Just for lunch

>> Writer David Rakoff on Schwartz’s,
ethics, and comedy

by JULIET WATERS

Essayist David Rakoff, who’ll be hosting the Just for Laughs event Reading It! An Evening of Literary Comedy, is no stranger to comedy festivals. In his recent book Fraud, he writes about the Sixth Annual U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, which he describes as the “Sundance of struggling comics.”

Although he went there as a journalist, Rakoff admits he really has a secret agenda: “To flay Robin Williams-who is to be the subject of a tribute here. I have been entrusted with the task of exposing the rainbow-suspendered-Patch-Adams-Jakob-the-Liar-Twinkling-Elf as the personification of everything that is wrong and normative and middle-brow in our culture: the walking representation of the USCAF’s taking itself too seriously.” In the end, Williams gets off pretty easy, and the festival gets most of the flaying for trying to turn comedy into something artsy.

Figuring we should investigate whether the writer had any such plans for Just for Laughs, the Mirror spoke to Rakoff from his apartment in New York.

Mirror: Have you ever been to Just for Laughs?
David Rakoff: No. I never have because I’m not really a comic. I’ve been to the Aspen festival once, as a journalist, and I doubt they’ll actually let me back.

M: Any secret agenda this time around?
DR: The only secret agenda I have is to go to Schwartz’s. You know, I was born in Montreal.

M: Oh really? I always think of you as a Toronto person.
DR: Well, we left when I was three. And I left Toronto when I was 17, so I’m barely a Toronto person ... So yeah, the only secret agenda I have is Schwartz’s. [Rakoff once wrote, “The central drama of my life is about being a fraud, alas. That’s a complete lie, really; the central drama of my life is actually about being lonely, and staying thin, but fraudulence gets a fair amount of play.” This may be why he mentions Schwartz’s twice.] It would be intellectually dishonest of me to accept an invitation and then trash the festival.

M: You write often about the ethics of comedy and journalism. Why is this an issue that comes up a lot?
DR: Nancy Franklin, who’s this amazing writer from the New Yorker, once wrote, “We should never confuse the public’s desire to know with the public’s right to know.” You know it’s not like I’m covering war trials. I’m just going out and covering these shallow little things. I try to stay vigilant about the people I take down when I do take them down, and it’s generally the powerful, or the people who I think deserve it. Actually that’s a complete rationalization... I’m not a very good reporter, because I am by nature kind of shy and sheepish. So there are things that I don’t feel comfortable asking people. Much in the same way I wouldn’t be comfortable writing about myself. For instance, I don’t like asking people about sex because I don’t write about my own sex life.

M: So are you and Melissa Bank and the writers at your event going to feel a little alienated from the stand-up comedians?
DR: We’re going to be the eggheady event. We’re the liver of the festival-we’ll be good for you.

M: Still, it’s probably a good thing that Just for Laughs doesn’t try to lionize comedy like the Aspen festival, right?
DR: Just for Laughs serves a community. Aspen is ski bunnies, a notoriously funny group. You know those millionaires like to laugh at themselves. So this is kind of different. I know I shouldn’t even mention this town, but it’s like the Toronto Film Festival because it really serves the city... I will, however, be doing a very heart-warming routine where I, as a sad clown, sweep up the spotlight.

M: Seriously?
DR: No. :

David Rakoff hosts Reading It! An Evening of Literary Comedy with Melissa Bank, Andy Blitz, Robert Schimmel and Marc Maron at the Centaur Theatre, July 18, 10:30pm, $10.75