Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians

by Corey Andrew

  Seth: There’s one that was deemed to offensive for Fox.

  Corey: What was that one about?

  Seth: It’s sort of the bigot story. It’s like a reverse Archie Bunker. Peter thinks things would be 1,000 times better if he befriends a Jewish guy. Peter gets him to do his taxes and help his kid with homework. He immerses himself in the Jewish culture thinking it will improve his life. How could that be offensive? I guess they figured just the subject matter alone was too intimidating.

  Corey: There are plenty of references in there—as funny as they may be—that could be offensive to some. Have you gotten some letters?

  Seth: We’re shielded sometimes by broadcast standards which is actually very nice of them. There’s some strange ones that come in now and then. We got one from the American Fascist Association. They were upset by the language in the show. They didn’t like the use of the word ‘bastard’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘hell.’ I dunno, maybe Hitler never swore like that.

  Corey: Apparently, he had a clean mouth. Is there a real Quahog, Rhode Island?

  Seth: No, but I spent a lot of time in Providence, which is where I went to college. Initially we had it set in Providence, and we were advised by Fox that we would be able to do a hell of a lot more if we created a fictitious town. In a real town, every ancillary character, you would have to look up and see if there’s an actual person that could potentially sue. We’ll just say they live next to Providence.

  Corey: You’ve had some real celebrities guest on the show, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell if it’s really them or someone doing an impression. Is there anyone special that you really tried to get?

  Seth: We had the entire cast of ‘Murphy Brown.’ KISS did the show. Norm MacDonald was exciting for me because I’m a huge fan of his. We had Jennifer Love Hewitt which was even more exciting. Obviously, Adam West, who became a regular, became one of the most popular characters. We would get letters: ‘More Adam West.’ He’s a very funny guy. They’re scattered throughout. Andy Dick. Dick Van Patten. Waylon Jennings, which was his last acting appearance before he passed away. Appropriately enough, it was a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ gag.

  Corey: His legacy ends with ‘The Dukes.’

  Seth: Yeah, he was great. He was very sick at the time, and he agreed to do the episode. We were very grateful for that. Wallace Shawn. Hugh Downs.

  Corey: Were these people who had seen the show and got what you were doing?

  Seth: Some of them. Some were taking a gamble, and they had just read about it. It became easier once we started getting more people because we could say, ‘Well, we got this person to do it.’ Most of the time it was playing themselves. It was pretty fun the mix of personalities that were involved with the show.

  Corey: Are there any impressions you do that you’re particularly proud of?

  Seth: We tried to get Shatner early on, for the second episode, and he said no so that was one I had to do. Here and there. I do a passable Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. I’m trying to think of obscure ones. Gosh, Mr. Sulu. More often that not we were able to get the actual person. Some times out of desperation, I would go in there and mimic them the best I could.

  Corey: The DVDs were first available overseas. What kind of following do you have?

  Seth: We’ve always been told we are big in the U.K. It’s quite a compliment because British humor is some of the best. It’s interesting some of the translations of some of the names. In France the show is just called ‘Le Griffin.’ In Korea, it’s called ‘The Shocking Family.’

  Corey: Appropriately enough. I wonder how some of the jokes translate.

  Seth: Yeah, I have no idea. Some just scare the crap out of me. There’s one in the pilot with the black woman who is selling pancakes door to door, and she’s a Jamina’s Witness. I have no idea how they could possibly translate that because it’s an English pun. I’m sure whatever they came up with is horribly offensive—not that the original isn’t!

  Roseanne Barr

  Some folks are just drawn to drama like a moth to a flamer, so it’s easy to understand why the offstage life of Roseanne Barr overshadowed her role as an entertainer.

  Sure, you could dwell on the stacks of tabloid articles, the three ex-husbands, the book about multiple personalities and familial abuse—and that unfortunate song at the ballpark forever ago.

  But…don’t forget why there was so much ink and bad TV movies and clips of the week. Roseanne—formerly Barr, Arnold, single name only like Cher and now back to Barr—is one of the funniest, groundbreaking comedians of all time. Her sitcom family, the Connors, will rival others like the Ricardos, the Bunkers and the Huxtables—and you better believe the Connors would kick all their asses at a Halloween costume contest. Or how to skate by ’til payday with only $37 in the bank.

  Now that the media frenzy has died, Barr is able to get back to doing what she does best, making people laugh as she made Johnny Carson laugh on her first, stressful “Tonight Show” appearance in the ’80s.

  Corey: How does your stand-up style compare from when you first started to what you’re doing today?

  Roseanne Barr: It’s about the same. I have my style. It’s still my style. It’s more seasoned because I’ve been doing it a long time.

  Corey: I bet the subject matter is a little different.

  Roseanne: Not all that much, no.

  Corey: Rodney Dangerfield was a big fan of yours, and you were a big fan of his. I heard you were a pallbearer at his funeral?

  Roseanne: No, I wasn’t a pallbearer, but I did speak.

  Corey: How did you first get involved working on his comedy specials?

  Roseanne: Well, he invited me.

  Corey: He had seen you perform?

  Roseanne: We were introduced, and he had heard about me from friends, you know. He liked me, which was lucky for me.

  Corey: Do you remember your first ‘Tonight Show’ visit?

  Roseanne: Oh yeah, it was very exciting, very exciting.

  Corey: Did you get called over to the couch that first time?

  Roseanne: I did, and I ran the hell out of there. I had no idea; I was just not prepared.

  Corey: It was intimidating?

  Roseanne: Oh, yeah. I was on there a second time, and the guy goes, ‘Make sure you watch Johnny this time, and if he motions you over there, you’re gonna have to go over there.’ I’m like, ‘OK, I get it.’ So he did, and I left; I ran. I just panicked. Then they came to the dressing room to get me, and I was trying to get my clothes on and get out of there. They go, ‘Johnny wants you. Johnny wants you to come out there.’ I couldn’t get out. OK, so I had to go out. As I knew would happen, I had nothing to say, and I just sat there like a blithering idiot. He made me look good, though.

  Corey: Was he nice to you off camera?

  Roseanne: So nice, so nice.

  Corey: I’ve heard a lot of people say that’s the moment they knew they made it in show business.

  Roseanne: Absolutely.

  Corey: How does that performance compare to the first time you ever got on stage and told jokes?

  Roseanne: What, ‘The Tonight Show?’ Are you shitting me with that? It was more exciting to be on ‘The Tonight Show’ than anything ever. That’s why I went through all the crap I went through; kept getting onstage even thought they hated my guts. I wanted to learn it. I wanted to be on ‘The Tonight Show’ with Johnny. So when I got there, it was every dream I ever had come true.

  Corey: Do you use notes now, or how do you get ready for a show?

  Roseanne: I use notes because I’m old, and every so often I have to look at them, not too much. I just get up there and let it rip.

  Corey: There’s not a set format?

  Roseanne: No, it’s a show. It’s a set format, written show.

  Corey: Does this particular show have a title?

  Roseanne: The title I’m having trouble with. I’ve changed it about 75 times. It was, ‘Let the Healing Begin,’ just because I hate people who say, ‘
Let the healing begin.’ I hate Dr. Phil. He keeps saying crap like that so I just named it that because my act is a celebration of the end of the world. That’s why I named it, ‘Let the Healing Begin.’ Every week it has a different name. I was calling it ‘The Gay Tour.’ I was calling it ‘Kiss My Ass.’ You know, ‘Menopause,’ that was taken. I don’t know, ‘Bitter Old Woman,’ ‘Fat Old Jew,’ ‘Bitter Old Fat Jewish Woman.’ (laughs) I don’t know.

  Corey: Was menopause a dirty word for you when it started hitting?

  Roseanne: You mean personally?

  Corey: Yeah.

  Roseanne: I knew it was gonna happen. I was prepared for a lot of things, like I knew I was gonna get emotional and paranoid and grow a beard. I was prepared for that, but I was not prepared for some parts of it such as the fact that you lose your sex drive. I thought it was just because I was married, but no, it’s a symptom of menopause. These are my jokes.

  Corey: My stepdad likes to say that. My mother is going through that right now, and that’s a symptom I didn’t know about or want to hear about.

  Roseanne: It’s a good one, though. It’s awesome to stop worrying about being hot so someone will have sex with you. That’s what’s ruining the world is people’s obsession with sex. I’m glad that I’m saying that.

  Corey: Does it make it difficult to date now?

  Roseanne: Date, are you kidding me? I don’t date.

  Corey: You don’t have a boyfriend?

  Roseanne: I do, as a matter of fact, but he’s old, too. He’s old, thank God.

  Corey: If you go out on Saturday night, you don’t call it a date?

  Roseanne: We don’t go out. We’re those two old Jewish people who go on screaming about socialism, like in Woody Allen movies.

  Corey: I am a big fan of the Halloween episodes of ‘Roseanne’.

  Roseanne: Oh God, do I miss those! I’m talking to people about doing something Halloween-ish. They were the most fun things—my favorite part of the whole show.

  Corey: Do you still get into the spirit of the holiday even though you’re not doing the show?

  Roseanne: Halloween? Oh yeah, it’s right around my birthday so I’ve always been a Halloween fanatic.

  Corey: When do you pick out a costume?

  Roseanne: I start thinking about it pretty early.

  Corey: Are you narrowing it down already?

  Roseanne: I think my and my boyfriend are going to go as penguins because we loved that movie (‘March of the Penguins’). Did you see that movie?

  Corey: That was a great documentary.

  Roseanne: If we could make it to a Halloween party, we would just stand in the corner, passing an egg back and forth on our feet. That’s kind of what I’m thinking this year. But I’ll probably do what I do every year which is be with kids. That’s real fun. My grandkids and my son, we do those kinds of things.

  Corey: Do they get all dressed up, too?

  Roseanne: We all wear costumes, definitely. It’s probably like the most important religious holiday in our family. Last year, my son-in-law, he started like four months before Halloween, gathering pallets out of trash and he built a pirate ship in his front yard which we filmed. It was a work of art. It was a real pirate ship. He had cannons that actually fired and sails. And it was all made out of discarded trash because our family is creative and crazy. The block was lined up for like two weeks bumper to bumper. People could not believe it. We were all dressed up like pirates and stuff.

  We used to say, the Connor family, the reason why they didn’t have any money was because they spent it all on Halloween. We’re actually not that poor. We’d say, me and John Goodman, ‘Well kids, this year it’s either college or Halloween.’ And they’d go, ‘Halloween, of course.’ Yeah, the Connors. It was fun.

  Corey: On the scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the kissing ability of Mariel Hemmingway?

  Roseanne: Geez, that’s something I haven’t thought about for a long time. I just saw that she’s got a book out at the bookstore I was at today. She’s nice. The kissing ability? That’s one thing that bugs me about actors, they just want to have an excuse to make out with people, but the real thing is you’re just pretending you’re kissing. So I was just pretending I was kissing her. Compared to the real world, there was no reality in it, so I don’t think it stacks up with anything.

  Corey: Something I always appreciated was you were never afraid to shy away from gay subject matter and characters. Was that hard to get on ABC at the time?

  Roseanne: Oh yeah. That show in particular, they said they weren’t gonna air. Then I’m just gonna get huger press about it. You’d probably be doing yourself a favor to not make a big deal about it or else it will be everywhere. There was a guy who worked there who I actually liked, and he made some right decisions now and again, and I think that was a good one to let it go. They didn’t want me to have Halloween either. They said the Bible Belt doesn’t like Halloween. To think that my show was one of the first shows that had a Halloween theme was pretty freaky. I just did it because they told me people from the Bible Belt wouldn’t like it. Whatever they tell me not to do, or did, I’m not so much like that now, because I’m old. But I was just so full of bitterness. If they’d tell me I couldn’t do something, I did it.

  Corey: Did you get any personal feedback from people in the Bible Belt?

  Roseanne: It’s just what Hollywood thought. There aren’t any real people like that. There aren’t any real people who don’t like Halloween. It’s just a bunch of crap; they just make stuff up.

  Corey: When you did the last episode, why did you decide to make your sister, Jackie, gay?

  Roseanne: Because it was based on my life, and my sister’s gay, and so is my brother. I went into television because I thought it would be cool to see someone tell something truthful about their lives. I had a lot of gay people in my family, and I just wanted to push that point because it’s true.

  Corey: Why don’t we see families like the Connors on TV anymore?

  Roseanne: Because they’re working class, and there are no more working class people in this country, let alone on TV. It’s a class that has been literally crushed to death, and that’s the truth.

  Corey: It’s sad because now, they would probably class Roseanne in as a housewife even though she worked job after job after job. There aren’t men and women that can stay home. They all work and have to raise the kids at the same time.

  Rosanne: You used to be able to afford a house and put away money for your kids’ college education. Well, you can’t do that anymore. It’s not possible and that’s another sitting-idle-while-Rome-burns thing that’s going on.

  Corey: Looking back, do you have a favorite Becky?

  Roseanne: They just both did great. I just love Sarah Chalke. First of all, my favorite, I chose Lecy Gorenson to play Becky from the start, and she was real sassy; I always liked her. Then when Sarah Chalke came in and took over, that is so hard to come in and take over. I just have a lot of admiration for her, too; both of them. They’re both really cool young women. And to see them now, and Michael (Fishman), too, who played the son. He’s got two kids; that’s crazy. I kind of think of them fondly almost like they’re in my family.

  Corey: Sure, because they spent a lot of their formative years around you a lot. Do you feel like you had a parental influence on them?

  Roseanne: Yeah, they say that. That’s nice. Thank God they’re not out robbing and shooting. I tried to help them stay grounded. I tried to help the kids on the show know it was just a bullshit job and didn’t mean anything personal.

  Corey: When do you feel the show was at its absolute best?

  Roseanne: That’s real subjective. It was good a lot. We did a lot of different things with that show. There were a lot of things I enjoyed doing.

  Corey: When people say something about Roseanne Barr and singing they automatically go to the baseball thing, so I think it’s cool that you made a kids’ album. Is this a ‘grandma’ thing you wanted to
do?

  Roseanne: It was a grandma thing, and it was prompted by—as I say—the unfortunate singing accident. It was a huge, huge impact on my life. My kids saw on the Internet that I was voted the worst singer that ever lived. That made me sad because my whole life I’ve liked singing. I knew there was no way around it because that’s how it’s always going to be. Then I thought, ‘Hey, what would it be like to be the world’s worst singer that got better?’ Because I don’t want to leave something negative like that behind. It’s kind of cool, I can be the world’s worst singer who got better, and I put a lot of time into actually getting better. And I did, and I’m proud of it, and I didn’t let it kill me.

  Paul Mooney