Roseannearchy

by Roseanne Barr

  Roger had already offered $1,000,000 to Monica Lewinsky to be interviewed on my talk show, yet she chose to go on Barbara Walters’s show for free. (I am sure Barbara’s evil minions pulled their evil strings to get that one away from me, too, and I will bet my hat Monica wishes she had that million bucks now.) Unlike old Babs, who is well over one hundred years of age now, at least I knew what a blow job was, and had some common ground with Miss Lewinsky on that topic, as well as on being a fat, Jewish girl who knows how to rock a beret. (I used to be known for my berets back in the day.) I was over the moon that Bill Clinton went for a fat, Jewish chick; it really, really helped my self-esteem, I am not ashamed to admit!

  I got to have dinner with Bill at a Barbara Boxer benefit right after the whole Monica thing went down. (Man, the scams these politicians run could fill volumes.) With the scratches still across his cheek, where Hillary tore a piece out of his ass for all the world to see, Bill got up and said, “Good evening. Thank you for coming tonight. Hillary, my wife, is the smartest woman I have ever met in my life, and she said . . .” Blah, blah, something, something. . . . He had me, though. I mean, I liked him before and wanted to like him now more than ever, that red-hot devil, that Bill uh-huh Clinton. I got to take a picture with him ‘cause I paid the twenty-five grand. I wish he had turned to me and said, “Hey, Roseanne, thank you so much for getting me elected. That one episode where Roseanne Connor tells the audience that it is time for a ‘change’ in the White House—I really believe you helped get me elected and I owe you big-time. If there is any way I can ever repay you, you let me know, sugar, ‘cause I will so be there. Here’s my number. Wear a beret.”

  But no, he didn’t, because he is too damn dumb. Oh well. Bill, call me! Fart! I mean, wink! (“Old age has you farting when you want to be winking.”—Roseanne Barr, 2009. I am putting my name on that, trademarking it forever. I do not put my name on everything, but now I wish that I had, so I could sue every mother-fucking thief I have ever met in Hollywood. DO NOT even get me started bitching at Rosie O’Donnell about trying to trademark the name Rosie.)

  Despite my admiration for Bill and my affinity with Monica, I didn’t get to interview her. And the King World and network powers-that-be were not happy with my talk show rating, which was 3.2, so they replaced my show with programs that never got more than a score of 0.1. Go figure.

  I was depressed about it and still am, honestly. It was so much fun to get into trouble every day. The memory of the Seattle and Mississippi affiliates refusing to run the show one day because I came to work wearing a teddy in protest of all the women on TV who were half-naked all the time still cracks me up. Even though it was extremely difficult to do a serious talk show when the studio audience was being bussed in from suburban mental hospitals and rehab centers, or paid fifteen dollars a day to leave their sidewalk perches as homeless people and feign amusement in a show where young actresses talked about the pressure they felt to stay thin so they could make millions of dollars wearing teddies on TV’s prime time, I still loved it.

  Right after that, I got cut from a David Spade movie. I know what you’re thinking: How does one get cut from a David Spade movie? You either suck worse than anyone can mortally imagine or you were actually funny or something.

  I’d gotten the part after running into Adam Sandler at the Four Seasons one night. He came over to my table to say hi, and then he said, “I really want to say thank you for helping me out when you hosted SNL and telling Lorne that you thought I was really funny.” I said, “Thanks for telling me that—and, hey, why don’t you write me a part in one of your movies sometime?” He said he would, and within about six weeks a script came. It was for me to play the part of David Spade’s mom in the triumphant film Joe Dirt. Basically, it was exactly like every other disappointing role that anyone from SNL, including Lorne Michaels, ever came up with for me to play. They have all pitched me the idea of playing some variety of a slovenly and desperately repulsive slut, which, as actors say, is too close to home for me to have the emotional distance that an actor requires in creating a character. (Actors talk endlessly about this and it’s complete bullshit. Acting is pretending and lying convincingly, which are both things that actors in real life are extremely good at doing.)

  The only person I ever met in Hollywood who could sit and jaw with me about what complete bullshit acting and actors are, and make me laugh, was Heath Ledger. I enjoyed an evening drinking with him on a veranda at a Hollywood party one night. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about how acting is just pretending, like a kid playing dress-up. We talked about how we thought it was coolest of all to act like you aren’t acting, and to leave in all the mistakes to make it look real. We talked at length about how phony everyone acts around you when you are famous. We impersonated assholes at the party and made fun of them. We talked about how everything sucked in Hollywood, except the performing part.

  He was delightful and soulful and had lots of interesting things to say, and he became my favorite young actor. I was more surprised by his acting talent in each movie he made. His Joker in Batman was the best acting I have ever seen; the details he added to that character were just stupendous. (I really identify with his Joker character, too. Comics, or jokers, can be dark forces that expose the supposed good guy’s evil underbelly—at least the good ones do.)

  Having the opportunity to shoot the breeze with people you admire is one of the perks of showbiz. I used to meet a lot of stars—I once met Gregory Peck at a 7-Eleven and we traded autographs; another time, I met Barbra Streisand, and I have never recovered from the awesome majesty of that encounter. But the one who really blew my mind was Bob Dylan. I got to talk to him about the number five for a long time—he has the five thing, too! We also talked about Joe Hill, a union organizer killed in my home-town.

  Once, I met Harry Belafonte, whom my mother had been madly in love with, and that was a thrill. Now I am madly in love with him, too. He really is gorgeous. But he made me mad when he refused to be on my Hanukkah special for The Roseanne Show. I literally could not find one Jewish person in Hollywood to be on it. Every Jew said no, except for Neil Diamond, and he said he would only come on if he could sing a Christmas song about Jesus. I did like the idea, but, Christ, come on! It was a Hanukkah special, for chrissakes! I found out that a lot of people in Hollywood liked me when they thought that I was interested in hearing their tired old stories and coming to their tired old parties to hear the tired old stories of other tired old stars. Of course, I was not in the least bit interested in any of it, as I only want to be surrounded by fawning sycophants—let’s get that straight.

  Anyway, I called Adam Sandler about the part he had written for me, wanting to say, “I wanted to be in one of your movies, not fucking Spade’s,” but Adam was producing Spade’s movie and that seemed rude. So I asked if I could get a rewrite on the part, and he said, “Of course, just talk to the writer.” The writer I had to talk to was named Fred, and I not only gave him his first job as a television writer, I personally went to Lorne Michaels and recommended him for SNL, so I figured he would be only too happy to help me out with a nice rewrite.

  I was quite wrong about that. The rewrite came and it was worse than the first version, a tactic I found common to almost all male writers whose genius I had the audacity to second-guess. It was as if they wanted to punish me for not falling over in praise of the self-abasement they wanted me to portray as their muse, or something.

  The writers I have met in TV are very juvenile, and they all hate women. The only women they can bear to write into their shitty little scripts are vacuous models, whom they hope to bed in their sad, still adolescent, sexual fantasies, but never really do—unless they become directors, that is. But I kid the writers! I hired a couple of them for one of their first show business jobs; they were quite good and have gone on to be very successful. The two who come to mind are Judd Apatow and Joss Whedon.

  After I discussed the revised script for Joe Dirt with the female d
irector, she assured me that she would get a rewrite from Fred, that she knew how to handle male writers and so on. When Fred refused to change the script to accommodate me, or even to allow me to rewrite it, the director said that I could ad-lib some lines that were not as sexually debasing as what was on the page in a scene with the actor who was portraying my husband, the amazing Mr. Gary Busey. Gary, thinking he was free of the confines of the script, did not really understand what “ad-lib some character lines” meant, and in every take he portrayed a different character altogether, including a six-year-old child.

  I wanted to walk off the set and just quit, but feeling I owed more to Adam and to David, just out of mutual respect for being comics and casual friends, I pulled David Spade aside to tell him how difficult things were for me. He put on that actor face that actors use when they pretend they know how to summon “The Method” and “embody their character,” as if to say, “If only you would stop your constant whining, which is preventing great art from being created around you.”

  Shortly thereafter, the director called to apologize for having to cut me out of the movie.

  I never got the chance to thank Adam for his gracious repayment of a favor. That experience made me decide never to get involved with movies or movie actors or movie producers or publicists again, no matter how much I wanted to act.

  Buck liked Joe Dirt, though, and repeated lines from it for a while. He thought I was a large loser for not being featured in the total entertainment experience that was David Spade’s last movie. And I hated myself for being depressed over the whole thing. Personally, I think David Spade is a leading man, and that he could oust George Clooney. I should get busy and write him a part someday!

  The best comic from SNL, the one I loved best, was Chris Farley, who was the greatest thing to happen to that show and to David Spade. My husband and I tried all we could to help him get sober and take care of himself. My son Jake was Buck’s age when Chris used to come over and be entertaining and hilarious. My son Jake is hilarious, too, and was profoundly influenced by Chris’s genius. Chris was even more obsessive-compulsive about food and germs than I was. He demonstrated for me once how he had to touch his tongue to every piece of furniture in the room before he could go on stage to perform. I loved that; it made me feel completely normal and calm.

  When we saw that Chris could not stay sober, I asked Lorne Michaels to kick him off the show, because I knew that SNL was the only thing he really cared about and that losing it would make him take inventory and seriously get off dope. I knew from my own experience with others close to me that coming down hard on addicts can help them, and I felt that tough love would also work for Chris—and I loved Chris. Lorne refused to use him for a couple of weeks, and when it looked like Chris had sobered up, he let him come back. I wish the banishment had gone on a little longer, but maybe even that wouldn’t have worked.

  Performers are selfish, lying babies who must be appeased at every turn. When they are really, really good at what they do, they get away with murder, and then they murder themselves.

  The time did indeed arrive when I had to deal with my addiction to marijuana. And I dealt with it by getting a legal prescription for cannabis that helps me deal with that addiction, which is a medical condition. Oh, and yes, I am my own grandma.

  Thanks to the “rehab” treatment for my addiction, and also to the money I made from doing the Roseanne show, I can now blissfully retire from giving a shit about showbiz or anything else anymore—except my family, writing jokes, planting more snacks on my Hawaiian nut farm, and, of course, waging my psychic war on the pigs there.

  Chapter 17

  Pig Politics

  When I was a little girl I had a collection of pigs that I added to whenever I could. I was always trying to make friends with the whole notion of pigs, since my Orthodox Jewish grandmother said they were cursed, and also because I was called a fat pig frequently at school by those who saw little fat girls as targets on which to project their well-deserved lack of self-esteem. But I thought pigs were kind of cute! At one point, I had about a hundred little piggy knickknacks and dolls. When I became a huge international sex symbol, many of my adoring fans sent me a ton of little piggy favors that they had either hand made or bought for me.

  After a while, I felt buried alive in all of those pigs, so I stopped collecting them and started collecting thimbles, teacups, dolls, antique fire hats, and alcohol-advertising posters and buttons instead. Buried alive in those collections, I bought the house next door to mine and started to collect other things, like spoons, crystal vases, glass fruit, cupboards, paperweights, and silver picture frames. By the time that house was full, I was old and moved to a macadamia nut farm in Hawaii.

  The first thing I noticed the day I got the keys and drove up to my new little cottage on the Big Island was a bunch of big fat pigs standing around in my yard, looking straight at me. They continued to look at me as they went about having sex in full view of me, my boyfriend, Johnny, and their own little piglets.

  I was completely offended by the repeat display that took place right in front of my window, and ran outside and screamed, “Get out!” I watched them scatter only to return later on to continue rutting in my yard. At this time, I forgot to mention, I was somewhat “Kabbalah crazy,” as we in the spiritual survivor trade like to call it. It’s when you first realize that you can think your way to happiness, health, and wealth, and it works for a while. Unfortunately, what follows is bankruptcy and divorce, because there is always a backswing to everything. Every so often, the high comes back around, but you eventually have to learn to weave your way through the highs and the lows by staying in the middle, where it’s safest for old women and religious hysterics to stay.

  Anyway, with all my mystical knowledge, I thought I would try to communicate honestly and directly with a real live pig, as I had always heard they were as intelligent as dogs. I could communicate with dogs in a rudimentary fashion, but I bonded big-time with a horse named Buddy once in Iowa, and it was pretty spiritual and otherworldly. Buddy would patiently parade my ass around, but when he was done, he was done, and we were going home, back to the barn, and with no arguments! Once, to show that he did not agree with my attempt to prevent his return to his stall in the cozy barn, he walked over to a pool of mud, slowly lowered us into it, and then rolled onto his side and made horse-shaped mud angels, as I slithered out from under him, caked with wet, dirty mud myself. I respected Buddy and never tried to pull rank or do him wrong again. I simply gave in to his will and we got along famously after that.

  Also, I hate cats, and whenever I see one, I have to use my mental telepathy to tell it to stay the hell away from me. They always try to get next to me, too. They are attracted to fear. They like to mock it, too. I have found that the best way to keep cats away from me is to pretend that I am overly interested in them, and then they will flee.

  So I figured that I had enough of an animal mind-reading résumé to let the pigs know that I was equal to the task of being their worthy opponent, their landlord, and their ultimate queen. It made sense to me that pigs were my karma and dharma.

  Drinking a lot, and planting and picking and thinking a lot, too, Johnny and I came to a nonviolent solution to the “pig problem.” We fenced the forty-eight acres, and graciously left a few choice nut-tree-filled acres on the other side of the fence for their perusal and pleasure. Indeed, I also left the rest of the entire island of Hawaii for pigs to roam at their whim. I figured that if I left them enough room on their side, they would leave me alone on my side. I thought I had found the perfect, nature-based metaphysical formula for preferential pig–human relations. But no! After two years, I realized that they were only pretending to peacefully coexist with me. They resumed digging under the fence just when I thought we had reached a two-state solution. I mended the holes, refilled the dirt, cut up fallen trees, and plugged them in there only to find that the pigs would begin a new terrorist campaign two or three feet from the last repai
red part of the fence. They wanted me to see that they had less than no desire to recognize my right to exist as a sovereign entity.

  Increasingly frustrated, I took my little grandsons to the fence and told them to pee on top of the logs and around the perimeter. Then Johnny and I got drunk and peed on the places where my little grandsons had previously marked their territory, and then we sprayed ammonia on top of all of that, too. The pigs refused to stop coming for my nuts! I had hexed and peed to the extent of my powers to try to get the message through to them that they have enough on their own side. Yet they remained blissfully unaware of how nature worked. They had unmitigated gall and no sense whatsoever of other beings’ boundaries! They overran my orchard, rooted out my lawn, and rubbed mud holes into my garden. One of the bastards took a dump right on my front porch!

  That’s when it hit me: They are Repiglicans! The flaw in their intelligent design is that they never learn their lesson, ever, and they breed like crazy, having their babies about every four months. The babies can get through any fence at all, I noticed. If nature is so smart, then why don’t Repiglican mothers know when their piggery is putting their young at risk? Why don’t they stop breeding for lack of food and water? Their inability to control their seed is vexing to me. Don’t they have a desire to survive? Why do they have such elemental cognitive errors in their instinctive senses?

  I realized that I was going to have to accept and initiate the “final solution” and execute some of these elitist swine. Granny—thinking, Don’t tread on me!—went to the police station and registered for a rifle so as to engage in battle with these disrespectful pigfolk! I was proud to live in a country where I can bear arms against intruders who never get enough of anything and shoot them right between their little raisin eyes. But I told some Hawaiians of my plans to do so, and they got all upset with me. The Hawaiians think it is impossibly haole to use firearms against pigs, and insisted that their ways were The Way of doing things. So I relented and agreed to let them do what they have done for eons.