Official Book Club Selection

by Kathy Griffin

  There were a million things about her that were funny and outrageous, and when she’d do something bizarre in my presence, I couldn’t not talk about it. But when somebody dies that day, I’m not rubbing my hands together saying, “Oooh, a new chunk for the act!” It’s really the opposite, and in fact, I haven’t talked about her onstage since. That’s not to say there’s a steadfast rule about this kind of thing, but instinct was telling me it wasn’t funny. The first show I did after her death, which was only hours after the announcement, I started by saying, “Okay, everyone, let’s address the elephant in the room. I know you guys all want me to talk about Anna Nicole.” And there was a lot of clapping. I said, “Well, you know, I sort of knew her. We’re not going there. Okay, on to the next subject!” It was uncomfortable, and I understand why the audience would expect something hot off the presses being addressed, but I’m telling you, if I had started in on her, I would have lost that crowd two minutes in. I guarantee you people would have thought, Bummer, and then it clouds the entire show.

  So in my own way, I have boundaries.

  But really, there’s nothing I won’t talk about, and what happens is you have to know your audience, and you have to be able to read their temperature. When I started at the Groundlings, there was a steadfast rule when it came to improvising: no cancer, no AIDS. There was no way to put a funny spin on those two topics, so don’t bother even mentioning them by name or talking about them. Then when I went into stand-up, I figured the same rule applied. But it wasn’t until I started doing charity work in the gay community, meeting so many people afflicted with AIDS and hearing them tell the most filthy, disgusting, and horrible jokes about AIDS, that I realized that for them, that’s what they needed to get through it. That when you have a disease that grave, your threshold for what’s funny is probably so much higher than everyone else’s that you almost need a pushing-the-envelope type of joke to get you to laugh.

  When SNL alum Julia Sweeney’s brother Mike was dying of cancer, and then through a terrible coincidence she got cancer, too, I would call their house, and they would take turns answering the phone, “House of Cancer.” When Mike was ill, it was so important for him to laugh that he had no tolerance for small talk. He wanted to hear the most out-there jokes he could.

  I’ve mentioned my late friend Judy Toll before in the book, but when she was sick with cancer, she once said to me, “Will you come over and make fun of my illness?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “All those years you thought I was a hypochondriac, and here I am dying of cancer. But it always made me laugh. So will you come over and make fun of me?”

  “Of course, but … I don’t want to be mean.”

  “No, it won’t be mean. It’s going to make me laugh. It’s going to get me out of my head.”

  It’s held true so many times that when I meet people suffering from AIDS, they don’t want to hear a knock-knock joke. They’re in a battle, so they want the jokes to be fearless, too. I have a friend with full-blown HIV, and to this day he calls it the butt flu, and it always makes him laugh. Things like that really changed my attitude about what’s on the table and what’s off. I don’t go out of my way to do jokes about certain subjects, but I also realize that depending on the audience, I may not have to hold back.

  Consider the men and women I met when I performed for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or for those recovering from war injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Soldiers in the field are people whose lives are in danger every day. They wake up thinking there’s a 50/50 chance they could die that night. Imagine if you were in that situation. You’d need something pretty hard-core to make you laugh if you were carrying that around all day. “So the dog’s thinking …” jokes aren’t going to cut it. You have to make fun of everything: the insurgents, the officers, the location, the food, and the soldiers themselves!

  That’s why I’m just blown away when things like FanningGate happen. When you’ve been in a war zone making men and women in uniform laugh, hurt feelings in Hollywood are not high on your list of things to worry about.

  Me at Walter Reed Army Medical Center surrounded by heroes.

  Here’s that ridiculous saga:

  For the 2004–2005 awards season I was hired by E! channel to be their replacement for Joan and Melissa Rivers, who had gone on to sign an $8 million deal at TV Guide channel. In reality, E! considered me number two to Star Jones, whom everyone at the channel was excited about because she’d be able to talk about impending awards show coverage on The View. But at least they knew I’d be the funny one. Legitimately funny, that is. I was thrilled.

  I have to say, for whatever trouble I ultimately caused at the 2005 Golden Globes over Dakota Fanning, it was Star who was the pain in the ass. On The View, we’d gotten along fine, but it wasn’t until we did the red carpet coverage together that I found her to be unpleasant, humorless, and kind of a malcontent. I’d hear her being snippy with the crew, complaining that she wouldn’t rehearse for more than half an hour. And there was a hilarious diva moment during rehearsal when she and a whole posse of minions were walking by, and when I said “Hi,” she barked to her people, “We’re WALKING, we’re WALKING, we’re WALKING.”

  I, meanwhile, was just happy to be in a pretty dress and meeting celebrities. My idea for questions on the red carpet, though, was to avoid the what-are-you-wearing kind—because I’m not a fashionista—and do something sillier, more offbeat. I didn’t even want to try to do Joan’s shtick, because she’s the master of that. I don’t know designers like she does, nor do I have those relationships with stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. I wanted to see who would play along with me. Could I ask Kanye West, “What’s your favorite meal at the Olive Garden?” E! was fine with that, so I got together a couple of friends to help me come up with those kinds of absurdist questions to ask celebs on the red carpet.

  One bit I thought would be funny was to come up with some fake news that celebrities could comment on. I love those moments when some famous person is getting their fucking tonsils taken out or something, and celebrities send them special shout-outs to the camera: “Good luck with your tonsil surgery! God bless you!” Insufferable, right? Well, I wanted to start a rumor that the most unlikely celebrity you could imagine had gone to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, and then solicit those messages from celebrities right to camera. I couldn’t say Lindsay Lohan or Britney because those basket cases you’d believe. Then I thought, Of course. Dakota Fanning. Little Dakota Fanning: ten years old, angelic face, impeccably mannered, kind to a retard, er, special needs retard, or whatever, in I Am Sam. Perfect.

  When the cameras started rolling and we were live, the silly questions turned out to be really fun. People like Clive Owen and my former student/victim Mariska Hargitay (who sustained no injuries that day at the Groundlings) were great, and even the panicked reactions from celebs like Michael Chiklis and his wife, whom I asked if they were getting a hooker later for their hotel room, made for great TV. Then I started my rumor about Ms. Fanning, and every celebrity I said it to laughed. Some even added their own spin. Sean Hayes from Will & Grace said, “All I can say is, Dakota, you don’t want to go south. Uh-oh, South Dakota!” We were laughing, and I’ll admit I was pretty proud of this running bit.

  When we went off air, the people from E! said, “How do you think it went?” Which is usually the beginning of a “You’re fucking fired” conversation. But I just said, “I thought some of it worked, some of it didn’t, but overall kind of fun.”

  They said, “Okay.”

  Monday morning my attorney called. “Well, I got a call from Camp Fanning.”

  “Who’s Camp Fanning?” I said.

  “Dakota Fanning’s camp.”

  “Wait, you’re saying there’s a Camp Fanning? What do you mean, like a summer camp? You got a call from a bunch of counselors?”

  “No,” he said. “She has a movie coming out, a Steven Spielberg picture called War of the
Worlds with Tom Cruise, and they’re extremely upset. Did you say she was a drug addict?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. I said that she went to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. Why?”

  “Well, they’re upset that you said that. She’s ten years old and she has a giant blockbuster coming out, and they feel like it could affect the box office.”

  That seemed like bullshit. How was a movie with the biggest star in the world and from the biggest director in the world going to be hurt by my joke? Which was, I remind you, a joke. Nevertheless, someone from the channel called and said, “We’d like you to issue an apology.”

  I said, “Okay, here’s my statement: ‘You’d have to be a complete fucking moron to think I was serious. The end.’ How’s that?”

  “That’s not an apology,” he said.

  “Well, that’s the best I’ve got. I’m standing by it. What idiot would think I was serious about ten-year-old Dakota Fanning going to rehab? Have you seen her on Oprah? She’s so innocent-looking it’s ridiculous. She practically wears a lacy doll dress and looks like she’s going to her first Holy Communion. And by the way, I’d like some credit for not saying it was Lindsay Lohan, for once.”

  Well, the calls to my agents and attorney wouldn’t stop. Team Fanning was upset, as well as Camp Fanning, and Fanning, Ltd., and Fanning & Roebuck, and Fanning Amalgamated, and whoever the fuck were her peeps. My reaction was always, “Whatever publicity anybody wants to throw my way about how awful this is, please go ahead, because I’m super excited that this could blow up into something big.”

  And it did, because I then heard Spielberg was personally furious with me. I read in the New York Post that Spielberg’s publicist issued a statement to Page Six: “It was a very upsetting thing for a young child and her family. Obviously, to Kathy Griffin it was a joke, but why make a joke out of [Fanning]? She’s a terrific young lady who was there with her family, and it was very upsetting.”

  That “young lady” part was better than anything I could have come up with. Calling a ten-year-old a “lady”? How much would I have laughed if I was ten and everyone called me a “terrific young lady”!

  Also, I was so thrilled that somebody as powerful as Steven Spielberg knew who I was. I thought, This is great! Seriously, that was a career high. But I think this means I would not do well in a Mafia situation, because if a hit were put out on me I’d be too excited. I’d just be walking around saying, “The Gottis know my name! The Gottis know my name! Woo-hoo!” As blood came gushing out of the hole in my head.

  Well, E! didn’t fire me right away, but when it came time for me to cover the Academy Awards for them, they stuck me on what they called the “media bridge”—a bridge that hovered over the red carpet by several dozen feet, and in my case was a euphemism for “you’re not getting anywhere near those fucking celebrities”—and eventually after the Oscars I was replaced by Giuliana Rancic née DiPandi.

  But I did live off that brouhaha for quite a while. There was a funny moment at a gift suite for the Golden Globes—back when doling out free shit to famous people was respectable, and none of it was taxed—when a woman came up to me as I was getting my free under-eye cream and said, “You know, you upset Dakota Fanning so much that she couldn’t leave her bedroom for days, and she wouldn’t let anyone open the curtains.”

  I just looked at her like she was batshit. “What are you talking about?”

  She said, “She cried and cried for days in her room.”

  “Uh, I’m pretty sure you’re making that up,” I said, and walked away.

  Someone who saw all this said to me, “That’s someone from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.” The group who chooses who wins Golden Globes.

  “Well, I don’t care. I think that was someone from the Fucking Crazy Association.”

  Big deal. Spielberg won’t let me star in any of his movies, and I won’t win any Golden Globes for the Spielberg movies I’m not in. I’ll take my celebrity rehab jokes any day, thank you very much.

  And by the way, I have nothing against Dakota Fanning, who’s obviously a very gifted and talented young actress. I mean, lady. But I would like a muffin basket from all the Lohans, because it would have been so much easier to make that joke, and nobody would have flinched.

  As a side note, I’ll tell you just how vicious Hollywood really is. One of my agents actually said to me, “You know, if you had just made that joke about Haley Joel Osment or Jonathan Lipnicki, it would have been fine. Because they’re not hot anymore.”

  Ouch. Can I just say, that is way more harsh than any fucking Dakota Fanning joke I could make. That Hollywood would have given me the stamp of approval if I had just picked on a kid whose “career” had cooled instead of a kid who was behind a giant blockbuster where they could all make money, was really an eye-opener. So for the record, my apologies are to Jonathan Lipnicki and Haley Joel Osment. Stay off the smack, boys.

  Since people often ask me whether I pay the price for my offending celebrities, I will reveal that I did have an interesting run-in two years later regarding the Dakota Fanning incident. I was working in Las Vegas on a Friday night at Mandalay Bay and the next night Jerry Seinfeld was performing at Caesar’s. I wanted to go see him, so I put in the call to his people and asked if it would be possible to say hi. I was told to come by backstage before the show. Although friends had come with me on this trip, I was nervous about dragging them to see a superstar, so when it came to seeing Jerry one-on-one, I just went by myself.

  Big mistake.

  I head to Le Celine Dion lounge—I will always call it Le Celine Dion lounge, no matter who’s playing there—and see a table full of people. And at that table is, of all people, Steven “I Will Protect Dakota Fanning At All Costs” Spielberg. I walk in and it’s literally just me, and a circle of them sitting at a table eating. So I immediately head to the farthest corner of the room, like I’m a second grader in timeout, and quickly vowed to myself never to go to any Hollywood backstage area, green room, party, or even casual costume fitting alone again for the rest of my life.

  Of course, it seemed like Jerry was taking forever to come back and say hi, but he was preparing for his show, which I understood. I just kept talking to the bartender, ordering Diet Cokes and making chitchat. How was his day? Where did he live? What a nice shirt! I probably looked like a meth addict the way I was furiously babbling at him.

  My plan was, let Jerry come in and have his private conversation with Spielberg, and then the Spielberg posse will leave, and I’ll be able to say hi, and what the fuck was I thinking and this is what I fucking get and great, I have fucking ass-crack sweat now, and God, why can’t I keep my big fucking mouth shut. I’m regretting this whole thing. Really, I’m regretting my whole career at this point. I’m about to pay the piper, and his name is Steven Spielberg.

  Sure enough, Jerry comes in and he’s got his suit on, and everyone’s excited to see him. He deals with the Spielberg party first, as he should, but I knew he’d seen me. Well, it seemed like they were talking for what felt like forever. No one else was there, remember. Then, suddenly, Jerry starts to wave me over. “Kathy, come on over!” he says.

  I’m gesturing like a lunatic, “Oh no, I’m okay over here! Heh heh! This Diet Coke won’t drink itself! Heh heh! I’ll be right here! Come find me when you’re done!”

  Then he talked to the Spielberg group some more, and again he called out to me. “Kathy, come on! I know how you like celebrities! Don’t you want to meet Steven Spielberg?”

  “Oh, you guys probably want to catch up! Don’t let me … [gulp] … get in the … heh heh … way, I mean … [gulp] … I would … never want to … impose!”

  I knew Steven Spielberg knew it was me. And I knew he knew I was nervous. There had to be a part of him that was loving this.

  It got to the point where it was going to be weird if I said no anymore, so I walked over, and it was that horrible timing where the minute I approached
Jerry, Spielberg stood up and Jerry started a brand-new story. So there’s Spielberg to his right, Jerry in the middle, and me to his left, and I just kept looking at Jerry, nervously focusing on his tie so as to avoid even being in Spielberg’s line of vision. I’m sure that made me look even more normal, right? Everybody was laughing, and I was, too, but probably at all the wrong moments, looking like I was trying to join the in crowd, when I clearly had no membership qualifications, whatsoever.

  Finally, Jerry says, “Well, Kathy, this must be an exciting moment for you, because I know how much you love meeting famous people. So, Kathy Griffin, Steven Spielberg! Steven Spielberg, Kathy Griffin!”

  I just thought, Here we go. I looked at him and chuckled, trying to acknowledge that I’d been busted. “It’s so nice to meet you,” I said with a little giggle.

  He looked at me, and with a very serious tone said, “Nice to meet you, too.”

  And that was it. He wasn’t a jerk. He could have said, “You were out of line,” but instead he looked at me in a way that my dad would look at me when I came home late from a beer bash, and I don’t even drink. It was the look of someone grounding me. I felt like one of the “Peanuts” characters whenever they’re nervous and have a squiggle for a mouth. I was shaking and squiggle-smiling at the same time. And Jerry was so proud of himself, thinking he was doing me this big favor by getting me face time with Spielberg.

  Finally it was time for him to do his show, and he said, “Come with me.” He said good-bye to the Spielberg party, and then I followed him to his dressing room. We sat down and I just went off on him. “What the hell are you doing introducing me to Steven Spielberg? Don’t you know he actually issued a press statement against me? Didn’t you remember that thing where I made that joke about Dakota Fanning? How could you drag me over to make me say hi to him? Were you fucking with me? Is that it? This is so typical!”