| Figure
of speech
by
RUPERT
BOTTENBERG
In
an ocean of oily, inconsequential stand-up hacks, comedian Janeane Garofalo
stands out for her incisive, straight-shooting wit and eagerness to
tackle issues that get her goat-particularly the media’s packaging
of women. Somehow, despite this, they actually let her on TV. Since
her start on Larry Sanders and an ill-fated stint on Saturday Night
Live, she’s graduated to movies. Look past the sappy rom-coms
(The Truth About Cats & Dogs, The Matchmaker) and you’ll see
her in inventive, undersung fare like Mystery Men, The Minus Man and,
quite recently, the straight-to-video Wet Hot American Summer, a quirky,
kindhearted parody of the early-’80s summer-camp teen flick genre.
Mirror: It’s a shame Wet Hot American Summer didn’t
get a harder push, because it’s got a bit of a cult following
here in Montreal, a word-of-mouth kinda thing.
Janeane Garofalo: Oh, great! Excellent, I really like
that movie. My friends Michael Showalter and David Wayne wrote it, we’ve
been friends since the early ’90s. They’ve been trying to
get it made for many years. Basically, everyone in the cast is friendly
with one another-we all knew each other prior to doing it. It was made
for under a million dollars. Some people might say, that’s still
a lot of money, but as you know, that’s an absurdly, ridiculously
low amount to make a movie, especially with a cast that large. We all
lived in the camp for six weeks while shooting it, we slept in the cabins
and ate the cafeteria food. It rained every single day of the shoot
except for three. There was some sort of anomalous weather pattern that
went through eastern Pennsylvania. It was freezing and raining and there
was so much mud everywhere that the crew had to build planks to put
over the places where we walked. So it was a really trying experience,
but it was probably the most fun I’ve had making a movie. As it
turns out, movies that have no budget tend to be the most fun because
everyone, cast and crew, are doing it because they like the script.
 Ab
gab
M:
For a long time, you’ve spoken very passionately and eloquently
about the pervasive artificial-beauty culture in the media and the psychological
damage it does to women. Do you perceive the rise of an equivalent thing
aimed at men?
JG: Yes, I have noticed that. Traditionally, I’d
only noticed that sort of thing in the gay community. The lesbian community
is very different in their stance against that, unless you’re
dealing with lipstick lesbians. In the homosexual community, there’s
this inordinate pressure to look good. It’s almost a parody of
the pressures that are put on women. But now it’s stretching into
the general male culture. The reason for that is that there’s
money to be made. If you can keep people insecure, and make them think
they need a product, you make money. So it’s really just a capitalist
endeavour to now get men involved in the beauty myth. It’s inevitable.
It was going to happen at some point. There’s money to be made
by taking the exact same products and repackaging them in a more manly
fashion. There’s been such a boost in magazine circulation aimed
at men. There are men’s magazines that are two notches above porn-
M:
The lad magazines?
JG: Yeah, Maxim and what have you. Within that, you
need to sell advertising. What you can do is have beauty advertising
aimed at the average male who is not gay. It remains to be seen if it
will take off as it has with women, but as younger generations come
up, you certainly see younger men much more concerned about their looks
than, I’d say, men 20 to 25 years older. It’s the Backstreet
Boys, six-pack-abs ethic. Young men are now feeling the pressure that
young women have always felt. Even with these lad mags, you have pictures
of men in them too, looking great-whatever that is. Or Tom Cruise on
the cover of Vanity Fair, being drenched in water and his abs are glistening.
I’m actually turned off by those images, whether they’re
male or female. If you show me rock-hard abs, it doesn’t do anything
for me. I don’t respond to it.
Beating
’round the Bush
M:
You’re really into the indie rock music, aren’t you? What
are you liking lately? What do you think people should check out?
JG: I really enjoy Sleater-Kinney’s latest album,
which just came out. There’s a band called Pedro the Lion that
I’ve been listening to. Of course, the Hives-everyone likes the
Hives. There’s a band called Muckafurgason, from New York, that
I really like. If you like They Might Be Giants, you’d like them.
There’s a really healthy dose of comedy in with great rock music.
There’s also a girl named Amy Miles from New York, the Gravel
Pit from Boston-they’re sort of in the Superchunk mode. They’d
fit well on the Merge label.
M:
I read something in an interview with you that I really got a kick out
of, where you suggested that George W. Bush might be as bewildered by
his presidency as much as, well, everyone up here is.
JG: Oh, I think he’s a man that is so far out
of his depth. The pressures of family, in the way of the Kennedy family-the
father pushes the son, and in this case, I believe it’s the same
thing. The father and the Carlisle Group would like to perpetuate a
Bush dynasty. They probably knew that they could get a candidate with
the name Bush in and move their conservative agenda forward, their globalization
and corporate-friendly agenda. I have no way of knowing if George W.
Bush is a good, bad or indifferent person. He seems like a nice enough
guy. I think he’s a person who has willingly done this but, like
the Kennedy sons, is very much pushed through life by their father and
his agenda. He seems like a guy who’s been thrust to the forefront
because of 9/11, and who knows what his presidency would or would not
have achieved without the war-quote-unquote, the “war.”
M:
Okay, you know the old expression, “Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of society?” Some dead guy in a wig said it 200 years
ago. My feeling is, poets have been superceded by comedians in that
respect. I think comedians can, if they choose to do so, have a tremendous
impact on our culture.
JG: Good ones can. Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Ellen
Degeneres, Sandra Bernhard, Dave Chapelle-when they’re good, they’re
great social critics and great people to challenge societal perspectives
and push the envelope. Unfortunately, most comedians don’t take
up that mantle because they want to be well-liked or they don’t
have the inherent talent, what it takes. I like watching Jon Stewart,
Lewis Black, Jimmy Tingle and Paula Poundstone-when they’re good,
they’re very good. But most comedians, especially the ones that
make it onto television, are more vanilla, because television doesn’t
wanna touch ’em. There are so many good comedians we’ll
never see on TV. They’re just too good, and TV doesn’t like
that kinda thing. When they’re good, there’s nothing for
social critique, but when comedians are banal, there’s nothing
worse. 7
An
Evening with Janeane Garofalo, with guest Zach Galifianakis, is at Kola
Note on Wednesday, July 17, 8 and 10:30pm, $24.50. Garofalo is also
at the Gala with Wayne Brady (Théâtre St-Denis, July 18,
7:30pm, $19.50+), the Bill Hicks tribute (Centaur, July 18, 9:30pm,
$22.50) and Eve’s Tavern (Spectrum, July 19, 7 and 10:30pm, $25.50)
>>
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