The Janeane Genie

Although Janeane Garofalo is known for her outspoken political views – she was one of the many comedians and entertainers who took severe exception to the Bush administration – her stand-up shows are very loose affairs, and sometimes politics doesn’t figure at all.

“I definitely don’t have any hard-and-fast rules about what I’m going to get to in the hour-and-a-half,” she notes. “I always have an idea about what I’d like to get to, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. I’ve been doing stand-up for so long that I have to perform like that, to keep it interesting for me and for the audience. People have to believe that you are interested in what you’re saying, and one of the ways for me to stay engaged after all these years is keep it as open-ended as possible.
“I’m not lying about anything I say onstage. I’ve certainly embellished here and there for humorous effect, but I don’t pretend that something happened to me that didn’t happen. With regard to politics, sometimes I don’t discuss it all. Some nights I’m very eager to discuss it, some nights it’s too tragic and it makes me sick. And some nights I’m not interested in discussing it. Subject matter varies on a nightly, case-by-case basis.”
Janeane first came to the attention of a wider audience thanks to her role as attitudinal talent booker Paula on The Larry Sanders Show, Garry Shandling’s masterwork about a neurotic talk-show host. The Larry Sanders Show managed the tricky feat of brilliantly observing the foibles of human behaviour (something it did better than most dramas, in fact), whilst simultaneously being incredibly funny. It and Seinfeld are routinely cited as being the best US sitcoms of the ’90s, and it is quite possibly this writer’s favourite ever comedy show.
Janeane found working on the series to be a hugely positive experience.
“I loved it,” she enthuses. “That was my first acting job, actually. I really loved working for Garry, he was one of the best bosses I ever had. He really encourages improvisation, and creativity generally. It was a truly great first acting job. The only downside was that most other acting jobs after that were nowhere near as open and supportive.
“It was the opposite of a baptism by fire – it was a baptism by delicious chocolate. Doing The Ben Stiller Show that same year was a similar situation; I was friends with Ben and some of the other cast members even before we started shooting, so that was another baptism by creamy chocolate. And it was sort of downhill from there.”
The Larry Sanders Show has influenced some of the best comedy shows of recent years, including The Thick Of It and The Office. Indeed, Janeane heard first hand how much Ricky Gervais loved the series when he stopped her on the street in Los Angeles for a chat.
“He said ‘hello’, and I think he apologised for not being able to do some interview I’d asked him to do for my radio show,” she recalls. “He was unbelievably polite, and I was shocked that he even think twice about saying anything to me. I was so thrilled because I’m such a huge fan. He was behind me and he called my name, and when I turned around and saw him, I was just giddy.”
Gervais, of course, had an infamously awkward encounter with Garry Shandling on his Ricky Gervais Meets… series.
“There are times when Garry can get in a mood,” reckons Janeane. “I think more so now than when I worked with him. I think there are times now when he would just prefer not to discuss it, and that’s maybe part of what the Ricky Gervais thing was. He gets uncomfortable talking about Larry Sanders, especially when people are raving about it. But when we were working on the show in the early ’90s, he was probably one of the best bosses I ever had.”
Many of the finest UK comics may have been fans of The Larry Sanders Show, but Janeane herself has kept abreast of the comedy scene in Britain, and she is a particularly big fan of satirists Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris.
“I loved The Day Today, and all the Steve Coogan stuff, and the movie Armando just did, In The Loop. Anything Armando’s name is on, I will watch. I actually got into his stuff when I was shooting a movie called The Matchmaker in Roundstone in Ireland. Somebody gave me some videotapes of his stuff.
“And then when I was doing a film in London in 2000, I got into The Fast Show, Human Remains and The Royle Family. I was putting a lot of different shows on tape, and then when I got back to America I transferred it from PAL to whatever, so that I could watch it here. Also, Chris Morris is fantastic. I feel the same way about him as I do about Armando Iannucci – if there’s anything with his name on it, I’m interested.”
How did Janeane find the progression from comedy to drama, when she started working on The West Wing and latterly 24?
“Obviously the content is different, and in The West Wing and 24, there’s no improvisation whatsoever. It’s just not allowed or encouraged, and it would probably be odd if you did it. So those environments are totally different to me. The West Wing was a blast though, I have to say, and so was 24. I really enjoyed both of those. I can’t honestly say I loved the content of 24 – I’m not down with some of that right wing torture shit – but then again I’m not playing myself.
“But I enjoyed the day-to-day job of working on 24. That was a lot of fun, and The West Wing experience was also fantastic – working with Bradley Whitford and Kristin Chenoweth was brilliant. But on both of those shows, there’s a lot of dialogue that has to be executed rapidly. You’ve got to say stuff really fast, and usually while you’re walking and multi-tasking; that tends to be how they shoot those scenes. And it sort of leaves very little room to find anything human in it.
“In a way, it’s not about the actor at all. You are a vessel that needs to speak articulately and quickly, and preferably with a non-regional accent. And while I’m always thrilled to have a job, it’s not particularly fulfilling creatively.”
Hence, you suspect, Ms. Garofalo keeps doing stand-up – which is very good news for comedy fans.