Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (48 page)

Corey: Is the ever a time when all four kitchens are in use?

Kathy: That hasn’t happened yet, not even during the Christmas party—I mean the Toys for Tots party. They kept telling me I couldn’t call it the Christmas party because they didn’t want people to know what season it was. But there’s a Christmas tree which normally doesn’t happen in May. I don’t cook at all, but the main kitchen is always busy because that’s a gathering place. People love to gather there. Even if we’re just gathered around a box of Krispie Kremes we like to gather in the kitchen. Like tonight, we’re having a lasagna and garlic bread party. It’s a good mix, a few of the gays are coming over, Jane Wiedlin from The GoGo’s is coming over, some of my old Groundling friends are coming over and we’re just going to get a huge pan of lasagna and garlic bread and have at it. We’re pretty wild.

Corey: Have you always been a ‘big’ dog person?

Kathy: I love them like they’re people. I’ve never had a dog and then I was supposed to get a cat, because I travel so much. But I’m so freakin’ allergic, so I ended up with Captain, the brown dog, first. It’s funny because on some of the message boards they call Captain the old dog, but he’s really a year younger than Chance, the blond dog. I do like the dogs because I like that they are security dogs. Anytime someone walks past the house, they go ape-shit.

Corey: I’m not a little dog person. I don’t like the yippy.

Kathy: No, and I don’t feel the need to carry a dog in my purse. I think that they should be here guarding the house, which is really what they like to do. They sit out on the balcony like that’s their post.

Corey: When you do these award shows, they talk about the gift bags. What’s the best thing you’ve gotten?

Kathy: I’ve gotten some good things. One of the things I got from the American Music Awards was a certificate for one of those really big Sharper Image massage chairs. It’s always a big hit at parties. One by one the relatives will go down there and get in the massage chair. It’s also in a room I call the relaxation room, so it’s a good room to get away from drunken relatives. That was a good one.

Corey: What’s the worst thing?

Kathy: There’s so many bad ones. What cracks me up is you’ll get a gift bag and there will be so many good things in there, like maybe a cute T-shirt or belt and then somebody will give you a printed coaster. ‘Oh, thanks, the other guy gave me shoes.’ So even like a drink stirrer or a book of matches. ‘Oh, thanks, I can get this from the gas station.’ I’m doing the Emmy’s for E! again this year. Not only am I not on the red carpet …

Corey: Are you in a helicopter?

Kathy: Not only am I not on the red carpet, I’m in the booth. What booth? It’s me and Giuliana Rancic, the news girl. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was nowhere near the red carpet. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhere in the parking lot. ‘Why don’t you guys just bring a camera to my house? I could sit here in my PJs and won’t have to do the dress thing. I’ll just make funny comments from my living room.’ I won’t be surprised if that’s next.

Corey: I was a little surprised when I saw the Jay Leno episode. How do you get banned from Ellen and Letterman, those shows?

Kathy: Let’s just say one way you get it banned is putting it on your Bravo show. I would be very surprised if I did ‘The Tonight Show’ again, but I did do it again before it aired. After the incident where Jay and I had the crying fight, I weaseled my way back in there for one more hurrah. I would be shocked if I got to go on again. I would be shocked if I got on ‘The View’ again. Those girls are so weird; they don’t watch anything. People get mad. Brooke Shields will get mad about something I say in my act and then when she sees it, she’ll say, ‘No, that’s not bad.’ People love to do that—Kathy said this about you.

Here’s my deal, with Letterman, I went on once during ‘Suddenly Susan.’ I’m a huge fan of his and I swore on the show and Dave was teasing me about it. I got back to my hotel and there was a note from the booker of the show: ‘You were great; you were so prepared. Dave didn’t have to do anything.’ And then I could never get booked again. Letterman hasn’t said I’m out and out banned, but that was 1998.

Then, for Ellen, I tried to get on for my first Bravo special and couldn’t get on. Then I think I tried to get on for ‘Average Joe’ and couldn’t. I thought this is weird. When Ellen first started the show was struggling a little bit. It wasn’t Justin Timberlake the first week. Finally my publicist at the time said, ‘What’s the deal? You guys keep acting like if we’re trying to book Kathy two months in advance, you’re booked up.’ Finally the booker for the Ellen show said, ‘I don’t know what it is but it’s coming from Ellen personally.’ It’s not gonna happen. Ever. Which crushes me because I’m a huge fan of hers and an admirer of hers. I’ve known her very casually for a while. I don’t have her phone number but I had dinner with her one time and run into her at many events.

My inclination is, since my act is making fun of celebrities and she’s so warm and fuzzy with celebrities, what if I come on and do 10 minutes of making fun of somebody and three days later they’re a guest or something. I don’t know.

Corey: I know you follow the tabloids and I read Entertainment Weekly religiously. A few weeks ago they had their in and out thing and had Sarah Silverman in, Kathy Griffin five minutes ago and Margaret Cho out. What happened there?

Kathy: Matt turns to me and says, ‘At least you’re not out.’ I thought, ‘That’s life on the D-List.’ Yeah, I’m not out. When you’re on the D-List, you’ve got to spin everything. I will say EW is particularly bitchy because in one three-month period, they had me on their It list, their hot list. Then three months later they actually had an article about how I was one of the eight most annoying people on television. Wait a minute, I was one of the It people. I just expect it from EW.

Corey: Last week you were one of the quotes of the week.

Kathy: I was one of the quotes. Then one time I was one of the things to watch but it was a negative thing. Oh cool, I’m in the highlights box. It was like, ‘If you want to watch Kathy Griffin try to be funny.’ Which is what I do, I try to be funny and therefore, I’m a highlight.

Corey: I notice you don’t have a lot of merchandise. Where are the Kathy T-shirts?

Kathy: I had to fire my director of sales. I’m gonna have to have another staff meeting with Matt in bed tonight because I feel like something’s missing; I don’t know what it is. I have gotten so many e-mails from gay guys who are like, ‘Girl, I’m gonna sell the shit out of that stuff. You call me next time you’re in Phoenix,’ or whatever. The merch thing doesn’t seem to work that well. I just started this year with my DVDs. What I didn’t know was when you play classy venues, I don’t know if clubs do it, but if you play theatres, they take a percentage. And a lot of places, they’ll take 40 percent.

Now that I’m fortunate enough to not play clubs, but play 1,000-seat theatres, I didn’t know that whole scam. I have to buy the DVDs from the distributor. I love when people call from a charity event and say, ‘Would you mind sending over 50 DVDs and we’ll pass them out?’ ‘Not unless you’re paying me 10 bucks a piece.’ That’s what I pay for them. It costs me 10 bucks a piece, I sell them for $20. Then I have to ship them and then I have to turn around and put my marriage in jeopardy by having Matt sell them. Then I have to turn around and give the venue 40 percent—not really worth it. It’s not like I’m selling a million T-shirts. I will admit this to you, three nights ago—you can’t hold this against me—the gays and I went to see Backstreet Boys and I loved them. They sold so much merchandise it was ridiculous. That’s the way to do it because even if you have to give the venue 40 percent, they set up the booth and have their people sell it. The T-shirts are like $75.

Corey: That’s what Margaret Cho does. You go to her Web site and the T-shirts are like $20 but at the concert they’re $30 and that’s probably why.

Kathy: She doesn’t actually go out and sign stuff, right?

Corey: No.

Kathy: That’s how money she is. If I’m not signing I’m not selling. The reason I sold all the DVDs last time was because I sat there and signed them. In Morristown, I sold like 10.

Corey: We just went to a meet and greet with Brian Wilson the other night. You know how when you see the people who are in assisted living and there are helper people with them, like, ‘Eat your French fries.’ That’s what it was like.

Kathy: Did you watch the first episode of my show where I bombed with the Warren Beatty thing? The musical act was Brian Wilson. There’s actually a shot of his back at one point where I try to shake his hand and he doesn’t even see me. His people wouldn’t let our crew cover anything so we kept calling it a ‘Brian Wilson-free zone.’ There were moments where Matt and I were alone in the green room with him and we were saying, ‘What do we do?’ He was either staring off into space or would doze off like a narcoleptic. He has all of his lyrics on teleprompter. And yet I loved his show.

Corey: As soon as the show was over he got up and walked off the stage like a robot.

Kathy: It’s crazy. He doesn’t even really do a bow. He doesn’t do any patter, right?

Corey: He said, ‘Nice to be here,’ but didn’t even sound like a person talking.

Kathy: It was so weird being around him that night. The back-up people are so used to it. They don’t even act like, ‘What’s with the crazy guy?’

Corey: Switching gears, where did the big, gay following come from?

Kathy: It’s from hanging out with gay guys. I probably didn’t notice it until high school. It was like the cliché. When you’re in the drama clique, it’s a bunch of girls and a bunch of gay guys, and there’s a few un-decideds. I always connected with gay people and we truly have a lot of common interests. I respect the struggle. I respect how gay people are so organized and often mobilize. I often say to my girlfriends, ‘Women have to stick together the way gay people do, because that’s the only way any minority will move forward.’ And I get frustrated with the black community if they hate the Hispanic community. No, the way for you guys to have any movement is for you guys to get together and fight the white guys on the Supreme Court who don’t know anything about your experience.

I’m not really pandering here but the Supreme Court doesn’t have one gay member but yet they’re going to decide about gay marriage in the way that they should have no say in a woman’s right to choose. I feel like what’s going on in this country where we keep letting the middle-aged, doughy-looking white guys make the decisions for the country, the majority of which is not doughy and white. That just keeps blowing my mind.

Corey: I’m a little doughy these days.

Kathy: You’ll have to join the bears. I respect that so much about the gay community and I just love the whole getting it together, mobilizing. I love how the community addresses its own problems like attacking the crystal meth problem. That’s to be admired. Also it’s a tried and true method of here’s how you make progress.

Corey: What was Kathy like in high school?

Kathy: I was uber-nerd. I was super skinny, freckly. Here’s who I wanted to be. I wanted to be Barbara Siegel. Remember Barbara Siegel, who used to be Barbara Hershey? I basically wanted to look like one of the Manson girls. If I could just have long, straight brown hair that parted in the middle—preferably a little stringy—and a peasant dress, I could be popular. Unfortunately, I was always a big mouth and always tried to make people laugh. When you’re in high school that’s really not what guys are into. There are guys who want to go out with a girl who’s a riot, except they’re ga-ay guys. Honestly, that’s another reason I hung out with gay guys a lot, because they really couldn’t give a shit what I looked like if I had boobs or not. They thought there was nothing better than hanging out with the girl that was fun and they could laugh with and to this day, that’s my MO.

Corey: When people do recognize you on the street what do they come up and say?

Kathy: It’s the same, Kathy Griffith (or) Kathy Lee Gifford. I was doing an interview the other day and this guy wanted to know all about ‘Newsradio,’ and I was like, ‘Don’t you have like a paragraph bio in front of you?’ My favorite thing now is people don’t know which reality show I’m on now. Everyone thinks I’m on ‘The Surreal Life.’ ‘How’d you get along with that Omarosa?’ Everyone thinks I was on the ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.’ I wasn’t there. Believe it or not, I would not in a million years sit in the jungle in the rain for charity with Alana Stewart and Robin Leach.

Corey: That’s the line?