Official Book Club Selection

by Kathy Griffin

  Well, he called me the day of the wedding and basically stood me up, telling me he was sick. I was humiliated and went to the wedding by myself, and wouldn’t you know it, at the end of the reception, in walks Conan. “Hi, feeling better?” I said to him. I think he thought he could wait me out. But of course, I’m the last to leave any party, so I was there for his secret appearance.

  Clearly we were never going to be a Groundling power couple, of which we would have been the first. But I was starting to see Conan fairly regularly in that Dave Rath pizza party crowd, or he’d be one of twenty when we were all going to dinner somewhere, becoming somewhat of a fixture in my comedy orbit. When he got his talk show, I remember calling him and congratulating him, thinking he really deserved that break, because he was often the funniest guy in the room. I thought it was really cool that this hysterically witty “kid” whom people didn’t know was about to be introduced to the whole country on a big national stage.

  From my return to Conan O’Brien’s late-night show before he moved to the Tonight Show spot in the summer of 2009 (Photo: Dana Edelson/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank)

  So I went on Late Night with Conan O’Brien those few times during the Suddenly Susan years—we’d chat during the commercial breaks (“Have you seen Janeane lately?” he’d ask, “How do you like living in New York?” I’d ask) and nothing seemed awkward between us—and then all of a sudden I wasn’t asked back. Specials coming and going, no Conan. Emmy win, no Conan. Second Emmy win, no Conan.

  Since he’d had me on the show initially, my guess is when he was a newcomer, NBC probably said, “You’re going to have her on.” But when Suddenly Susan ended, at which point Conan had come into his own, he had bigger sway with who made the cut. So I spent ten years thinking, He can’t stand me, and I guess that’s the way it’s going to be.

  Then in late 2008 we ran into each other in the hallway of the ill-fated-but-fun-to-be-at Rosie O’Donnell variety special Rosie Live. It was right before the show, and for some reason he was completely nice to me. Well, he did just have a pie thrown in his face onstage. Maybe there’s something about being covered in whipped cream and standing in the hallway of a sweaty off-Broadway theater that just makes you happy to see an old friend.

  It was after this exchange that I went on Late Night in February 2009 for the first time in ten years, just in time for Conan to close out that show and get ready to segue into The Tonight Show in LA. We had a good conversation on his show, and it felt great to be back. It was really easy-breezy and he laughed at my jokes, and overall it was really fun. (Note to Oprah: When a comedian is on your show and makes a joke, you might want to laugh at them instead of giving a death stare. Jokes are their job. Just like your job is to be omnipotent.) He didn’t bring up my long absence from his late-night show, or any possible ill feelings. Probably because he doesn’t even remember what they might have been. I certainly didn’t bring it up. We talked about old friends, and it was wonderful. I just hate having a frost with anyone from that era, because it was such a good time, and I’m so glad he’s doing well.

  Then he said, “Well, when I go to LA, you’ve got to do the show.” I was so thrilled! But I think I’m going to make him attend at least one wedding with me first.

  A few of the guy hosts, like Craig Kilborn when he had The Daily Show and his own late-night talk show on CBS, have always been in my camp, and one in particular you wouldn’t necessarily think of has definitely supported me. Howard Stern. Total mensch. People had warned me about going on Stern. “Don’t do it, he’ll eat you alive.” And from the first time I went on Howard, during the Suddenly Susan years, before he was on Sirius satellite, we had the funnest conversations during those twenty-minute-long commercial breaks. He showed a softer and gentler side that his listeners don’t get to see much of.

  On air, however, he absolutely gave me and continues to give me shit. And the call-ins are brutal.

  “You horrible old hag/cunt/bitch. Nobody would ever fuck you in a million years. You are awful, you should die now,” someone will say. You can’t show weakness on Howard; you just have to wait for it to be over and hope the next caller is a gay guy saying, “We love you, diva.”

  And Howard, being the expert ringleader that he is, plays along. “Now come on, cut that out,” he’ll say, but lets the call go on, of course. But you know that’s the gig going in. During my divorce, I would have a conversation with him during the commercial break where he’d compassionately ask, “How are you doing?” But when we were back on the air, it’s “What’d that guy do, steal all your money?”

  I really respect Howard, and think he’s genuinely comedian-funny, not just witty. There’s a thing he does that’s very smart with women in my category, meaning those of us who remain fully dressed while on air. He’ll strike a nice balance between giving us complete shit and then adding, “You’re hot. I think you’re totally hot. I’d totally bang ya.” First of all, it’s a treat, because it never happens. And for his audience, it’s a stamp of approval. I know it sounds weird, and it requires an adjustment in recognizing what, exactly, a compliment is, but the funny thing about going on Howard is, when you’re me, the nicest thing he can do is say, “I want to bend you over and buttfuck you cause you’re so hot.” Oh Howard, you softie.

  What I learned early on from doing that show is, the way to survive is full disclosure. If you go on Howard’s show and try to be coy or not answer, he’s going to have you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. During my first appearance on Howard, I was having a little fling with one of the guys from ’NSYNC, which, yeah, is really sleazy because I was way too old for him. (I told him I was twenty-seven and my real age hadn’t had a two in front of it for nearly a decade.) And when I say fling, by the way, I think I made out with this ’NSYNC-er twice. (Hope you’re sitting down, Oprah. It was NOT golden-haired hottie Lance Bass. I know, I know, the sexual chemistry between him and me can be electric, but he must have been reading your favorite book The Secret, because I think he had one!) Anyway, I talked about it on Howard—I thought it was funny, he thought it was funny—and he wanted to know every single detail. So I told him. If I had gone on and said, “I made out with someone from ’NSYNC!” and then said, “I’m not telling you any more, Howard!” that would have been disastrous. So I had to go, “Okay, he touched my boob over here, and I was wearing this.” When Howard says, “What do you want to do with him?” it means you say, “Well, I want to do missionary, and I want to do doggie-style, and …” It’s all about how explicit you can be. And in return, he always plugged the hell out of my shows.

  The environment at Howard’s studio was heaven for me, too. His green room was a show in itself. And it made for instant material when I’d have to go play Caroline’s that night. One time when I was there, I was sharing the room with a couple of Scores girls (Scores being an infamous New York strip club), who were on the show to do one of Howard’s crazy games involving strippers. I’m wearing jeans and a sweater and heels, and they’re in silver lamé bikinis with tassels covering their fake tits. One girl said, “I think I’m gonna win cause I’m mohonia.”

  I’m thinking, What? Is that an affliction?

  Then it hit me. She’s more hornier. I didn’t know what game they were about to play, but I should have gotten some prize for deciphering their code.

  I loved Howard’s whole gang, too. Howard really defers to Robin, and he truly feels he can’t do the show without her. I think she’s wonderful, too, and I adore them as a pair. I have a total crush on Fred, and Baba Booey enjoys the celebrity dish as much as I do. The first time I did the show with Artie Lange, I really thought he was gonna go after me. The guys’ guy comics don’t always dig me, because let’s face it, a lot of people, and especially boy comedians, don’t think chicks are as funny, and can only think of women in terms of whether they’d want to fuck them or not. I totally expected the “Ugh, she’s ugly, who’d want to go near that” treatment. But I’ll never forget how nice Artie was to me. From day on
e. He was quiet during my interview, and then afterward said I was really funny. Strange as it sounds, I really felt respected and welcomed by the whole Howard crew.

  Plus, Howard single-handedly broadened my demographic. The first time I did his show, I walked down the street ten minutes later and every cop and construction worker said hi to me. Basically, every straight guy. I can perform for 7,000 people, and all that the straight guys there know me from is Seinfeld and Howard Stern. They don’t know the stand-up specials, they don’t know D-List or Suddenly Susan. And overseas, when I performed for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, all those guys were saying, “Oh, you’re the girl from Howard!” To which I say, “Thank God.”

  So that’s why I do it, why I’ve been on at least a dozen times. It’s why I take the licks. I never know how it’s going to go—brutal calls and nice Howard, or brutal calls and brutal Howard—and it’s something that can rub my female friends the wrong way. Jenny McCarthy said to me one time, “I told Howard I can’t do it anymore. Those calls are too mean.” During Suddenly Susan, Brooke got mad at me once because she felt I didn’t stick up for her when Howard started baiting me about her. I never threw her under the bus, but I couldn’t spend my entire forty-five minutes on Howard saying that Brooke Shields was a comedic genius. My first job is to be funny.

  Going on Howard was a great learning curve for me, and overall I’ve gotten a lot from it. At the end of the day, from being on his show, there’s going to be five more straight guys who’d never heard of me thinking, “Oh, well, if she’s cool enough to be on Howard …”

  That’s all I have to say about talk show hosts for now. In the world of celebrity, what makes talk show hosts unique in terms of whom I would put in my act (or my book), is that they’re probably the one area I occasionally have to hold back on. I can make fun of the president and it wouldn’t do anything, but I need talk show hosts more than I need my own boss at the network. Network CEOs come and go, but some of these fuckin’ talk show hosts seem like they’re never going to die.

  Andy Dick having boundary issues with me and Sharon Osbourne.

  Could I hit the road and make it work? Or would I be roadkill?

  That’s what I wondered when I started getting real stand-up offers, as in headlining gigs at places around the country. Even though I was raised in the alternative scene, being a fixture on television meant offers from spots like Caroline’s in New York and all the Improv clubs nationwide.

  But would I be able to get laughs anywhere besides coffeehouses and “alternative” showcases? Remember, I hadn’t had such good luck at the Improvs and places like that in the past, whose audiences expected more traditional joke/punchline comedy. Luckily for me, Margaret Cho continued to reassure me that I could do it. It just required adjustments. Change up the material faster. Don’t spend twenty minutes on one story when half the audience is drunk or on a date or trying to impress their boss. Move it along, people.

  I was getting asked to play colleges now, too, which was always a good and lucrative gig. I was in my midthirties but a pop culture sponge, so I was still young enough to be able to talk to the eighteen-to-twenty-two-year-olds, for one thing. I remember once going to the MTV awards, and that experience made for great material at a college gig. I could talk about running into Christina Aguilera (teen diva), seeing Whitney (all “sweaty”) and Mariah (hi, crazy!). Margaret was right. It was about knowing what subjects fit with which audience.

  So I was now the headlining act, and the stakes were higher. Bombing is a whole different animal when you’re the marquee name who people have paid money to see. In the days when I was the only girl in a lineup of ten comedians at a club, following the prop comic with the bad jokes about hating his wife gives you a little cushion of lowered expectations. And when I was in the Groundlings company and we had a crappy show, we could sit around backstage afterward and commiserate about it and laugh. But as the headliner, a bad night means bombing alone. The blame can’t be shared. I don’t mean to put myself on a watch list, but I became a una-bomber. If only I’d had the hood and sunglasses to hide in. Anyway, my greatest headliner bombing story is as follows:

  Year one of Suddenly Susan I got a call from my stand-up agent. He said, “You have an offer for a club in Boston. It’s called the Comedy Stop.”

  Boston! I’d never played there before. A city full of drunken micks? I’m gonna kill!

  “Or …” he said, “the alternative is this other club in Worcester, Massachusetts, about an hour from Boston, called the Comedy Palace. You’d have to do a show there Thursday, two on Friday, two on Saturday, and one on Sunday. The catch is, they have a sister club that’s a forty-five-minute drive from Worcester, so on Saturday you’d do the early show in Worcester, get in a car, and then you’d be driven to the sister club, perform there, go to bed, then come back on Sunday. But it’s more money.”

  It was a heavy workload, and during my week off from Suddenly Susan to boot, but thinking like my mom, I said, “Well, screw Boston’s Comedy Stop. I want to make more money.” We were talking a difference of maybe $2,000 between the Boston club gig and the Worcester venues. But I was the girl who’d happily take that $15,000 to do a horrible corporate gig, knowing full well I was going to bomb, because, you know, how can you turn down money?

  Well, it turns out that there were some big differences between a Boston institution like the Comedy Stop, and a Worcester noninstitution like the Comedy Palace.

  I showed up at the Comedy Palace alone, which right off the bat was just a stupid thing to do. I mean, I wasn’t famous, but I was on an NBC show in a big Thursday night lineup, and I just shouldn’t have been traveling by myself. I should have dragged a friend with me. Thinking cheap and convenient, I booked myself into a Days Inn a block from the Comedy Palace and headed over to the club. The guy running the club was like a Jewish goombah, with a really big, boisterous personality. The tickets were going fast because people knew me from television, so that seemed to bode well. I went onstage, and the crowd was tough. We’re talking crispy bangs, mall perms, hardcore eyeliner. That kind of crowd. They looked like they weren’t even there to laugh, but instead were waiting to be provoked.

  I did my act, stories about Andre Agassi’s house, an episode of Frontline I found particularly amusing, and I closed with an hil-a-a-arious anecdote about how I had attended the trial of a serial killer and accidentally spoke to one of the jurors. Silence. Deafening silence. My opening act, a local comedian, had killed. And now me, the headliner, was bombing badly. This was a club where the front row is three feet from you, and the bachelorette party of twelve with their cardboard tiaras weren’t having my la-di-da tennis player/PBS show/courtroom shit for one second. There was no air-conditioning, either, so I’ve got the ass-crack sweat and the flopsweat and all I can do is think, the contract says an hour and ten minutes. I don’t get paid unless I do my time, so even if I just stand there and read the phone book, I’ve got to do my contractual time.

  Meanwhile, the girls in the audience are vicious. “HEY, AW THERE ANY JOKES IN THEAH?” “YOAH NAWT EVEN FUNNY” “WHERE’S THE PAHT WHERE I STAHT LAUGHIN’?”

  After the show, however, the oddest thing happened. I was trying to slink out the side door without being noticed, like a criminal, but in fact my crispy-banged hecklers were now crowding around me. Was I gonna get jumped now? Girlfight-style? Should I have brought my shiv?

  When you’re doing clubs, it’s two shows a night, sometimes three.

  No, they were actually standing in a line. “TAKE A PICK-SHUH! TAKE A PICK-SHUH!” That was surreal, the notion that these people wanted snapshots of themselves with anybody from TV, even somebody they’d just finished razzing for giving them a shitty night out.

  The next night, I bombed again. Bombed. Not even with the same material. I changed my act as much as possible trying to figure out what they were into. You know what they were into? Heckling, and then having their photos taken. Then I had to get in a car and drive forty-five minut
es to the sister club in Saugus, which—no joke—was a Chinese restaurant that one night a week put a cardboard sign that said COMEDY PALACE in its banquet room. I’m on a riser with a microphone with another hour and ten to get through, and I am bombing. The set ends, and I go back to the Days Inn to recover and lick my wounds. But instead the phone in my room rings constantly with harassing “fans” calling me, saying, “Are you Kathy Griffin from TV?” I can’t even get a minute’s peace at the fucking Days Inn, and now I’m sobbing hysterically because I have one more night of this misery.

  To top everything off, the owner of the club calls me and says, “I want you to give some of the money back. That’s how bad you were.”

  So I head to his office, thinking, if nothing else, I am not giving any goddamn money back. And I tell him this, all while trying not to cry in front of him. I mean, I took a picture with every single person in that line after those shows.

  If you’re going to try to get my money, I thought, you better have a fucking gun, pal.

  At the time, I knew one person in Boston: Jonathan Katz, a wonderful, droll comic and writer who did the hilarious Comedy Central show Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, which featured funny recorded exchanges between Jonathan and comedians playing themselves, that were then animated. I was a giant fan of that series, and he had always wanted me to do the show, but the only way you could do it in those days was go to Boston, where Jonathan lives. Somehow I got his number, and because I desperately needed a friend, I called him. And I barely knew the guy.

  Through a wall of tears I told him what was going on. “I’m playing at this place called the Comedy Palace … [sob] … and I’m bombing every night … [sniffle] … and the guy yelled at me in his office … [sniffle, sob] … and he wants his money back … [sob, sniffle] … and I have to take pictures with people who are heckling me …”