Escape from New York

Escape from New York

Life might be easier for comedian Janeane Garofalo if she
stopped talking to the press. But she’s not about to shut up.
Commenting frequently on her strained relations with ‘SNL’ has
thrust her into the media spotlight.

By Michael Horowitz

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Hundreds of articles have quoted comedian Janeane Garofalo
lambasting "Saturday Night Live," and all the quotes are true.

But that’s only half the story.

"Unfortunately, the press is a lot responsible for getting me in
trouble," she says, "because they only print the worst of what you
say. Like any ‘SNL’ comments, they will leave out the fact that I
said ‘I want the show to do well,’ ‘I would love to be on that
show;’ they will only print ‘not sophisticated material.’ They have
made it so that as diplomatic as I try to be, only the most painful
part of the opinion will be printed."

The painfulness of the opinions printed hit its peak around late
winter, when Garofalo took a leave of absence from the show in
order to film the recently released Bye, Bye Love and The Truth
About Cats and Dogs, which she’s now filming with Uma Thurman.

Back in L.A. after a tough year in New York, Garofalo talks to
The Bruin about her tumultuous stay at "SNL," her relationship with
the press and her appreciation of the Internet. Still best known
for her character in Reality Bites and recurring character on "The
Larry Sanders Show," she’s working overtime to be as diplomatic as
possible, but the sheer number of subjects she has strong opinions
on often subvert her attempt at quotation control.

Exhibit A: Garofalo, who plays Randy Quaid’s nightmare date from
hell in Bye, Bye Love, describes guys she would not want to date:
"Music speaks volumes about people. If I get in the car and there’s
a guy my age blasting the Lion King soundtrack, or they’re into
some middle-of-the-road band like, I don’t like Bon Jovi. I like
the person Bon Jovi; I met him; he’s a really nice man, so if he
hears this, I don’t like the music ­ and if the guy has like
acid-wash denim or short hair on top, long hair in the back, any of
these red flags for me. I’m not saying they’re bad things, or those
guys in the Valley who wear white ankle boots, know what I mean?
White ankle boots with the jeans tucked in and a football jersey or
something. There’s certain looks that are indicative of certain
personality types."

She pauses to take a breath and moves on to "Saturday Night
Live," long worshipped as the mecca of sketch comedy, but
critically attacked for going downhill. Since the moment the press
heralded her arrival as "savior of ‘SNL’," she has been running
into problems with bad publicity.

"They painted it as if I thought that," she says. "I had to live
that down for weeks. I was not only the new kid, but the new kid
that no one liked."

Since then, she has been called in repeatedly to see producer
Lorne Michaels, who has advised her to be a little less candid with
the media. Unfortunately for him, Garofalo feels it’s important for
her to talk about "Saturday Night Live" and thus, she continues to
do so.

"I would very much like to be a part of ‘SNL’ if the commitment
is made to skew the material to a more sophisticated audience," she
says. "I would like nothing more than to be on ‘SNL’ for the rest
of my life, but what I found was increasingly hard to do was to
participate in sketches that in my subjective opinion, were not
what they could be.

"They can do any kind of show they want. God bless ’em, I hope
they go on and flourish, but I was just really disappointed that I
had to do things that I didn’t believe in."

Garofalo says she and fellow newcomers Mark McKinney and Chris
Elliot were promised upgrades in material before agreeing to join
the cast. "I was told it was going to change," she says. "I was
promised the world on a string going in."

Unfortunately, a season later, the sophistication of the
material hasn’t risen. She believes there are fundamental problems
with the show that keep it from being what it could be.

"There’s no writer in the world who can write a consistently
funny hour and a half on a weekly basis," she says. "Having said
that, we don’t have the best writers in the world. We have some
very good writers and some mediocre writers.

"We have a system that’s been in place for 20 years that does
not service the performer very well. We have some people who aren’t
as commited as they should be. And we have an element of the show
that is very willing to go to the 14-year-old high school boy in
the suburbs."

This blatant appeal to the mainstream culture is one of
Garofalo’s biggest aggravations, not just about "SNL," but about
all of entertainment.

"The people who … care about what goes in their earhole and
their eyehole and want good television and good movies," she says,
"they are not being catered to," she says. "We’ve got Miramax for
them, and Merchant-Ivory films and things like that. In only urban
areas."

These people are among her biggest fans, as she is most
well-known on the coasts and in cyberspace. Unfortunately, these
fans aren’t demographically powerful enough to support her work by
themselves.

"The masses who don’t have the Internet have Neilsen boxes," she
says. "They go see certain movies that are number one at the box
office that have no business getting financial backing. These
movies that feed into our culture of stupidity.

"I love the Internet (users), because they love me," she adds,
"but the Internet is very different from real life," she says, "and
very different from the entertainment business. I wish it was ruled
by the Internet, because I wouldn’t stop working."

She laughs as she ponders the idea.

"I’d be as famous as Sharon Stone if the Internet made
decisions."