhile, you can walk just a few blocks over and be at a shopping mall called The Grove where purses are selling for $4,000.”

“I know they have their problems,” she said of Grosse Pointers, “but I wish they had a bit more perspective on their problems.” People in lower-income brackets “have to seriously worry because they’re the ones with no savings and are losing their jobs.”

She said that during the shooting of “Poor Grosse Pointe,” she encountered subjects who, after agreeing to an interview, would not give her permission to use the footage. One memorable resident told her that he had to sell his third house due to economic struggles. She has a hard time feeling bad for him.

The video was created as an audition piece for Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

“”The Daily Show’ and the ‘Colbert Report’ are two shows that are like dream jobs for me to work on,” she said. “I think a lot of the reason that I’m so interested in working on those shows is because I’m from such a political family.”

She certainly is. Her brother, Daniel, is running for reelection to the Park’s city council and her mother is Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan, who thinks the video is funny.

“We’ve always had clashes of ideas,” Corrigan said. “We’ve always encouraged debate in my family and Megan was always encouraged to express her ideas as a child. The dinner table was the most important place in our house.”

She advised her children from an early age to “find what you love to do and don’t waste a day doing something you don’t love.”

“My parents were really supportive of whatever I wanted to do, which I feel so lucky that I had parents like that,” Grano said. They even supported her in her childhood dream to become the first female Detroit Tiger. “Luckily, I didn’t follow through on that. Although maybe the Tigers could’ve used me. You never know.”

Corrigan, despite political differences, is proud of both of her children in their pursuit of what makes them happy now.

“My son is a conservative Republican, my daughter’s a liberal Democrat,” she said. “We love each other to death, we debate, we talk. That’s how it should be. That’s what a democracy is about–it’s promoting a vibrant exchange of ideas because that’s how you get the best result.” 

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