Official Book Club Selection (31 page)

And what stood out when I met her is, she carries no shame about being an idiot. That’s what makes her funny. I mean, if I’m caught not knowing something, at least I feel guilty or embarrassed about it. But this girl, with her gum-popping and malapropisms, has no concept of thinking the way most of us would. That interview with Matt Lauer, the one she did without any publicists to guide her, was proof positive of her cluelessness. She’s sitting there popping that gum, her fake eyelash is falling off, she’s wearing the prerequisite denim mini with her gut hanging out, weird shit is coming out of her mouth, and I’m thinking, Okay, not so much a victim, Britney.

And if you’re going to go on the Video Music Awards and lip sync your new hit with crazy dirty hair extensions and not know the dance moves, Bingo! You’re in the act!

I can hear it now. “You can’t make fun of her. She’s a mom!”

Really? Well, can I make fun of someone who barely appears to be conscious most of the time?

But I will say, when the reports came out that she was on suicide watch, I backed off. If someone’s in real danger, it’s just not funny to me. But many of the stars who go into rehab and clearly don’t take it seriously, and you know who you are, they’re fair game. Most of those, by the way, have the last name Lohan, and they reside on Long Island.

A couple of examples of my set lists, which I use as topic points when I perform.

Anna Nicole Smith exemplifies how I feel about boundaries, since she was a tabloid figure who was fun to razz until it clearly wasn’t fun anymore. When Anna Nicole had her reality show, she was the kind of loopy train wreck you couldn’t not talk about. The gays loved her cause she was a big girl and beautiful and sexy and had that mixture of crazy, drug-induced Texas twang and garden-variety stupidity. I’ll never forget getting to go to her Christmas party, the one they shot for her E! show. What a juicy hub of insanity that was: That troubled female ex-wrestler Chyna was there, Rip Taylor was helping in the kitchen, and Anna Nicole herself was like a whirling dervish. I was actually pretty impressed at how she was filming and running around and getting drunk and being ridiculous and yet actually spearheading an authentic Southern meal. The food was fucking delicious. She was really cooking it, too, the turkey, ham, stuffing, and what she called “puh-taters.”

When things started to get really nuts with her toothless cousin Shelly flying off the handle and getting into an altercation with the makeup girl, my friend and I decided to split. As much as I love a good scene, this one got too crazy even for me. I can observe all day long, don’t get me wrong, but I have no desire to be immersed in crazy in a way that’s scary or threatening. That’s why I’d never do something like The Surreal Life in a million years. It’s not fun for me to get into a screaming match with Omarosa, and even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could even track down her crazy ass at this point. Now, in the case of the Anna Nicole holiday wingding, if I could have gone across the street with some FBI surveillance equipment, I would have watched the goings-on all night long. But I don’t think my audience wants to hear about how I manufactured a scene. They’d rather I take notes on what I experience, then comment on it.

Anyway, Anna Nicole was someone I’d had a few experiences with over the years, and though she was almost always out of it, she was also always nice. The claws came out with her attorney Howard K. Stern, and my personal belief is that while the general perception is that he was some Svengali who had her under his control, from my observation she was calling the shots, putting him in his place, and yelling at him, while he followed her around like a puppy dog.

I heard about Anna Nicole’s death when I was on tour, as I was pulling into Cleveland and checking into a hotel. I went to lunch and the news was on television in the restaurant. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember the bartender saying to me, “Now you’ve really got to go for her in your act!” I thought that was interesting, that this guy assumed I would gun for her harder. Somebody else that day said something similar to me, and I replied, “You know, I knew her. Not well, but I did know her.”

There were a million things about her that were funny and outrageous, and when she’d do something bizarre in my presence, I couldn’t not talk about it. But when somebody dies that day, I’m not rubbing my hands together saying, “Oooh, a new chunk for the act!” It’s really the opposite, and in fact, I haven’t talked about her onstage since. That’s not to say there’s a steadfast rule about this kind of thing, but instinct was telling me it wasn’t funny. The first show I did after her death, which was only hours after the announcement, I started by saying, “Okay, everyone, let’s address the elephant in the room. I know you guys all want me to talk about Anna Nicole.” And there was a lot of clapping. I said, “Well, you know, I sort of knew her. We’re not going there. Okay, on to the next subject!” It was uncomfortable, and I understand why the audience would expect something hot off the presses being addressed, but I’m telling you, if I had started in on her, I would have lost that crowd two minutes in. I guarantee you people would have thought, Bummer, and then it clouds the entire show.

So in my own way, I have boundaries.

But really, there’s nothing I won’t talk about, and what happens is you have to know your audience, and you have to be able to read their temperature. When I started at the Groundlings, there was a steadfast rule when it came to improvising: no cancer, no AIDS. There was no way to put a funny spin on those two topics, so don’t bother even mentioning them by name or talking about them. Then when I went into stand-up, I figured the same rule applied. But it wasn’t until I started doing charity work in the gay community, meeting so many people afflicted with AIDS and hearing them tell the most filthy, disgusting, and horrible jokes about AIDS, that I realized that for them, that’s what they needed to get through it. That when you have a disease that grave, your threshold for what’s funny is probably so much higher than everyone else’s that you almost need a pushing-the-envelope type of joke to get you to laugh.

When SNL alum Julia Sweeney’s brother Mike was dying of cancer, and then through a terrible coincidence she got cancer, too, I would call their house, and they would take turns answering the phone, “House of Cancer.” When Mike was ill, it was so important for him to laugh that he had no tolerance for small talk. He wanted to hear the most out-there jokes he could.

I’ve mentioned my late friend Judy Toll before in the book, but when she was sick with cancer, she once said to me, “Will you come over and make fun of my illness?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“All those years you thought I was a hypochondriac, and here I am dying of cancer. But it always made me laugh. So will you come over and make fun of me?”

“Of course, but … I don’t want to be mean.”

“No, it won’t be mean. It’s going to make me laugh. It’s going to get me out of my head.”

It’s held true so many times that when I meet people suffering from AIDS, they don’t want to hear a knock-knock joke. They’re in a battle, so they want the jokes to be fearless, too. I have a friend with full-blown HIV, and to this day he calls it the butt flu, and it always makes him laugh. Things like that really changed my attitude about what’s on the table and what’s off. I don’t go out of my way to do jokes about certain subjects, but I also realize that depending on the audience, I may not have to hold back.

Consider the men and women I met when I performed for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or for those recovering from war injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Soldiers in the field are people whose lives are in danger every day. They wake up thinking there’s a 50/50 chance they could die that night. Imagine if you were in that situation. You’d need something pretty hard-core to make you laugh if you were carrying that around all day. “So the dog’s thinking …” jokes aren’t going to cut it. You have to make fun of everything: the insurgents, the officers, the location, the food, and the soldiers themselves!

That’s why I’m just blown away when things like FanningGate happen. When you’ve been in a war zone making men and women in uniform laugh, hurt feelings in Hollywood are not high on your list of things to worry about.

Me at Walter Reed Army Medical Center surrounded by heroes.

Here’s that ridiculous saga:

For the 2004–2005 awards season I was hired by E! channel to be their replacement for Joan and Melissa Rivers, who had gone on to sign an $8 million deal at TV Guide channel. In reality, E! considered me number two to Star Jones, whom everyone at the channel was excited about because she’d be able to talk about impending awards show coverage on The View. But at least they knew I’d be the funny one. Legitimately funny, that is. I was thrilled.

I have to say, for whatever trouble I ultimately caused at the 2005 Golden Globes over Dakota Fanning, it was Star who was the pain in the ass. On The View, we’d gotten along fine, but it wasn’t until we did the red carpet coverage together that I found her to be unpleasant, humorless, and kind of a malcontent. I’d hear her being snippy with the crew, complaining that she wouldn’t rehearse for more than half an hour. And there was a hilarious diva moment during rehearsal when she and a whole posse of minions were walking by, and when I said “Hi,” she barked to her people, “We’re WALKING, we’re WALKING, we’re WALKING.”

I, meanwhile, was just happy to be in a pretty dress and meeting celebrities. My idea for questions on the red carpet, though, was to avoid the what-are-you-wearing kind—because I’m not a fashionista—and do something sillier, more offbeat. I didn’t even want to try to do Joan’s shtick, because she’s the master of that. I don’t know designers like she does, nor do I have those relationships with stars like Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. I wanted to see who would play along with me. Could I ask Kanye West, “What’s your favorite meal at the Olive Garden?” E! was fine with that, so I got together a couple of friends to help me come up with those kinds of absurdist questions to ask celebs on the red carpet.

One bit I thought would be funny was to come up with some fake news that celebrities could comment on. I love those moments when some famous person is getting their fucking tonsils taken out or something, and celebrities send them special shout-outs to the camera: “Good luck with your tonsil surgery! God bless you!” Insufferable, right? Well, I wanted to start a rumor that the most unlikely celebrity you could imagine had gone to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse, and then solicit those messages from celebrities right to camera. I couldn’t say Lindsay Lohan or Britney because those basket cases you’d believe. Then I thought, Of course. Dakota Fanning. Little Dakota Fanning: ten years old, angelic face, impeccably mannered, kind to a retard, er, special needs retard, or whatever, in I Am Sam. Perfect.

When the cameras started rolling and we were live, the silly questions turned out to be really fun. People like Clive Owen and my former student/victim Mariska Hargitay (who sustained no injuries that day at the Groundlings) were great, and even the panicked reactions from celebs like Michael Chiklis and his wife, whom I asked if they were getting a hooker later for their hotel room, made for great TV. Then I started my rumor about Ms. Fanning, and every celebrity I said it to laughed. Some even added their own spin. Sean Hayes from Will & Grace said, “All I can say is, Dakota, you don’t want to go south. Uh-oh, South Dakota!” We were laughing, and I’ll admit I was pretty proud of this running bit.

When we went off air, the people from E! said, “How do you think it went?” Which is usually the beginning of a “You’re fucking fired” conversation. But I just said, “I thought some of it worked, some of it didn’t, but overall kind of fun.”

They said, “Okay.”

Monday morning my attorney called. “Well, I got a call from Camp Fanning.”

“Who’s Camp Fanning?” I said.

“Dakota Fanning’s camp.”

“Wait, you’re saying there’s a Camp Fanning? What do you mean, like a summer camp? You got a call from a bunch of counselors?”

“No,” he said. “She has a movie coming out, a Steven Spielberg picture called War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise, and they’re extremely upset. Did you say she was a drug addict?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes. I said that she went to rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. Why?”

“Well, they’re upset that you said that. She’s ten years old and she has a giant blockbuster coming out, and they feel like it could affect the box office.”

That seemed like bullshit. How was a movie with the biggest star in the world and from the biggest director in the world going to be hurt by my joke? Which was, I remind you, a joke. Nevertheless, someone from the channel called and said, “We’d like you to issue an apology.”

I said, “Okay, here’s my statement: ‘You’d have to be a complete fucking moron to think I was serious. The end.’ How’s that?”

“That’s not an apology,” he said.

“Well, that’s the best I’ve got. I’m standing by it. What idiot would think I was serious about ten-year-old Dakota Fanning going to rehab? Have you seen her on Oprah? She’s so innocent-looking it’s ridiculous. She practically wears a lacy doll dress and looks like she’s going to her first Holy Communion. And by the way, I’d like some credit for not saying it was Lindsay Lohan, for once.”

Well, the calls to my agents and attorney wouldn’t stop. Team Fanning was upset, as well as Camp Fanning, and Fanning, Ltd., and Fanning & Roebuck, and Fanning Amalgamated, and whoever the fuck were her peeps. My reaction was always, “Whatever publicity anybody wants to throw my way about how awful this is, please go ahead, because I’m super excited that this could blow up into something big.”

And it did, because I then heard Spielberg was personally furious with me. I read in the New York Post that Spielberg’s publicist issued a statement to Page Six: “It was a very upsetting thing for a young child and her family. Obviously, to Kathy Griffin it was a joke, but why make a joke out of [Fanning]? She’s a terrific young lady who was there with her family, and it was very upsetting.”