Growing Up Laughing

by Marlo Thomas

  —Rita Rudner

  “I want to have children, but my friends scare me.

  One of my friends told me she was in labor for 36 hours.

  I don’t even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.”

  —Rita Rudner

  “It wasn’t that no one asked me to the prom,

  it was that no one would tell me where it was.”

  —Rita Rudner

  “Marriages don’t last. When I meet a guy, the first

  question I ask myself is: Is this the man I want my

  children to spend their weekends with?”

  —Rita Rudner

  “When I eventually met Mr. Right,

  I had no idea that his first name was Always.”

  —Rita Rudner

  . . . and ROSEANNE

  “As a housewife, I feel that if the kids

  are still alive when my husband gets home

  from work, then hey, I’ve done my job.”

  —Roseanne Barr

  “Experts say you should never hit your

  children in anger. When is a good time?

  When you’re feeling festive?”

  —Roseanne Barr

  “The quickest way to a man’s heart

  is through his chest.”

  —Roseanne Barr

  “Women complain about PMS,

  but I think of it as the only time of the

  month when I can be myself.”

  —Roseanne Barr

  “My husband said he needed more space.

  So I locked him outside.”

  —Roseanne Barr

  Chapter 44

  The Making of a Wisenheimer—Tina Fey

  Like the rest of America in the fall of 2008, I couldn’t wait for the weekend to watch Tina Fey’s dead-on send-up of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, on Saturday Night Live. Tina’s channeling of Palin was by far the best female impression I’d ever seen, and almost overnight, her winks and “You betcha’s” turned her from a star into a superstar. But nothing about Tina’s remarkable rise qualifies as “overnight.” She worked her way to the top from the scrappy improv circuit in Chicago (including Second City), where she honed her performing and writing skills. For all the comedy writers that roamed through our house—and our lives—when I was growing up, there never was a woman at the table. Tina not only made it to the table of SNL writers—in just a few years she moved to the head of it. But to her it’s not about gender, it’s just about getting the laugh. That’s something she’s been doing her whole life.

  —M.T.

  Step One: Come from a Funny Family

  Tina: I grew up in Upper Derby, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, and I think there’s something about the Northeast—New York, Philly, Boston—where everyone’s a little bit of a smart aleck. I went to college in the South, and my roommates would always say, “How come when your family’s here, if you ask them a question, they’ll always give you a sarcastic answer?” I’d say, “I guess that’s just how we do it up there. Everybody’s kind of a wisenheimer.”

  Step Two: Have Greek Uncles

  I had an Uncle Pierre and an Uncle Napoleon—I don’t know why they were named that; we’re a Greek family—and they were very funny, in a cutting kind of way. They were great at take-down humor. Like, when Uncle Pete would come over, he’d play my mom in Scrabble, and when he’d start winning, he’d turn to me and say, “Go comfort your mother. She’s crying.”

  Step Three: Find Your Comic Groove

  When I was 12 or 13, I decided that I wanted to try to be funny. That’s the age that you realize, Oh, I get it—some girls are going to be very pretty, and then the rest of us have to figure out what our coping mechanism is going to be. Looking back, having greasy skin and getting your boobs at ten is actually a good way to grow up. It builds character.

  Step Four: Do Your Research

  My brother always made me laugh. He’d imitate everything he saw on Saturday Night Live—he did a great Steve Martin. But we were all big fans of comedy shows. We watched everything on TV. Old Burns and Allen, classic sitcoms, Marx Brothers movies, Laurel and Hardy, and all of the Monty Pythons. We practically lived on Channel 48.

  Step Five: Try Out Your Material

  I wasn’t exactly the class clown, but I was definitely funny—I just wasn’t up front about it. I’d mutter things under my breath so my friends could hear it, and they’d always laugh. Basically I think I became funny to get people to like me. I especially remember being a cut-up in algebra class. That’s because I wasn’t great at math, and getting a laugh was a lot easier. My favorite joke was: “Two peanuts were walking down the street, and one was a-salted.” Okay, it’s a really, really dumb joke, but it always made me laugh.

  Step Six: Make One Last-ditch Effort Not to Be a Comedian

  In college, I thought about becoming a serious actress, but it quickly became clear to me that that wasn’t the right path. My problem with learning how to act was that I was never sure what you were supposed to be thinking about when you were doing a role on stage—unlike with improvisation, where your focus is always on your scene partner. So eventually I began to write, and wound up studying playwriting. And most of my plays came out funny, as opposed to serious.

  Step Seven: Take It to the Next Level

  In the early Nineties, I moved to Chicago and started studying at Second City. I had a day job, working the front desk at the [Evanston] YMCA, which left my nights free for classes. I’d take the train to work every morning at 4:00 A.M., always with the same group of Polish cleaning ladies. I somehow convinced myself they were looking out for me.

  For a brief period, I tried stand-up—at a very, very amateur level. I enjoyed it and really respect it as an art form. But to go out there alone is really tough. The highs are high, but the lows are really low.

  Step Eight: Be Discovered

  I began working on Saturday Night Live in 1997. I was a writer there for a few years before I moved to on-camera. It took some adjusting moving from performing full-time to writing full-time. It’s tough giving away your best material to someone else—though when they’re a better performer than you, that makes it a lot easier. When the job opening came up to co-anchor the “Weekend Update” news segment, [producer] Lorne Michaels asked me to do a screen test. I wasn’t that nervous because I’d been working there for three years. I knew the room and the people I was auditioning for, and I knew I had a job to fall back on. I was lucky in that way because, if I’d come in out of the cold, I would have been really, really intimidated. To audition in that room is scary. There’s, like, two people watching you and nobody laughs. It’s the worst.

  Step Nine: Become a (Gasp!) Sex Symbol

  I was extremely amused when people in the media started calling me “a thinking man’s sex symbol.” Obviously, it was because of my glasses, but glasses make anyone look smarter. Put a pair on a Playboy model and she becomes a paleontologist.

  But the most hilarious thing for me was when People magazine named me one of the 50 Most Beautiful People of the year. Every year, there’s always a person on the list who makes you roll your eyes and say, “Yeah, right.” I guess I was that year’s person. Still, I’m not going to complain about it. I’ve decided to stash all those magazines in a trunk, and then show them to my daughter one day.

  Step Ten: Learn to Do a Dead-on Impersonation of a News-Making Vice Presidential Candidate

  People were fascinated with Sarah Palin, regardless of whether they loved her or not. The weirdest thing for me was when everyone kept commenting on how similar we looked. Hello? This woman has perfect teeth and a great tan—and she’s got really long legs. I will admit, however, that we have similar noses.

  THE BOOK OF PAUL

  One of the quickest minds ever to light up a television game show was comedian Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, hosted by Peter Marshall. Let’s go to the tape . . . —M.T.

  Peter: Paul, what is a good reason for pounding meat?


  Paul: Loneliness.

  Peter: Do female frogs croak?

  Paul: If you hold their little heads underwater long enough.

  Peter: If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?

  Paul: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.

  Peter: According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?

  Paul: Point and laugh.

  Peter: Paul, how many men are on a hockey team?

  Paul: Oh, about half.

  Peter: What did the Lone Ranger always leave behind when he left town?

  Paul: A masked baby.

  Peter: Why do Hell’s Angels wear leather?

  Paul: Because chiffon wrinkles.

  Peter: Paul, in ancient Rome, bakers were required by law to bake something into each loaf of bread. What was it?

  Paul: A Christian.

  Chapter 45

  The Reluctant Interview: An Improv

  When Elaine May and I first met, we didn’t like each other. She was directing a revival of Herb Gardner’s play The Goodbye People at the Stockbridge Theatre in the Berkshires. I had just started going out with Herbie, and each day we would watch the rehearsals together. Later that night, he’d ask my opinion of what I had seen, and I would give him my comments, never dreaming he would tell them to Elaine. Unfortunately, he did.

  Elaine wanted to kill me—here was this girl from Hollywood, swooping in and critiquing her work. But by then the feeling was mutual. I didn’t like her either because, from the moment we’d met, she called me “Margo.” I had just finished my TV series and was pretty well known, so I took her getting my name wrong as a personal—and intentional—knock.

  The following year, we were thrown together quite a bit because of her close friendship with Herbie. One night she heard someone call out my name.

  “Wait—your name is Marlo, not Margo?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I just assumed you were mad at me for giving my notes on the play,” I said. “I thought you were being hostile.”

  Elaine answered back, “Well, I think it was hostile of you not to correct me for a solid year.”

  And so it began . . . a forty-year friendship.

  At one point, Elaine moved into my house on Angelo Drive for six months. It was very early in our friendship, so we were still being pretty careful with each other. Actually, I was careful. She complained constantly that there wasn’t enough surface space for her papers. And she smoked. We were like Felix and Oscar. She was Oscar and I was the one with the broom and the dust pan.

  It was during the third week of her stay that I met David Geffen. What a force he was. He was just hitting his stride as a movie and music mogul, and I had never met anyone who was so sure of who he was and where he wanted to go. And going out with me was one of the things he definitely wanted.

  So we made a date.

  “But I’d rather not go into your house if Elaine May is there,” he said.

  It seems they had met—and fought—at a restaurant a few nights before. Great. What a houseguest—a complainer, a smoker and now my dates don’t want to come into my home.

  So, for a couple weeks, I would meet David in front of the house. Then one night, when I thought Elaine was out, he came inside. I ran up to get my coat, and when I came back downstairs, there they were in the living room, the two of them, chatting away. And they were both complaining about me.

  David eventually became a part of my life, and he won Elaine and me over with the sheer power of his energy and optimism and love. And he was an obsessive. Perfect.

  But even when Elaine is inciting a domestic comedy, she’s like a sister to me. We have worked together, lived together, strategized together, played together and cried together. When my dad died, everyone tried to comfort me by reminding me of what a great life he’d had. But Elaine was the one who said the very right thing.

  “This is awful,” she said. “There is no consolation. It’s just horrible.”

  Exactly. That’s exactly how I felt. And by her understanding that feeling, she actually comforted me.

  But of all the things Elaine and I do together, the thing we do best is laugh . . . like hell.

  In 1990, we co-starred in a movie, In the Spirit, written by Elaine’s daughter, a gifted actress herself, Jeannie Berlin. As with any project, we needed to promote the film, but Elaine is famous for never doing interviews. So our producer and dear pal, Julian Schlossberg, landed on a great idea: Elaine and I should do a faux interview, with me as the eager journalist and Elaine as my reluctant subject. We loved the idea, turned on a tape recorder and began to improvise.

  What follows is that conversation, as it appeared in Interview magazine.

  Marlo: Elaine, I know you’re nervous about being interviewed, but it’s just me, and you’re a highly articulate person who makes her living putting words together, so I’m just going to throw the ball to you and let you run with it O.K.?

  Elaine: Great.

  Marlo: What was it like working together?

  Elaine: Great.

  Marlo: Was it fun working together?

  Elaine: Yes.

  Marlo: Were there any surprises in our working together?

  Elaine: No.

  Marlo: Well, there must have been some surprises.

  Elaine: Oh. Well, maybe there were.

  Marlo: What were they?

  Elaine: What do you mean?

  Marlo: I mean, you know me so well. Did anything I do surprise you?

  Elaine: Oh. Yes. I was surprised by the power of your acting.

  Marlo: Thank you. In what way?

  Elaine: It was so very good.

  Marlo: What about our friendship?

  Elaine: It was fine.

  Marlo: Do you recommend friends working together? I mean, there are some people who think you shouldn’t mix business with friendship. Or that if you give a friend a dollar, if you loan money to a friend, it will ruin that friendship. Would you recommend taking that risk?

  Elaine: Well, I think a dollar is such a small amount to lose.

  Marlo: No, no I mean . . . I shouldn’t have said a dollar. I mean, you know, people lend money to friends, right?

  Elaine: Yes.

  Marlo: Then, somehow, that changes the friendship. So they say you shouldn’t mix business with friendship. Do you think we should mix moviemaking with friendship?

  Elaine: Is this the same as the dollar?

  Marlo: Forget about the dollar. This has nothing to do with the dollar. I’m just saying that, do you think our being friends made the scenes better or worse?

  Elaine: You mean our scenes?

  Marlo: Elaine, you’re so nervous. You’re listening so hard that it’s making you seem stupid.

  Elaine: I see.

  Marlo: Now, just relax and listen to me. Did we have more fun doing our scenes together because we were friends? For example, in the scene where you had to grab me by the neck and bang me up against the wall, would you have had as much fun doing that to a stranger?

  In the Spirit: With Elaine—up against the wall.

  Elaine: No. That’s true.

  Marlo: Yes. What?

  Elaine: It was more fun grabbing you by the neck and slamming you up against the wall than a stranger.

  Marlo: Really? Why?

  Elaine: Well . . . because you aren’t a stranger.

  Marlo: Aside from that.

  Elaine: There is no aside from that.

  Marlo: You know, if you don’t expand on these questions it’s going to be a very boring interview. I mean, if I ask you why it was fun to grab me by the neck and bang me against the wall, you have to give me a better answer than “because you aren’t a stranger.” What else made it fun?

  Elaine: Well, it was fun . . . because . . . you’re smaller than I am.

  Marlo: We’ve always fought about this, Elaine. I am not that much smaller than you are. I think I’m only an inch shorter, that’s about it.


  Elaine: That’s smaller.

  Marlo: Well, it’s not that much smaller. It’s not small enough for you to have that smug expression on your face.

  Elaine: And you’re weaker than I am. That’s always fun.

  Marlo: I like the idea of myself being weak and vulnerable.

  Elaine: And it’s always fun to take a weak, vulnerable person and slam them up against the wall.

  Marlo: I don’t think you are going to like the way this looks in print. “It’s always fun to take a weak, vulnerable person and slam them up against the wall”? Spoken like a true guy.

  Elaine: I really think it’s unfair for you to ask me if something is fun and then tell me I have to expand on it, and then when I do, you attack me for it. I mean, I barely know what I’m saying. I’m very nervous.

  Marlo: Why? I don’t understand why you’re so nervous. I’m still you’re friend Marlo. This is just like we’re talking on the phone.

  Elaine: No, it isn’t. You don’t call me on the phone and ask me if it was fun the last time we talked.

  Marlo: No, no, but I . . .

  Elaine: You are very direct on the phone. You say, “I’ve been sent two scripts. One of them is a true story of a woman who’s dying and one of them is a true story of a woman who’s paralyzed—”

  Marlo: “—which one sounds like more fun?”

  Elaine: What?

  Marlo: I’m kidding. I’m just making a little joke. Elaine, look at how tense you are. You’re actually clutching your clothes. And you’re not breathing. That’s why you’ve stopped thinking. There’s not enough oxygen getting to your brain.

  Elaine: These are very hard questions.

  Marlo: Are they?

  Elaine: Yes.

  Marlo: All right, here’s an easier one. How do you feel about being a writer and a director in what is predominantly a white-male-dominated world?

  Elaine: You mean . . . is it fun?

  Marlo: No, forget fun. We’re off of fun. I mean, most of the executives, directors and screenwriters in Hollywood are men. So how do you feel about being in what is mostly a men’s club?

  With Elaine, doing what we do best.