Every so often, an encounter with someone will make you realize something you meant to do and haven't done. A couple years ago, the performer Sarah Silverman did an HBO special which caused a critic for Variety to write that she seemed "…determined to prove she can be as dirty and distasteful as the boys." Even before I saw the show in question, that struck me as a silly review and I said so.
I can understand how someone might think some comedians have gone too far but if that's the case, they shouldn't be watching HBO stand-up specials. And they should remember that comedians do that because audiences love it…and if audiences love something, they're going to get it. (I believe this critic in another piece praised one comedian highly for not stooping to "dirty" material: Bill Cosby. Hey now, there's someone you should emulate.)
In any case, if you're upset at the trend in comedy overall, that's no reason to pick on Sarah Silverman…unless, of course, she's not funny. But then I saw the show and it was very funny. She usually is.
I wrote then that one of these days, I'd do a post explaining how much I like her as a performer…and then it went onto the long, long list of things I say I'm going to cover on this blog and never get around to. Last evening though, I was at a small dinner party and Sarah Silverman walked in with her friend, Michael Sheen.
I'd met her twice before — once on the set of The Larry Sanders Show and once at a screening and panel discussion of the film, The Aristocrats. In neither case was there a moment when it would have been non-awkward to tell her to her face what I like about her. I didn't really find an opening at the dinner last night either but I did talk with her and listen. She's very smart and very funny and most of all, she has as much courage as any comedian who ever lived and more than roughly 95% of 'em.
Around 1994, my friends and I started to notice her a lot, popping up on this show or that one. She was so visible that she aroused the ire of a comedian I know — a guy who habitually pronounces every new comic as (a) not funny and (b) going nowhere. I think this guy believes there's a finite number of laughs in the world and if a new comedian comes along and starts getting some, that's fewer laughs that are left for him. In her case though, there was a bit of misogyny in play because he added (c) "People won't like her because if a woman's going to be that outspoken, she's got to be fat, ugly or probably lesbian."
When he said words to that effect, I did a double…maybe a triple take. Once upon a time in a land not so far in the past, the only way a woman could get accepted as a stand-up was to get up there and ridicule her own appearance…and the worse her appearance was, the more material she had to work with.
Really, there were three main ones — Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields and Joan Rivers — and their acts were all about how sexless they were, how their husbands wouldn't touch them, how men thought they were homely, etc. I didn't think Joan was bad-looking but that was a key premise of her act. And while I don't know if she ever uglied herself up for an appearance, it wasn't until she was much older and well-established that she tried for a bit of glamour. It's like someone said, "We'll let women do stand-up comedy as long as it's all self-deprecation and not really about important topics."
Comedy has evolved since then…in what I think is a good way in spite of what that guy in Variety might say. There have been a lot of good female comedians but I've never seen one who more proves that that comedian I know was wrong. And even he eventually thought so about Sarah.
She won him over with many things but the killer stroke was the short film she did a few years back about how world hunger could be solved if only we could sell the Vatican. I linked to it back then but the link went bad so here it is again…
I think it's hilarious and very, very brave. That comedian did too, though he insisted on saying it showed she "has balls" — which reminds me: How long is it going to be before folks stop praising a woman by awarding her honorary male body parts? Might it not be possible that women can just be brave and clever as women…or better still, as people?
Sure it is…and Sarah Silverman is the best example I've seen. She does things that are powerful and which say important things about the world and how it maybe oughta be. Somehow, just sitting across a dinner table from her last night, hearing her talk and remembering some of the fine work she's done, I was impressed more than ever.
She's going to be on with James Corden on Tuesday night tonight and then on Thursday morning, Bravo is running an Inside the Actors Studio with her discussing her new film which I hear is wonderful. When my knee heals, I hope to get out and see it…but in the meantime, I've decided to start alerting you to upcoming TV appearances, as I do with other comedians I like. This dawned on me last evening somewhere between the Calamari appetizers and the arrival of our entrees. I'm sorry it took me so long.