That winsome smile, the long, silky black hair, the womanly curves in the super-casual girl-next-door clothes, the shockingly off-color one-liners – What’s not to adore about Sarah Silverman? The sexy, sewer-mouthed stand-up gets serious about comedy, telling Hollywood.com about her hot new concert film Jesus Is Magic.
Hollywood.com: Do people give you a hard time when you make your trademark jokes about typically taboo topics, like rape?
Sarah Silverman: “I’m sure there are people that don’t appreciate it. I mean, I’m certainly not making fun of rape, you know, I just happen to have jokes with rape in it. But you know, if I was a woman recently raped, I probably would not appreciate the trivialization of rape by me. But I always say, if you take the ‘e’ off of rape, you’ll see it gets a bad rap, right? No, that’s terrible. I don’t think it’s funny, it’s just it was funny because it’s totally not funny. Sorry.”
HW: Has anybody waited for you after the show to confront you because they think you really are racist, or whatever’s offended them?
SS: “Well, there were a couple of times I was escorted out the back door of the Improv. One thing I learned pretty early is never to defend my material because it’s just not for me to defend. It’s for if somebody else wants to defend my material – ‘No, you don’t get it, it’s this, it’s that.’ That’s fine. It’s so subjective, comedy. And if you don’t think it’s funny, it’s definitely gonna be offensive.” I try to be as comforting as possible when people are mad. ‘I completely understand, I’m so sorry.’ You’re right – if you are offended by it, or you don’t think it’s funny, you’re right. That’s what makes it, dare I say, art, because it’s totally subjective, and people are hearing it in the context of their own experience. I can’t cater my stand-up to each individual person’s experience and what they’re gonna be offended by. That’s one freedom I’m very lucky I have: I’m not on network television, I’m not selling soap, I’m not trying to please people who are selling soap, who are trying to please the people who are buying soap.”
HW: You told the Los Angeles Times that you do have one off-limits topic: you won’t make jokes about overweight women.
SS: “I think nothing’s off limits if it’s funny enough, if there was that perfect thing that was so great. But I kept getting the same question like ‘Does anything offend you, does anything offend you?’ And when I really thought about it, the only time I really remember – and I know it’s absurd, considering the subject matter of my own material, it’s hypocritical – but fat jokes about women, bum me out. I think because all women feel we’re fat women inside – in America, anyway. And also because women, fat women, are seen so differently as fat – like fat men still deserve love. So it’s terrifying, and I think probably women can relate to that same fear. But that said, I would never tell my comic friends or anybody ‘Don’t do that’ or ‘That’s offensive’ or anything. Never. If something’s not my cup of tea, I would really be a hypocrite to scoff at it.”
HW: Can you ever get the audience back if you bomb with material as potentially offensive as yours?
Silverman: “I often can’t get the audience back. I did a corporate gig recently in New York. I was booked kind of last minute, and it was this show opening the new Nokia Times Square Stage, and the show was Mary J. Blige, Sean Paul, and Eddie Griffin – I wasn’t even on the bill. They shot it for MTV, so, it was all like that MTV 17-year-old picture-perfect fake audience. And I remember saying to one of the producers, ‘Oh I’m gonna bomb.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh no, these are all kids, but all in the back seats are Nokia executives.’ Oh, that’s so comforting. [laughs] So I go out, and I realize that me and Eddie are booked because – so that they can switch out the instruments and do sound check and stuff in between the bands changing and stuff, so the band is like tuning up behind me, but you just ignore it, the audience can’t really hear it. I actually did okay for a while, and then I started doing more – I said, ‘I wrote an open letter to Martin Luther King…’ [NOTE: the bit is a farcical diatribe against an imagined list of MLK’s flaws, such as being a litterbug] and the second I said that, they were like ‘Uh uh! No way! Ooooh!’ And I just start to like nervous giggle, but I just plowed through it but it was downhill from there. So I get off stage, and Eddie Griffin was like ‘That was great! That was so f-ing courageous, and you just say what’s on your mind! You’re just like Lenny Bruce – or like me! These kids don’t know, they just listen to buzz words, and that’s all they hear.’ It meant a lot to me, and I said ‘Thank you so much, it means a lot coming from you,’ because he really has his finger on the pulse – he’s a famous comedian, but huge in the black community especially, and it was really nice hearing that from him. Reassuring, because I doubt myself. So, I’m gonna watch Eddie, I’m standing in front of the stage watching, and he comes on, and maybe one joke in the band behind the curtain starts tuning up – and it happened all through me, too, we could hear it more than the audience – but he was like ‘What the f**k?!?’ He puts his head through the curtain, he’s like ‘Shut the f**k up!’ Then he turns back and he goes ‘The black man comes on and they’re tuning their instruments, meanwhile the white girl comes on and she’s talking about Martin Luther King!’ And everyone around me is like ‘Yeah! In your face! And I’m just like ‘Oh my God! He totally sold me out, but you know what? I don’t blame him – even though I can’t fucking believe you did that, I understand that impulse of knowing how hard you can kill with a line that’s just come into your head. And it was so perfect, and he knew the crowd was just ready to receive it. So I understand, and it’s worth it for the story.”
HW: When did you realize you had a different way of looking at the world?
SS: “Um. I don’t know. Right now? Within the cocoon of my family, I wasn’t like some sort of outcast, or weird compared to my sisters or parents–they’re all weird. My dad is one of those dads who thought it was hilarious to teach his daughter swear words, you know. The first thing I said was ‘bitch, bastard, damn, shit,’ that was what my dad taught me, and it was hilarious. But my guess is I got such positive reaction at such an early age because I said these swears that my dad taught me, I think it probably fed into something that, you know, damaged me in this way. [laughs]”
HW: Do you think your edgier material is easier for audiences to take because you’re so cute and disarming?
SS: “I like to think of myself as ‘hot-larious.’ I don’t know, maybe not. I’m cute, but it’s not – I’m totally approachable-cute. In two articles they called me coltish, and I know that’s a nice way of saying ‘horse face.’”
HW: “Jesus Is Magic” features some of your funniest material from your stand-up act. Any worries that your die-hard fans will be too familiar with it when they see the film?
SS: “I don’t know if you were ever into comedy albums or anything, but the comedy albums I had I listened to over and over again. It doesn’t wear off, good stand-up. And I’m not talking about myself–I’m saying when I would listen to Woody Allen or Steve Martin comedy albums, I’d listen to them over and over again. I knew every beat, the cadence of every joke, and I wasn’t disappointed when I pressed play again at the beginning. A lot of the times, you do new material and people like want you to do this bit or that bit, you know, so you can’t please everybody. I think you have to find a balance. It’s important to keep writing and to be as prolific as you can, but you have to support that with jokes that are tried and true. I did all this new stuff, and then in the L.A. Times, the reporter was quoting all this stuff that is in its infancy, and it’s tough, because it has a long way to go. I’ve been doing stuff about Kabbalah and Scientology. And a little more racial stuff. For good measure.”
HW: Any bit where you may have gone too far?
SS: “In the movie there’s something my mom begged me to take out of the movie, and I totally understand, and I would’ve taken it out, but it’s kind of too late, and I liked it, but I totally understand what she’s saying. It’s after the credits, when it’s just the outtake stuff, and I’m looking at a picture of when I was in that ’60s outfit, and I say, just off the top of my head, ‘I look like Marlo Thomas after she just saw her dad underneath a glass coffee table with a girl taking a s**t on it.’ Because you know there’s that rumor that Danny Thomas was a slate man, which I don’t know if it’s true or not, but if you go to Canter’s Deli, the ‘Danny Thomas is the number two. But she was like ‘Danny Thomas was a great man! And you shouldn’t reduce him to just that, he did wonderful things, he opened a children’s hospital, blah blah blah!’ And I agree with everything she says, and I feel terrible, and I do believe that Danny Thomas should be remembered as a great man who opened a children’s hospital and was a great entertainer and family man. But what are you gonna do?”
HW: What were you hoping to do for your career with Jesus Is Magic?
SS: “Get famous. No. [Long pause] Yeah, get famous.”
