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Rita Rudner and Her Little Mind, Looking Around Dave Weich, Powells.com "I always thought I'd go to the Oscars," Rita Rudner explained, "but only as a stalker." Call her an overachiever. Before turning to comedy, she danced on Broadway for ten years. Then, rising through the comedy ranks, making appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and headlining HBO specials, she penned a pair of very funny books and, with her husband, co-authored two films, including Peter's Friends, which starred Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, and Kenneth Branagh (who also produced and directed). She based Tickled Pink on her own young life—loosely, she claims. "I'm not that interesting, so I took the interesting bits of my life and jazzed up everything around them." From the decrepit East Side Hotel for Women in New York City where we meet Mindy Solomon to the brink of Mindy's success in Hollywood, the novel treats readers to a mercilessly comic, insider's look at the entertainment industry, a scene the author knows all too well. Novel writing, Rudner was happy to learn, isn't altogether different
from stand-up comedy, not compared to writing screenplays and
sitcoms, anyway. "With my stand-up," she discovered, "it's just
me and my little mind looking around, thinking, What's funny
about that? With a book, it's just me and a computer."
Dave: Tickled Pink isn't your first book, but it is your first novel. Rita Rudner: Third book, first novel. Dave: What made you want to try a novel? Is this something you've wanted to do for a while? Rudner: My husband is English, and many of our good friends are English comedians. They write novels in England—Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, David Baddiel—with an irony and a lightness of tone that other writers wouldn't necessarily have, not being comedians. I thought I could bring something to fiction that didn't already exist. Most humor is in nonfiction. So I tried to write a story that was involving, but funny, too. Because my female lead is a stand-up comedian it's not a contrived device to make this woman think funny thoughts. Dave: She better. Rudner: She better: she's a stand-up comedian. I learned from people like Woody Allen, who's one of my idols. In Annie Hall, he made himself a stand-up comedian; he wanted to say funny things. In a lot of his movies, he makes himself a comedy sketch writer or a novelist or a screenplay writer; his character always establishes his legitimacy to say these funny things. He can introduce humor into a situation naturally. Dave: The voice of the book is a natural extension of your stage personna. Here it's in a different form, but it still very much sounds like you. Rudner: I thought I should write about something I knew intimately. The comedy clubs in the 1980s were really special. That scene doesn't exist anymore. Clubs were springing up all over the place and all of a sudden there was a comedy boom. We didn't know it; we just loved comedy. And a lot of the people in the comedy clubs in the eighties are still around today. It gave us a good base to expand from. We were there for so long. Bill Maher and Dennis Miller and Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser? we were all there together in those times. Dave: Mindy, the narrator, follows a career path not unlike your own. You danced on Broadway before becoming a comedian. Rudner: Yes, but nobody dropped me, though I shouldn't tell all the plot points. People asked, "Why didn't you write an autobiography?" Well, I'm not that interesting, so I took the interesting bits of my life and jazzed up everything around them. Dave: How did you make the transition to comedy? Rudner: I was a dancer for ten years on Broadway, and it was very, very competitive. There were eight hundred girls for every one part. I also noticed there weren't very many female stand-up comedians. So I decided to try something where the competition wasn't as great. If I knew then what I do now? It was even more difficult than being a dancer, but I didn't know. And I don't want it to sound so clinical because I did love it. I started listening to Woody Allen. I started going to the Museum of Broadcasting and listening to Jack Benny. Getting albums out? Fred Allen? everything I could get I would listen to and analyze. I would sit in comedy clubs night after night thinking, Why is this funny tonight? It wasn't funny last night. What's different about this audience? Comedy is a science and an art combined. You never stop learning about it. That's another reason I like to keep expanding. Another one of my idols is Steve Martin, who started as a stand-up comedian then began writing films and books and plays. I always want to be in the field of comedy, but as my portfolio manager said before he lost all of my money, "You have to diversify for safety." Dave: Steve Martin is incredible. I think he's a role model for almost anyone trying to write intelligent comedy these days. Rudner: I don't know if you know this: I wrote the Oscars with him this year. Dave: I heard that. What does that mean, exactly? The two of you sitting at a table thinking of jokes? Rudner: That was the first meeting. It was scary because I had to just tell him ideas and see if we could work together. It was me, three other guys, and Steve. Once a week for a couple months we'd get together, or we'd call each other or fax each other, but the most fun was when we'd get together and share ideas. He provided a great working environment for us. Dave: Did you attend the Oscars? Rudner: I did. We were there. I got all dressed up in a gown. It was quite an experience. I always thought I'd go to the Oscars, but only as a stalker. Here was the stage—I know this is bad since the people reading this interview can't see my hands—but right here [showing a space to the side of the stage] was a closet for the four of us with a t.v. and a computer. A little, teeny closet. Steve had to come in sideways. We'd consult after each segment. He'd have what he wanted to do in each segment, then go with the flow, too. If someone came in wearing a bird, you had to change it. It was really fun. Dave: Shopgirl is a favorite around here. We're all big fans. Rudner: He's an elegant writer. He goes into detail with everything. And he always surprises you. Because Naked Beneath My Clothes did well, I had an offer to do another book of essays, and I knew I could do that—I could write an essay about chairs, and a table—but it isn't challenging. I wanted to do something that was more challenging. I really wanted to do something that would be surprising. Dave: What, in particular, did you find more challenging about a novel? Rudner: What was very difficult for me? I create pictures very, very sparsely with my jokes. The words are tiny, well chosen. I slave over each word. There has to be a rhythm; it's like a poem, the timing? it's a whole different thing. When you write screenplays, the pictures are provided for you. You're just writing dialogue. When you write a novel, you not only have to provide a vivid description of what's going on, but you have to do it in a way that isn't a cliché. You have to describe everything in your own terms. Another thing that was challenging for me is that my mind immediately goes to funny. The book was originally a lot longer than this; it's been edited down. A lot of jokes had to be taken out. Ultimately, a novel can be humorous but it also has to be involving. Dave: Like elsewhere in the arts—writing and dancing are certainly two examples—most people who dream of being comedians will never make it. Rudner: No, most don't make it. Many of those comedians starting out with us in the eighties didn't, just as most of the characters in the book don't. A lot of people who want to do it don't put the effort in. They don't get in the fray every night. You have to say, "If I can't get on stage at this club, I'm going to get on stage at another." I absolutely dedicated myself to it. I went on at two in the morning for years. I wouldn't go to sleep until I talked into a microphone. Some people do the same jokes night after night even though they don't work. You've got to listen to the audience. You have to be willing to change the jokes; it's a constant work in progress. It's very hard work. Dave: Was there a moment in your comedy career when you recognized that you were going to be successful professionally? Rudner: It's incremental—and it's pretty true to life, the way I describe it in the book. You sit on the sidewalk and you get a number. You pass an audition, but you don't get on for a long, long time. You gradually get on earlier. You gradually get better spots at the different clubs. I remember the first gig I had for $25 at a bar somewhere in New Jersey—you'd drive down, three comics: a headliner, a middle act, and someone who wasn't very funny but had a car. Then my very first validating moment was when I got on The David Letterman Show. At that point he was on from 12:30 to 1:30 in the morning, and that was what all comedians in New York aspired to. You get on it once, and you think your life has changed, but it hasn't. The only thing that's changed is that you have to write new material. It's just the beginning of the journey, not the end. Dave: Steve Martin was on Letterman a couple weeks ago? Rudner: They have great bits. Steve is always prepared with something when he goes on one of those shows. Dave: He did "Steve Martin and His Singing Balls." It was great. But afterwards, when the two were talking, Letterman persisted in asking about Martin's relationship with Anne Heche and really seemed to cross some kind of line. Steve Martin made a joke of it that really fell flat? it became very uncomfortable for a minute. Letterman will do that sometimes, but I think it's why some viewers prefer him to Leno: Letterman's show doesn't feel as safe. Rudner: They have different approaches to comedy. Dave: As a guest, what's it like to prepare for his show? Rudner: I haven't done that show for a very long time. I'm in a very tricky place: I'm a stand-up comedian who does very well, but I haven't been fortunate enough to get my own sitcom. I don't like to do stand-up on those shows anymore because that's more for new faces. I want to sit down and talk like a person, but I'm not famous enough, and I'm not pushed by a network. You'll notice a lot of the first guests are people on that network; they're booked to promote their shows. So it's not a comfortable scene for me at this point in my career. With me, it would be different than how they'd handle Steve Martin. In a pre-interview with me, when I did it before, they would go over everything in my stand-up; then they'd go over every question. If something spontaneous happened, all the better, but if nothing spontaneous happens you go by the map—which is how I approach my act, too: I have a map, but if something spontaneous happens, even better. Dave: When you perform, do you have a stock of material that you do night after night and new bits to try out around the rest? Rudner: That's what I do. I usually look at my notebooks. I sit down, and it's still always a fight. Rita, open your notebook. Look at the joke. It's okay if you don't think of something funny; just try. There's a whole pep talk I have to give myself because it's scary to try to create something. I usually try one or two new jokes a night, and by the end of the week I like one or two new things and I leave them in. And sometimes I can look at set-ups I wrote ten years ago and finally think of a punch line. It's never a waste of time to try something. Dave: You said you moved to L.A. ten years ago? Rudner: I've moved out of L.A. now. Now I live in Las Vegas. Dave: It's always interesting trying to explain Las Vegas to people who haven't been there. Rudner: It's a place people go to have a party, but I have a regular house and a regular life, and I just go to work every night. I love it there. It gets to you, things ringing in your head all the time, but it's a good place for a limited amount of time to vacation. Dave: A lot of the funny material in the book comes from your descriptions of Los Angeles culture. Rudner: I loved doing those scenes. Hollywood. I've been through so many managers and Hollywood premiers, I've had sitcoms written for me, I've had pilots filmed. I can write a lot of that from truth. Dave: And you've written two movies, right? Rudner: Two and a half. We did Peter's Friends. We did a t.v. movie for the USA Network that my husband directed called A Weekend in the Country. And also a half-hour movie last year that I wish more people had been able to see. It was part of a series on Showtime called The Hollywood Off-Ramp Series. They ran thirteen episodes, but the first couple didn't get good enough ratings so they didn't push the rest. By the time ours aired? It was called Unfunny Girl, and I played the least funny girl in America. It was really fun to be funny by not being funny. But that's another reason I wrote a book: because, like my stand-up, it's a pure vision. No one puts any money behind it, so no one has any input except me. Control is directly related to the cost of production. With my stand-up, it's just me and my little mind looking around, thinking, What's funny about that? With a book, it's just me and a computer. Whereas with a t.v. series or a movie or a play, you need backers and millions of dollars, and everyone who has a dollar wants an opinion. Dave: So you find your calling, and it brings you to Hollywood. The reputation of the city, certainly the image you present of it in this book, is not one of an atmosphere filled with much genuine conversation or feeling. Everyone's looking out for themselves. Rudner: It's a town where you come because you want to be famous. Everyone has a selfish streak because they want to be a star. How far will you go to get there? It's an interesting question. Some people, there are no limits to what they'll do. I was never very social. I'm very shy and my husband is shy. We're both only children. We like staying home. We never really fit into the social scene in Hollywood. We were very lucky to have Peter's Friends made. We wrote screenplays and did well, but Hollywood is about development. It's ninety percent development and ten percent production. At first, it was, "Oh great! We sold a script! Oh great! We sold another!" But you want something made. You want to see it in the movies. The last sitcom I was commissioned to write? I sold an idea and was commissioned to write three scripts. I worked on them for two years. At the end of the two years the head of the network said the subject didn't appeal to their demographic and wouldn't even read them. I was very disheartened. I knew this wasn't a business I really wanted to be in anymore. Also, the last script my husband wrote was a wonderful script that everybody loved, but it was the same story: this isn't appealing to males 18-39 so we're going to put it on the shelf. So we just said, "We're getting too old for this. We don't need to go through this anymore." Las Vegas came along, and lifestyle took precedent. We're a lot happier in Las Vegas than we became in L.A. At first L.A. was exciting and new and trendy—we got to go into the studios and we got parking spaces—but it wasn't fun anymore. Dave: And recently a theater was built for you in Las Vegas. How exactly did that happen? Rudner: I was in a theater at the MGM, and they were negotiating with another show to take over the space. The negotiations took longer than they expected, and I ended up selling out in that theater for seven months. When the new show came in— which is, who would have thought it in Vegas, naked ladies— the naked ladies came and took over the theater with a French show called La Femme. Dave: I like how you say that, as if the naked ladies took control of the theater in some kind of violent coup d'etat. Rudner: It was! It was a naked coup! They came in on horseback and said, "Get out!" The MGM management has been really nice to me. They said they would find me a venue in one of their other properties, and they didn't have one, so they built one at New York-New York. It's 425 seats, and I just love it. Dave: You have a bit of leverage, I suppose, after you sell out for seven months. Rudner: And before that I sold out another theater for a month, working for someone else at a different group of hotels. And for about ten years before that I'd done well coming to Las Vegas five or six times a year. Again, it wasn't as if I got lucky. I'd been working, building this up, for about twelve years. Dave: How often do you perform in that theater? Rudner: Seven shows a week. I'm going to eight shows next year. Dave: What happened after September 11th? Did you have shows scheduled? Rudner: On September 11th, all of Vegas went dark. On September 12th, people had tickets and wanted to come to my show. I thought, I'm not going to achieve anything by not doing the show. It was a very strange time in Vegas. There were no planes flying, of course, and no one could get out. The people who were there wanted their moods lifted, you know, and Vegas is the place to do it. Because I'm not a political humorist or a satirist— I'm someone who comes from a human perspective, a personal point of view—I didn't suddenly have any material I could no longer do. I just didn't enter with the same big opening. Instead of having an introduction and music, I just walked on stage and said, "Wow. Do you think we can still laugh at the silly side of life? Because this is so disastrous, what's going on." They said, "We'll try." And I said, "Okay, I'll try, too." I think entering from the right point is very important. You learn that from years in front of audiences. I'm always still trying to find the right opening. You go through the wrong door and you can't find the kitchen, you know? You have to go through the right door to get to the beginning of your show. Then you can take an audience anywhere. I was very interested to see what David Letterman did that night. He had the same approach. You have to come in on a different level. People will always want to have a good time. People will always want to laugh. And I'm always going to want to make them laugh. Dave: And more books? Rudner: The next book is set in Vegas. I've started it, but that's the hardest part, figuring out the voices of the characters and the tone of the novel. I always want it to be funny; well, in Vegas, you don't even have to exaggerate to make it funny. You have to tone it down a little bit so people will believe it. I can't wait because Vegas is really fun to write about. Rita Rudner visited Powell's City of Books on November 27, 2001 to perform a free show in our Basil Hallward Gallery and sign books. The room was packed, and rollicking with laughter from the moment Rudner took the microphone. "I live in Las Vegas now," she told the audience. "My husband enjoys the fights. Have you ever been to a fight? One night he decided we should go together. I don't know if you know this, but there's not just one fight. No, there's a whole undercard of fights, a whole series of preliminary fights before the real one, each one a little bit less important than the next. Well, my husband, who was very excited about going to the fights, wanted to see it all. He made sure that we got there very early. Very early. When we arrived, it was just the Rosensterns in the ring arguing about where to send their son for college." |
In fact, having worked with Steve Martin to prepare this
year's show, Rudner watched the awards ceremony from the wings,
meeting with the host between bits to consult and improvise along
the way. She's been keeping busy lately, to say the least. While
selling out seven shows a week at a 425-seat Las Vegas theater
built specially for her and taking advantage of special opportunities
like the Oscars gig—she cites Martin as one of her idols,
so this was not a chance she was going to miss—Rudner somehow
managed to produce a charming and funny (no surprise there) first
novel, too.
