IKLAN
Like a cheerier version of Jeremy Renner’s demolitions expert in The Hurt Locker, Sarah Silverman is the kind of comedian who loves nothing better than venturing into the treacherous topics of race, sex, and religion to nimbly navigate some potentially explosive stuff. So, after taking her envelope-pushing comedy to television with Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program and warming up the Internet with her YouTube videos “I’m Fucking Matt Damon” and “Sell The Vatican, Feed The World,” Silverman next takes on that most daring, forward-thinking medium known as…book publishing. She makes her literary debut tomorrow with The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, which will be published by HarperCollins, and once again boundaries are pushed.
In addition to a foreword and an afterword, Silverman’s book contains what may be the first “midword” in publishing history. That she spends a nice chunk of that section biting the hand that edited her will probably make her a literary hero among downtrodden and emasculated writers. But what’s most surprising about Silverman’s book is that it doesn’t just go for laughs. Instead of a series of comic passages held together with crazy glue, she deftly mixes the spit-take funny stuff with an unsentimental but enlightened look back at her not-so-charmed life and career. The book’s title is a reference to the chronic enuresis that plagued Silverman into her teens, but Silverman also writes about dealing with severe depression and, as a result, a seriously misprescribed Xanax regimen. And though she professes to not enjoy deconstructing comedy, Silverman is quite good, both in her writing and our conversation below, at analyzing controversial moments in her comedy career, such as time in 2001 when she used the word “Chink” in a joke about racism on Conan O’Brien’s show—as she writes in her book, a last-minute substitute when she was told that her original word choice, “nigger,” would not fly on network TV—and incurred the wrath of Asian Americans who misinterpreted the joke. Fans who appreciate Silverman’s love of poo and penis jokes won’t be disappointed either—she’s even included a rather bizarre photo of the genitalia of one of her writers. The Bedwetter is a one-stop guide to understanding Silverman.
DiGiacomo: Let’s start with the cover. Who are you trying to channel in that magisterial book-jacket photo?
Silverman: So many comedians’ books are just like, “I’m wacky!” So I thought it would be funny if mine looked like a really important book. And then, I found this book about Mao Tse Tung. I believe the cover is a propaganda poster. So, I sent it to my friend, the photographer Robyn Von Swank and told her, “Let’s see this.”
In the book, you write about a debate between you and your editor David Hirshey over whether to use “Pee” or “Pee-Pee” in the subtitle. You won. Were there really that many e-mails generated over this decision?
Yes. The e-mails back and forth about the title in the midword are completely real. I had to put my foot down about it. I’m a pretty affable person, but when people whose job it isn’t to be funny tell me what works comedically or not, it bothers me.
Judging from your thank-you section, Hirshey’s chewing bothered you, too. You wrote that it “will make you want to stab yourself in your face.”
Oh my God, I really killed him on that, but it really is astounding. Chomping gum or chomping food—I have a visceral reaction. I can’t control it. I try to talk myself through it, and then I start sweating from the top of my head. I would drive the writers’ room crazy. Our head writer Dan Sterling would flick his pen on-and-off, on-and-off, and I would try to handle it. But then, the next thing I knew, I grabbed his pen and threw it across the room.
That reminds me of the Al Franken story in your book where you’re sitting next to him in the writers’ room at Saturday Night Live and spontaneously decide to poke your pencil into his curls but end up stabbing him in the temple. Your description of the scream Franken emitted, had me in tears.
It’s one of those things where I don’t think I thought about it in words. I had this really sharp pencil, and he had this really huge Jew-fro, and I just thought I’d stick it through there. Even if that happened it would have been weird. But then it just looked fucking crazy.
You also tell quite a few unusual tales about your childhood. Is the story about your grandmother—“Nana”—on her deathbed true?
Yeah, my sister Laura and I were sitting on either side of her, and she opened her eyes and went, “So beautiful.” And Laura and I were making light of it, “Oh, she’s talking about me.” “No, she’s talking about me.” And Nana gathered some breath and went, “Laura.”
You also tell the bizarre and chilling story about how in high school two jocks held you down in the school cafeteria while another forced a wad of cold cuts down your throat—because you were vegetarian.
Yeah, it was awful. It really felt rape-y.
I expected The Bedwetter to be funny—and it is—but what surprised me were some of the insights you share about yourself and your family. I didn’t expect you to be getting deep in this book.
I think I’ve had the benefit over of the years of having a couple great therapists. So, I’ve been able to think that way a little. I’m interested in that stuff.
A section of your book deals with the fallout of your 2001 appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, when you used the word “Chink” in a joke about racism. Given the manner in which NBC dealt with you at the time, do you have any take on the network’s treatment of Conan O’Brien over the Tonight Show debacle.
In retrospect, I understand it. NBC is a business. It’s a company. And they’re going to get more out of being loyal to their advertisers than to someone who’s on one of their shows as a guest. They’re selling soap, and I’m not the soap. In terms of the recent Conan stuff, I think it would have behooved NBC to have a little more loyalty in a situation where hundreds of people moved their lives from one coast to another and put their kids in new schools. I also think it would have behooved them to have a little trust that when Conan started in 93, he wasn’t the Conan that he was in 2000 or in 2005. Talk shows always take patience and time, and even though Conan was established at 12:30, 11:30 is a whole new thing. So you would think they would have given him more than five, six months to do that. That was pretty surprising, even for a kind of faceless corporation. But I just heard that he’s going to be on TBS, right?
Yes.
I think that’s great. I think people are going to go wherever he goes. There aren’t really channels anymore. People just watch what they want to watch. They don’t even know what time it’s on or what channel because they DVR it. You know? It’s almost like the way things are measured, ratings and stuff like that, has not caught up with the way people view television. So, I think NBC made a mistake, but I think Conan is going to be fine.
In light of the cultural changes that are going on right now, is it harder to do the kind of envelope-pushing humor you do than it was in, say, the 90s?
I never find it harder. I would find it harder if I was like, “I want to do what I do on NBC!” Then I would find it harder. Or, “I want to do what I do and be a millionaire!” You know what I mean? But with the Internet, there’s a big difference between the 90s and now: anyone can express themselves and do whatever they want to do and put it out there. And if it’s funny enough, people will see it, whether you’re in the middle of Ohio or you were a jack-ass playing World of Warcraft. Have you seen that? It’s a video where a bunch of guys are playing World of Warcraft, and they’ve been planning this thing to get to the next level for, like, weeks. But one of their guys—Leeroy Jenkins is his name—screams out his name and runs into the enemy… I can’t explain it, but it’s hilarious. I think people get threatened by that, but I think it’s great that anyone with the gumption can put themselves out there and do something. It’s like when you first saw Andy Milonakis, he was in his apartment in Queens making little videos and putting them out there. And someone saw it. And it’s great for someone like me. I can make a video on my couch and put it out there, like “The Great Schlep” and “Sell The Vatican, Feed The World.”
You were ahead of the curve on the Vatican. What motivated you to endure the torture of writing a book when you have the ability to make a YouTube video on your couch and reach hundreds of thousands of people?
It’s brutal, right? I’m so proud of this book, and I hope it does really well, but part of me goes, Well, what’s the reward for this doing well? Do I have to write another book? I don’t want to write another book.
I was surprised to read that you had written letters to Paris Hilton after a joke you told about her at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards while, unbeknownst to you, she was in the audience; and to Britney Spears after you did some material on her following her disastrous performance on the 2007 Music Video Awards. Did either of the women respond to your letters?
No. To be honest, with the Paris Hilton one, I found the envelope and it was sealed. And I thought, Oooh, did I ever send it? So, I can’t really say, “Oh, she never responded.” I really had every intention. I wrote the letter. But, I did feel bad.
I don’t want to give away too much of the book, but the behind-the-scenes account of how those incidents went down and how you felt about it is very interesting.
Usually my stand-up, whether it’s about race or about these people or those people, it’s always about a people and the idiot is me. And then, the only other times that I’ve been just brutal about people is at roasts where you’re doing it with love. But with MTV, I felt like the job really is to talk about pop culture and what’s going on, and I had no qualms with that. Like with the Paris Hilton thing, it was such a funny joke to me that I didn’t think twice. And in my defense, I think, Gee, you know, those jokes about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears are not dissimilar to any jokes on all of the talk shows every single night of the week. So, it felt odd that I was suddenly being portrayed as this cruel person. But, I also know that those girls are real people as much as we kind of just don’t think of them that way. And I also feel like I don’t want to be a grown woman who is hurting them.
I loved your line about thin, blonde white women being national symbols along with the Humvee and the Bald Eagle. Do you think there was a hint of anti-Semitism in the reaction to those jokes?
I’m not sure that if I was Chris Rock I would have gotten the same backlash. But that’s O.K. You hear things differently coming from different voices. It was what it was, but the next day, I just thought the reaction would be “A funny comedy routine,” and not, “She’s mean!” And the Britney stuff I did seemed, to me, innocuous, but it didn’t occur to me that she was going to have a meltdown. I didn’t watch her performance. I was going over my own stuff that I had been planning for a week. It wasn’t a case of me watching and immediately reacting.
O.K., now that we’ve done the deep stuff, let me get to the crude and superficial questions. In the book, you wrote that you have no interest in vaginas “except for their comedic value.” Off the top of your head, what are three funny things about vaginas?
Oh my God. I think just the word, the kind of instant uncomfortable factor. I think penis and vagina should be equal comedically, but they’re not. And it probably has something to do with how penises are external and dry and like an arm or an elbow. And vaginas have a whole situation—they’re like. Oh, I’m grossing myself out now. You know, like, labia majora, labia minora. Pubes.
What about penises with hairclips on them—like the one that’s depicted on page 209 of your book? Where does that fall on the humor scale?
I had to narrow it down to only one penis picture in the book.
Seriously?
Yeah—because there were a few. There was the picture we sent to the executive on the show Gary Mann for his birthday, which was either [writer] Harris [Wittels’s] or [writer and actor] Chris Romano’s penis, with my dog’s paw touching it. And we just sent that picture with a note that said, ‘Happy Birthday, Gary, from all of us at the Sarah Silverman Program.” And let’s see, there was Chris Romano’s penis poking through a napkin and him saying, “My dick just ate lobstah!” Harris Wittels’s penis with the hairclip had the best story.
Which is that another writer Chelsea Peretti left the hairclip in the writers’ room. What did she do with the hairclip once it was removed from Harris Wittels’s penis?
She probably just took it back. She’s like the funniest person I know. Women with the hairclips—you know, while we’re writing, it’s up. It’s down. It’s up. It’s in a ponytail. It’s in a bun. It’s down. But you don’t even feel it when you’re a woman. It’s like flicking the pen on and off. So, she was in the writers’ room and then she went down the hall to her office to work on a script. And we noticed the hairclip, so I put it on Harris’ penis, took a picture on my iPhone, and sent it to her.
Are the writers on your show required to be able to drop trou at a moment’s notice?
It’s nothing that I demand. I think it happens in every comedy room. Maybe not, actually. But I think a lot of times it’s something that guys do. It’s part of feeling free and feeling like anything goes. You need that kind of safety in a writers’ room. I don’t think that there’s anyone who worked on the show that would have been offended or upset. By the end, you walk on the set and [actor] Steve Agee’s balls are out of his fly, and you almost don’t laugh anymore. You’re just like, “Oh, hey.” It’s so normal. It’s kind of like porn actors. I always compare porn actors and comedians. Porn actors don’t get titillated by little things anymore. They need like eight midgets, a dildo and—
I think you also mention a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo in the book. Is there an equivalent for women comedy writers in terms of letting it all hang out?
No, and I wouldn’t say—not all the guys take out their penises. It was really just Harris and Chris Romano. But I felt like I was letting it all hang out without taking my pants down or exposing myself. It’s more sexual with a woman. Boobs are boobs during sex or the middle of the day. But penises are like shriveled up raisins. It’s not like I ever saw them erect.
Speaking of sex, does Clive Owen know how you feel about him?
No. (Laughs.) I think I had just seen Duplicity when I wrote that.
He gets two or three mentions in the book.
He’s a go-to. I like him!
Are you and Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin still together.
Yes!
Does he know how you feel about Clive Owen?
In addition to a foreword and an afterword, Silverman’s book contains what may be the first “midword” in publishing history. That she spends a nice chunk of that section biting the hand that edited her will probably make her a literary hero among downtrodden and emasculated writers. But what’s most surprising about Silverman’s book is that it doesn’t just go for laughs. Instead of a series of comic passages held together with crazy glue, she deftly mixes the spit-take funny stuff with an unsentimental but enlightened look back at her not-so-charmed life and career. The book’s title is a reference to the chronic enuresis that plagued Silverman into her teens, but Silverman also writes about dealing with severe depression and, as a result, a seriously misprescribed Xanax regimen. And though she professes to not enjoy deconstructing comedy, Silverman is quite good, both in her writing and our conversation below, at analyzing controversial moments in her comedy career, such as time in 2001 when she used the word “Chink” in a joke about racism on Conan O’Brien’s show—as she writes in her book, a last-minute substitute when she was told that her original word choice, “nigger,” would not fly on network TV—and incurred the wrath of Asian Americans who misinterpreted the joke. Fans who appreciate Silverman’s love of poo and penis jokes won’t be disappointed either—she’s even included a rather bizarre photo of the genitalia of one of her writers. The Bedwetter is a one-stop guide to understanding Silverman.
DiGiacomo: Let’s start with the cover. Who are you trying to channel in that magisterial book-jacket photo?
Silverman: So many comedians’ books are just like, “I’m wacky!” So I thought it would be funny if mine looked like a really important book. And then, I found this book about Mao Tse Tung. I believe the cover is a propaganda poster. So, I sent it to my friend, the photographer Robyn Von Swank and told her, “Let’s see this.”
In the book, you write about a debate between you and your editor David Hirshey over whether to use “Pee” or “Pee-Pee” in the subtitle. You won. Were there really that many e-mails generated over this decision?
Yes. The e-mails back and forth about the title in the midword are completely real. I had to put my foot down about it. I’m a pretty affable person, but when people whose job it isn’t to be funny tell me what works comedically or not, it bothers me.
Judging from your thank-you section, Hirshey’s chewing bothered you, too. You wrote that it “will make you want to stab yourself in your face.”
Oh my God, I really killed him on that, but it really is astounding. Chomping gum or chomping food—I have a visceral reaction. I can’t control it. I try to talk myself through it, and then I start sweating from the top of my head. I would drive the writers’ room crazy. Our head writer Dan Sterling would flick his pen on-and-off, on-and-off, and I would try to handle it. But then, the next thing I knew, I grabbed his pen and threw it across the room.
That reminds me of the Al Franken story in your book where you’re sitting next to him in the writers’ room at Saturday Night Live and spontaneously decide to poke your pencil into his curls but end up stabbing him in the temple. Your description of the scream Franken emitted, had me in tears.
It’s one of those things where I don’t think I thought about it in words. I had this really sharp pencil, and he had this really huge Jew-fro, and I just thought I’d stick it through there. Even if that happened it would have been weird. But then it just looked fucking crazy.
You also tell quite a few unusual tales about your childhood. Is the story about your grandmother—“Nana”—on her deathbed true?
Yeah, my sister Laura and I were sitting on either side of her, and she opened her eyes and went, “So beautiful.” And Laura and I were making light of it, “Oh, she’s talking about me.” “No, she’s talking about me.” And Nana gathered some breath and went, “Laura.”
You also tell the bizarre and chilling story about how in high school two jocks held you down in the school cafeteria while another forced a wad of cold cuts down your throat—because you were vegetarian.
Yeah, it was awful. It really felt rape-y.
I expected The Bedwetter to be funny—and it is—but what surprised me were some of the insights you share about yourself and your family. I didn’t expect you to be getting deep in this book.
I think I’ve had the benefit over of the years of having a couple great therapists. So, I’ve been able to think that way a little. I’m interested in that stuff.
A section of your book deals with the fallout of your 2001 appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, when you used the word “Chink” in a joke about racism. Given the manner in which NBC dealt with you at the time, do you have any take on the network’s treatment of Conan O’Brien over the Tonight Show debacle.
In retrospect, I understand it. NBC is a business. It’s a company. And they’re going to get more out of being loyal to their advertisers than to someone who’s on one of their shows as a guest. They’re selling soap, and I’m not the soap. In terms of the recent Conan stuff, I think it would have behooved NBC to have a little more loyalty in a situation where hundreds of people moved their lives from one coast to another and put their kids in new schools. I also think it would have behooved them to have a little trust that when Conan started in 93, he wasn’t the Conan that he was in 2000 or in 2005. Talk shows always take patience and time, and even though Conan was established at 12:30, 11:30 is a whole new thing. So you would think they would have given him more than five, six months to do that. That was pretty surprising, even for a kind of faceless corporation. But I just heard that he’s going to be on TBS, right?
Yes.
I think that’s great. I think people are going to go wherever he goes. There aren’t really channels anymore. People just watch what they want to watch. They don’t even know what time it’s on or what channel because they DVR it. You know? It’s almost like the way things are measured, ratings and stuff like that, has not caught up with the way people view television. So, I think NBC made a mistake, but I think Conan is going to be fine.
In light of the cultural changes that are going on right now, is it harder to do the kind of envelope-pushing humor you do than it was in, say, the 90s?
I never find it harder. I would find it harder if I was like, “I want to do what I do on NBC!” Then I would find it harder. Or, “I want to do what I do and be a millionaire!” You know what I mean? But with the Internet, there’s a big difference between the 90s and now: anyone can express themselves and do whatever they want to do and put it out there. And if it’s funny enough, people will see it, whether you’re in the middle of Ohio or you were a jack-ass playing World of Warcraft. Have you seen that? It’s a video where a bunch of guys are playing World of Warcraft, and they’ve been planning this thing to get to the next level for, like, weeks. But one of their guys—Leeroy Jenkins is his name—screams out his name and runs into the enemy… I can’t explain it, but it’s hilarious. I think people get threatened by that, but I think it’s great that anyone with the gumption can put themselves out there and do something. It’s like when you first saw Andy Milonakis, he was in his apartment in Queens making little videos and putting them out there. And someone saw it. And it’s great for someone like me. I can make a video on my couch and put it out there, like “The Great Schlep” and “Sell The Vatican, Feed The World.”
You were ahead of the curve on the Vatican. What motivated you to endure the torture of writing a book when you have the ability to make a YouTube video on your couch and reach hundreds of thousands of people?
It’s brutal, right? I’m so proud of this book, and I hope it does really well, but part of me goes, Well, what’s the reward for this doing well? Do I have to write another book? I don’t want to write another book.
I was surprised to read that you had written letters to Paris Hilton after a joke you told about her at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards while, unbeknownst to you, she was in the audience; and to Britney Spears after you did some material on her following her disastrous performance on the 2007 Music Video Awards. Did either of the women respond to your letters?
No. To be honest, with the Paris Hilton one, I found the envelope and it was sealed. And I thought, Oooh, did I ever send it? So, I can’t really say, “Oh, she never responded.” I really had every intention. I wrote the letter. But, I did feel bad.
I don’t want to give away too much of the book, but the behind-the-scenes account of how those incidents went down and how you felt about it is very interesting.
Usually my stand-up, whether it’s about race or about these people or those people, it’s always about a people and the idiot is me. And then, the only other times that I’ve been just brutal about people is at roasts where you’re doing it with love. But with MTV, I felt like the job really is to talk about pop culture and what’s going on, and I had no qualms with that. Like with the Paris Hilton thing, it was such a funny joke to me that I didn’t think twice. And in my defense, I think, Gee, you know, those jokes about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears are not dissimilar to any jokes on all of the talk shows every single night of the week. So, it felt odd that I was suddenly being portrayed as this cruel person. But, I also know that those girls are real people as much as we kind of just don’t think of them that way. And I also feel like I don’t want to be a grown woman who is hurting them.
I loved your line about thin, blonde white women being national symbols along with the Humvee and the Bald Eagle. Do you think there was a hint of anti-Semitism in the reaction to those jokes?
I’m not sure that if I was Chris Rock I would have gotten the same backlash. But that’s O.K. You hear things differently coming from different voices. It was what it was, but the next day, I just thought the reaction would be “A funny comedy routine,” and not, “She’s mean!” And the Britney stuff I did seemed, to me, innocuous, but it didn’t occur to me that she was going to have a meltdown. I didn’t watch her performance. I was going over my own stuff that I had been planning for a week. It wasn’t a case of me watching and immediately reacting.
O.K., now that we’ve done the deep stuff, let me get to the crude and superficial questions. In the book, you wrote that you have no interest in vaginas “except for their comedic value.” Off the top of your head, what are three funny things about vaginas?
Oh my God. I think just the word, the kind of instant uncomfortable factor. I think penis and vagina should be equal comedically, but they’re not. And it probably has something to do with how penises are external and dry and like an arm or an elbow. And vaginas have a whole situation—they’re like. Oh, I’m grossing myself out now. You know, like, labia majora, labia minora. Pubes.
What about penises with hairclips on them—like the one that’s depicted on page 209 of your book? Where does that fall on the humor scale?
I had to narrow it down to only one penis picture in the book.
Seriously?
Yeah—because there were a few. There was the picture we sent to the executive on the show Gary Mann for his birthday, which was either [writer] Harris [Wittels’s] or [writer and actor] Chris Romano’s penis, with my dog’s paw touching it. And we just sent that picture with a note that said, ‘Happy Birthday, Gary, from all of us at the Sarah Silverman Program.” And let’s see, there was Chris Romano’s penis poking through a napkin and him saying, “My dick just ate lobstah!” Harris Wittels’s penis with the hairclip had the best story.
Which is that another writer Chelsea Peretti left the hairclip in the writers’ room. What did she do with the hairclip once it was removed from Harris Wittels’s penis?
She probably just took it back. She’s like the funniest person I know. Women with the hairclips—you know, while we’re writing, it’s up. It’s down. It’s up. It’s in a ponytail. It’s in a bun. It’s down. But you don’t even feel it when you’re a woman. It’s like flicking the pen on and off. So, she was in the writers’ room and then she went down the hall to her office to work on a script. And we noticed the hairclip, so I put it on Harris’ penis, took a picture on my iPhone, and sent it to her.
Are the writers on your show required to be able to drop trou at a moment’s notice?
It’s nothing that I demand. I think it happens in every comedy room. Maybe not, actually. But I think a lot of times it’s something that guys do. It’s part of feeling free and feeling like anything goes. You need that kind of safety in a writers’ room. I don’t think that there’s anyone who worked on the show that would have been offended or upset. By the end, you walk on the set and [actor] Steve Agee’s balls are out of his fly, and you almost don’t laugh anymore. You’re just like, “Oh, hey.” It’s so normal. It’s kind of like porn actors. I always compare porn actors and comedians. Porn actors don’t get titillated by little things anymore. They need like eight midgets, a dildo and—
I think you also mention a bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo in the book. Is there an equivalent for women comedy writers in terms of letting it all hang out?
No, and I wouldn’t say—not all the guys take out their penises. It was really just Harris and Chris Romano. But I felt like I was letting it all hang out without taking my pants down or exposing myself. It’s more sexual with a woman. Boobs are boobs during sex or the middle of the day. But penises are like shriveled up raisins. It’s not like I ever saw them erect.
Speaking of sex, does Clive Owen know how you feel about him?
No. (Laughs.) I think I had just seen Duplicity when I wrote that.
He gets two or three mentions in the book.
He’s a go-to. I like him!
Are you and Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin still together.
Yes!
Does he know how you feel about Clive Owen?
Only from the book. Oh yeah, and after he read the book, he said, “You should see The International.”
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