Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (49 page)

Kathy: I do have a line. There’s still a lot of confusion.

Corey: Where is Judd Nelson these days?

Kathy: What about the ‘MTV Movie Awards?’ I have not talked to him, but he was working the press line and he’s working this kind of Beetlejuice haircut now. May I suggest this, there’s a possibility he might be drinking. May I—allegedly—be suggesting the possibility that as he drinks more, his hair gets wider. Then when it came time to go onstage, I guess he vanished. That’s a very Judd thing to do. It’s also a very Judd thing to do when he might be under the influence of an alcoholic beverage.

Corey: Are there talks of a ‘Suddenly Susan’ reunion or will that be your season finale?

Kathy: That would be great for the cameras because that would go over like a lead balloon. I’m still really good friends with Nestor Carbonell, who played Luis. I See Brooke occasionally, not as much as I’d like to, but she’s afraid if she so much as says ‘Hi’ to me it will be in my act. I see Currie Graham who was on the final season of the show and I see Judd once in a blue moon. He usually comes to the Christmas party. I’m surprised he didn’t come this year.

Corey: So a full reunion’s gonna be tough.

Kathy: Also there’s absolutely no desire for one. That would be a tough sell. We could do it in my living room or something and someone could tape with a camcorder.

Corey: Saying ‘allegedly,’ does that protect you or is what you do considered enough of a spoof or satire that you’re safe?

Kathy: I’m totally safe. I have an amazing First Amendment attorney. He’s the guy Ed Norton played in ‘Larry Flynt.’ The real guy. Alan Isaacman. He’s quite brilliant. What’s good for me is the longer I do it the more I have a precedent. I haven’t been sued yet. This whole religious right environment I’m in, are single handedly the ones who do. My entertainment attorney–I’m pretty lawyered up–was saying how it really doesn’t come from anywhere else; the religious right and that’s it.

Corey: A lot of those rights are Clay Aiken fans.

Kathy: I have had the Claymates crash my Web site once, and also I’ve gotten some Michael Jackson fan hate mail, because I like to say, ‘Michael Jackson is a big, old white lady who fucks kids.’

Corey: Those people must be busy.

Kathy: I comment on behavior. I guess Whitney Houston sent me a letter saying, ‘How dare you say I’m on crack?’ But she did just go to rehab for like the fourth time. I would never make something up out of the blue.

Corey: People are probably on their guard when you’re in the room.

Kathy: Yeah.

Corey: You’re in between publicists right now; what do you look for?

Kathy: I like when they do their job. It would be nice.

Corey: What are some specific things you like them to do for you?

Kathy: I just need someone to do the footwork. It’s not brain surgery. I need a publicist who’s proactive, not reactive. I had this woman—I got her from Brooke and she does Britney Spears and Debra Messing—and mostly what she does is she says no to things and tries to keep bad things out of the press. I need the opposite. I need someone to get me out there. I don’t care if it’s celebs with their makeup off. I don’t want someone to say, ‘Oh no, Miss Griffin would never want to be on that list.’ Yeah I do. I want to be on the list. I want to be on Stars not Normal.

Corey: Speaking of no makeup, you admit you’ve had work done. Is there anything you wouldn’t let them air on your show?

Kathy: I’m such a purist and such a diehard fan of reality, I thought, ‘You really roll the dice. What if I come off as the Omarosa of my own show?’ If they wanted to they could put in shots of my cellulite. I think I was edited totally fairly. So many moments I cringe. I like the shows where you feel like a fly on the wall.

Corey: Did you watch them all in a row?

Kathy: I didn’t want to see dailies or anything. The worst thing for me would be if I saw something and I changed my behavior. I’ll never work out again unless I’m in full hair and makeup. They would send me the rough cuts. They would send the hour-long versions that would be cut down to 50 minutes. The only notes I would give is that if it would really hurt someone. If I thought it would bother my mom and dad, I’d say cut that. By and large, I was not into cutting anything. I think it stands on its own. I’ve taken a lot of heat for being cheap and taking free stuff.

“
I remixed a remix. It was back to normal.”

A simple thought. But you didn’t think of it and neither did I. It was Mitch Hedberg, a one-of-a-kind comic whose style is so hard to describe. Just calling them “one-liners” do not do his genius justice.

Mitch was a true original and I was so pleased to discover him by accident, opening for headliners Lewis Black and Dave Attell. I never laughed so hard at a live show—and that includes performances from legends like George Carlin, Don Rickles and Chris Rock.

When it was announced on the Howard Stern show that Mitch was dead from an apparent overdose, it was a shame if not quite a shock—leaving many of us wanting one more, well, one-liner.

“
He made me laugh, which is no small feat. We will miss his extraordinarily askew vision of the world, but more importantly we will miss his presence,” Lewis Black told me after Mitch’s passing.

Spending a little time with the guy and getting to peek behind his ever-present sunglasses is something I’ll always treasure.

Corey: I saw you on the Lewis Black and Dave Attell tour, and I laughed harder at you.

Mitch: That’s nice of you to say. I just saw Attell the other night in D.C. He’s one of my favorites, but I appreciate you saying that.

Corey: I’ve had a difficult time today trying to describe how someone is funny. Trying to describe your style is very difficult.

Mitch: That’s true. When people ask me what kind of comedy I do … A radio deejay asked me the other day, ‘What do you do?’ I just had to hang up the phone, because I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. You can take some common terms from the comic description book like, observational. I think I write jokes. I think I tell jokes, basically. They’re not just made up out of the blue. Most of my jokes, like 25 percent autobiographical. But yeah, man, it’s hard to describe. That’s one of the worst things to do; that’s why you let the music do the talking, right?

Corey: I find it interesting that you have a different approach than many. You come off as kind of shy and wear the sunglasses and everything. How do you feel about the audience when you’re on stage?

Mitch: I like that they’re there and that they’re having a good time. I like that. Making eye contact with the audience is very hard for me. I’ve been trying it a lot more. I don’t want to close off to the point where people think that I don’t give a shit about the fact that they drove 20 miles and paid 35 bucks to see me. I want them to know that I care about them, because I do, but looking in the eye of the audience is always hard for me. I don’t know what that’s from, man. I think I’m gonna train myself back to doing it. Slowly cut my bangs and take one side of the eyeglasses out first, then the other side and then I’ll look in everyone’s eyes, man. It’s gonna be hard, boy.

Corey: Do you think it would easier if they were naked?

Mitch: Yeah, that’s the thing. That’s what that comes from, because if they were in their underwear, I’d think they were ridiculous so I’d have no problem looking at them.

Corey: If people listen to your CDs, they can definitely tell you pay attention, because you comment on the laughs and how (the jokes) are doing.

Mitch: That’s how I try to do it. That’s how I try to show it, man. You hit the nail on the head. To show I’m actually there, I do as much as I can to commentate on where I’m at, so they don’t think this guy is in his own book and doing his jokes and not thinking about it.

Corey: I love your material, and I would imagine it’s hard to write and also hard to memorize. How do you do that?

Mitch: Ever since I’ve had enough jokes to not have to do them in order … Up to the point where you had enough jokes, you had to do them in order usually, just so you remember them and know you’re doing them all. But now I have enough jokes where I have an overflow. If I’m doing an hour, I have some left over. I just go on there. A lot of times I just start with something I usually start with. But usually I just like to feel it out and go with what’s going on. Sometimes, you can tell.

I don’t have a lot of drug jokes, but this is most obvious representation of what I’m about to say. You do a drug joke, and you can tell the crowd isn’t gonna laugh that hard at a dumb-ass drug joke, so you say, ‘I’m not gonna do that anymore,’ and you go on to something else. I don’t have anything controversial so that’s never a problem. I just bob and weave through my act. It’s pretty scientific, yet it’s natural, too. Every now and then you can be stuck at the end, and like, ‘Shit, I did all my big laugh jokes already, and all I’ve got left are these fucking semi-obscure ones. Can you hang on one second?’

Corey: Can you talk about your writing process?

Mitch: I write my jokes in a short format. Usually I’ll come up with an idea. It’s pretty much a whole joke, but I don’t sit there and try and figure out exactly how I’m going to try and say it. I used to do that, but now I just come up with the concept, and then I write that down. Then onstage, I just try and say it. That feels much more natural. Usually the right words come out onstage, much more so than sitting in your hotel room and trying to come up with the right words.

For some reason, the stage makes the right words come out. What I do is, go onstage and I’ll do as much new material up front as possible. As soon as I get too many jokes in a row that don’t work, I’ll go back to the older stuff. If they’re on my side and things are going good, I’ll try more new stuff. It’s pretty simple. That’s it. I just like to do as much new stuff as possible. If I go onstage and do all old stuff, I’ll get too into the rut of that and be afraid to try the new shit.

Corey: What inspires your jokes?

Mitch: It’s more about just going in my head and thinking. I don’t go back too far. I’ll go back to the last 24 to 48 hours or maybe a week at the most and think about what’s happened to me and conjure up the silly moments of how things have been going. If something’s happening that’s really amazing, I’ll make sure I write it down at that moment. It’s usually more mental than visual. It’s visual at first, and then later on I just try and remember things. If you pull out a notebook while you’re out on the town with people, all they want to know is if what you’re writing down is about them. I try not to write about people too much.

Corey: What would we see if we went inside Mitch’s head?

Mitch: You’d probably see an anti-HBO sign, a big circle with a cross through it because they won’t give me a special. Other than that, I don’t know, man. I think everyone has got great jokes in their head. When I see a comedian who’s obviously emulating some other comedian, I’m like, ‘You’re fucked, man, because I know inside that head of yours you have a bunch of individual situations you can do and be funny.’ I’m scared that people will find out they can be comedians, too. If everyone’s a comic, I’m gonna have a hard time getting work. I try not to tell everyone that fact.