Glass Shallot by Adam Baer | Adambaer.com

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) on Her Funniest "Note" [Exclusive, R-rated]

A few years ago, Rolling Stone kindly published a piece of mine about the funniest "studio notes" actors, writers, directors, and comedians have received from Hollywood producers and network execs. It was intended to be an oral history about receiving chortle-worthy criticism, a way to use these "notes" to tell some of comedy's best secret stories, and I hope we accomplished that goal, to some degree. (Note: the headline was not my first choice, but I am a team player, and I had a lot of fun working on the piece and eventual pride seeing it in RS.)

It was a dream assignment: I interviewed a score of hilarious celebs, producers and directors--from Mel Brooks and Garry Shandling to younger talents like David Wain ("Wet Hot American Summer"), Paul Scheer ("The League"), and Nick Stoller ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "The Five Year Engagement").

Everyone cracked me up, and the piece generated serious interest from one of the world's biggest book publishers. So I took some of the quotes from my many funny interviews that Rolling Stone had not picked for inclusion (page-space is limited at magazines), and my agent and I went out with a book proposal about how this could be a hilarious narrative project, especially given my access to so many people in the entertainment industry. Eventually, and ironically, the senior publishing exec didn't think the book would make money (I still disagree), and the project, which could now be a brilliant multimedia thing with video, great for iPads, was tabled.*

Alas, one of the many funny things Rolling Stone could not include--sadly rendering my collection of interview subjects 100% male--was my unforgettable, if short, interview with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars tonight in HBO's new series "Veep." I share this gem with you now. Word, for word, and I have this on tape, this is what one of the funniest actresses in comedy told me, on the record. Addendum: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a lovely, generous woman, with guts of steel, and I don't doubt she will continue to be a hit with audiences everywhere -- and to reiterate, I would not have posted this if she had not given me the quote on the record.

FUNNIEST STUDIO NOTE: JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS

"I have only one story that comes to mind, and I leave out names because that's a better idea.

But when I was very young and had just started on “SNL”--I believe I was 20--I did a sketch in which I played John DeLorean's wife...

In that sketch, my hair was blown out straight -- because her hair is straight.

So, we did the show, and the following day, I was called into one of our producers' offices (as a side note, I should say that I have naturally curly hair), and he said to me, “Julia, I got a call from a bunch of NBC executives after last night’s show, and they said that after seeing your hair straight, they all wanna fuck you.”

This was apparently his way of trying to entice me into straightening my hair for the rest of season.

Needless to say: I was young and naïve, but I was so shocked that anyone would say anything like that, I just burst out laughing in a hysterical way. I didn't know what else to do.

Years later, when "Seinfeld" was becoming somewhat of a hit, I ran into the same producer at NBC again.

And he said to me, “Hey, Julia, I see they're letting you do your hair the way you want now."

That's apparently all he took away from my “Seinfeld” contribution.

The irony of it was that not only did I make my hair curly on "Seinfeld," which may have been a huge mistake now that I think about it, but I enhanced the curl and made it HUGE!

I wonder if that hair wasn't some kind of reaction.

I was saying: 'Not only is this hair going to be curly, it's going to be crazy curly. Take that, motherfucker!!'"

--as told to Adam Baer

 

*Tabled in this case means I stopped pursuing it. I'm open to pursuing it again, though, especially with a new class of today's funniest people.

Did Facebook Delete A Writer's Attempt to Use Timeline as a Narrative Tool?

Today I posted "content" in an attempt to use Facebook Timeline in a humorous, narrative way; I was kidding a little, but I thought it could be fun to really use the software to create a comedic, serialized micro-narrative made of short status updates. The post was commented on by a couple of friends, and then removed by someone other than me. I then discussed this in another status update with those same friends. That was then promptly removed by someone other than me. I then reposted the content twice, and now I do not see any of this on my page. If Facebook would like people to care about its IPO -- and that's a foregone conclusion, they do, because billions of dollars are concerned, but let's talk about regular people -- they should not delete writers' attempts to use their tools to create and engage with an audience, in jest or more serious ways. The aforementioned content (copied below) is far from genius and merely average, but I posted it here, which is less "buggy" a virtual "place" and likely watched by fewer programmers who police and react to user content. Perhaps this was all just FB software problems...but if so, who can trust FB with content you do not backup elsewhere. I mean, what if this stuff was actually good?

Here is the attempt at humor I posted, related to the ABC Show Revenge. Do you find it inappropriate?

"When I was 10, a high-school senior in my Monte Cristo-like neighborhood was hired to hang out with and shoot hoops with me before my parents returned home from work. One day, the kind young man suggested I find someone to buy me a tape of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” So, I did, and the next time he appeared, he “borrowed” it, never to return or answer our many calls again. Now, as a rational adult, I plan to use Facebook Timeline, narratively, to track down this man for a final confrontation. Would any of you care to follow this meaningful adventure? I shall call it “My Facebook ‘Revenge’ / Season One: Born to Run.”

I shall move slowly, follow clues, keep my emotions at bay, and friend anyone close to this man and his especially heinous crime, crossing each one off my list one by one. It will be sweet to one day recover this low quality recording, if it still exists, uncompressed and possibly warped. But the ultimate prize will be hearing this man sing under duress the lyrics: “The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive / Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide.”

 

AFTERNOON UPDATE: Facebook was briefly down this morning, and I wouldn't want to think they'd target one person, so it's quite possible that's what happened. Still, the "dangerous"  keywords used in my posts could have triggered a moderator or bot to remove them at different times (people observed their staggered removal individually), and the critique and untraditional use of Timeline the day after FB's IPO announcement is definitely something they might try to quash. 

The important issue remains: Can we trust FB to hold our original life-content as Timeline promises? I'd use a few backups, and make sure you already own the rights to anything you publish anywhere.

Medical Marijuana in LA: "Hit and Miss" in the Financial Times Magazine (FT Weekend)

 

This weekend, The Financial Times Magazine runs a hopefully informative and humorous personal essay [PDF] about my mysterious health travails and experience with LA's medical marijuana world at an crucial point in the battle to legalize cannabis in California. It's also online in web-friendly html page-format here, @ FT.com.

Naturally, I thought long and hard about what kinds of supplementary material I could offer on my blog. But we sadly only present words and stuff we can roll and/or bake into Web code  Glass Shallot. In that spirit, then let me offer a small chunk of text my editors and I had to cut at the last minute for page-space. It concerns the first dispensary I visited in Hollywood, one of the shops LA will close, where the system -- and the product -- actually worked very well. (Text below)

 

 

"More concerned with convenience than finding a boutique shop that sold Valrohna chocolate cupcakes, I first visited Druggie Christmas Tree Girl’s dispensary: a dank space above a seedy Hollywood motel, manned by a hulking Middle Eastern guy with a shaved head, wearing an elegantly dizzying Ed Hardy T-shirt. He screamed my name the way some thug had screamed at Jason Statham in an action movie I once reviewed. Naturally, I trusted him.

     “What iz dis?” the guy asked, taking my letter through a little hole in the wall that separated the real store from the waiting room.

     “It’s my doctor’s recommendation," I said.

     “I never see something like dis, yo.”

     “Well,” I said, “It’s real.”

     “I see dat, dude. But I still gotta call.”

     Yes, this sketchy drug-dealer type was calling a nationally lauded physician because of me. 

He left the window, I heard some mumbling. He reappeared minutes later.

     “You in,” he said. “He OK it.”

     “You spoke with my actual doctor, not some nurse or assistant?” I asked. 

    “Totally,” he said. “Now whaddayou want?”

     I walked into a tiny, smoky space through a cage-protected door, and he showed me some 10 canisters of fragrant weed. I asked for something to alleviate pain – nerve pain, if that meant anything?

     “Bubba Skunk,” he said. “That’s you shit.”

    “That’s my shit,” I concurred, handing over $50 for a pill bottle filled with buds.

     “How much should I use?” I asked.

    “Howev much you want, homeslice.” 

Then I left, and as I waved my new drugs around the seedy eastern side of Hollywood Boulevard, as a man in a doo-rag drove by me on a miniature bicycle powered by a tiny motor, my wife grabbed the bag and told me to hide it.

“But it’s legal,” I said.

“But this isn’t Brentwood!"

Avatar's Zoë Saldana and Chef Jose Andres: A Writer's Struggle

I struggle, like all artists, and nowhere is this more evident than in the rough-and-tumble assignments I completed last fall for publication in a variety of December magazines: a short Details magazine profile of  Zoë Saldana (above) and a Hemispheres feature on chef Jose Andres. Sometimes I must also dig ditches.

Cleveland Show Calling: The Kanye West Table Read

Recently, GQ posted a little one-question Q&A that I conducted with the co-creators of Fox's new "The Cleveland Show," premiering September 27. Below, is a piece about attending a table-read at the show's offices last spring, followed by a longer transcript of our conversation. 

 

Grab a folding chair in the front row; avoid clumsy boom-mic gaffers; sit close to the guest stars; caffeinate. These are but a few actions you will enjoy if you’re one of the animators, production staff, agents, TV execs, writers, and miscellaneous VIPs invited to a table-read for The Cleveland Show, Fox’s "Family Guy" spinoff (premiering September 27) centered around Peter Griffin’s lovable African American neighbor. 

On the day that I drop by, last spring, in the Wilshire Boulevard offices, the scene is business as usual. Nearly. Superagent Ari Emanuel, the brother of the new White House Chief of Staff, is observing (he represents the show’s co-creator, Simpsons writing-staff alum Rich Appel). Actress Taraji P. Henson has a guest spot, fresh off her Oscar nomination for “Benjamin Button.” In the house, wearing a sharp white shirt, as well is spiky haired executive producer and "Family Guy" mastermind Seth MacFarlane, the highest paid and most identifiable comedy writer in the world--see a new slew of Hulu TV ads in which aliens unfurl from his stomach. Then there’s the day's most notable guest-star: Kanye West—quiet and composed, decked out in black, neon-yellow hightops, and his trademark oversized Wayfarers. (Sadly, Arianna Huffington, who plays a talking bear, is absent.)

“The Cleveland Show,” if this is the first you're hearing of it because you don't live and breathe in America, is an attempt to recast the "Family Guy's" gentle deli owner as the patriarch of a new family in Rhode Island, where he lives with his gullible son, Cleveland, Jr., his new wife Roberta, and her ghettoriffic son, Rallo. But did you know America’s most heavily anticipated new African American sitcom’s really the brainchild of Mike Henry, a pale, 44-year-old white guy with easy smile from Richmond, V.A.?  As the source of Cleveland’s laconic whine and the gritty growls of Rallo, Henry seems as if he could just be some soccer dad from the burbs—and it’s a pretty surreal thing to watch, as he vacillates with epic smoothness between urban voice-archetypes as if somewhere inside him is a class clown from the South Side of Chicago. 

From the confines of his office, he says no one’s really ripped into him for doing black-voice—but that's just got to be a testament to how well he pulls it off. “Here Cleveland’s not just the Black Friend, but a much fuller, well-rounded character than he ever was," Henry adds. Appel, a former Harvard-educated lawyer who literally runs the read by announcing the script’s action as fast and naturally as a New York City auctioneer, sharpens the point: “There's a tradition in animated shows, and it’s a virtue that people often aspire to: colorblind casting. You have grown women playing Bart Simpson and Bobby Hill, and Hank Azaria as Apu.  We have Kevin Michael Richardson, who is African American,and while he plays Cleveland, Jr., he also plays one of our most redneck, potentially racist [white] characters.”

An admitted “Family Guy” fan, Kanye is—surprise!—playing a character based on himself: a freestylin’ ladies man who competes for a chick with roley-poley Cleveland Jr. through a rap battle at a Jewish neighbor’s house. Picking up a Menorah, he spits: “This voodoo shit’s got nine candles/Your fat ass got nine loooove handles.” Kanye reads OK, if a little slowly, on the fly, but it's not half as magnetic as hearing him perform his own stuff—or, for that matter, posturing for attention on the VMAs.  Voiced smoothly with spot-on syncopation by actor Kevin Michael Richardson, Cleveland, Jr.'s retort wins: “Your flow is fated ‘n’ dated, deflated ‘n’ constipated. If I had to rate it? Hate it. Translated—you ate it… Hey cheeseball, you been grated. Chewed up, swallowed, defecated…On the DVD this won’t be pixilated.” 

Yep, this thing's written by the Family Guy crew.

And, expectedly, the in-crowd eats it up with cheers and measured guffahs. By the end, everyone’s congratulating each other, posing for snaps, and milling out to the hallway where a giant Cleveland cut-out stands in front of a large table of craft-service goodies. What I can’t forget, however, as Ari Emanuel offers Our Rap Icon a high-five handshake—power connection!—is how Hollywood rarely contrasts with its meta-depictions on shows like “Entourage.” To wit, the way Appel introduced the day’s Rhymin' Guest Star star an hour earlier: “The man who will appear two weeks from Saturday at my son’s Bar Mitzvah, I hope… Kanye West!”

*   *   *

As with any reported piece, there's often at least one Q&A behind it. For the true Cleveland fan, here's a three-way phoner I did with the show's co-creators after attending the Kanye Table Read...

Never Byrne-d Out

In the course of interviewing David Byrne for this short piece about his design work and music in May's Departures Culturewatch section, I realized that Shallot friend Hillman Curtis had done a really cool commercial (embedded above) for Byrne's joint album with Brian Eno "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." For people who aren't in the know (which could have been me if I had not done this piece, sadly), the album has been freely streamable on the Web for some time. For those who like to hold amazing design in your hands and play with dice, you can still buy a Sagmeister-designed Deluxe (CD) Package that includes an original Hillman Curtis film about the album as well as a full book and other goodies (watch a video that explains the contents here). 

Byrne told me the following about why the duo decided to offer the album in these different forms. "We had both been thinking about the changes the music business has been going through," he said. "There are now many more ways that musicians can get their messages across than before, though the industry typically lags behind. We decided to try some of those out for ourselves by initially selling the record exclusively through our website and allowing people to stream the whole album if they simply wanted to hear what it was like.  It just seemed obvious. I wanted to sing these songs more, so I asked my booking agents to book some tours -- so that kind of gave the project an endpoint -- and the only way to get the music out to people before the tour started was to make it available online.  That said, there are many among us who still love a physical object. A well-designed package can enhance the experience. It used to be that an eye-catching package helped sell a record: it would shout at you like a box of laundry detergent. But I don't think CD package design is meant to do that anymore. Now it's more about adding another layer to the experience. I'd worked with Stefan (Sagmeister) many times before, so he was a natural choice."

Other questions broached in my interview included prompts about the joy of performing.  "At my age and situation, I don't need to tour simply for financial reasons (though I do make money touring)," Byrne said. "Though I would love to believe otherwise, I don't think touring sells many records either. I do it for two reasons: it's immensely pleasurable these days and because I can (immodestly, I can say that I do know how to perform and put on a show). The show we've created -- the band, crew, singers, dancers, choreographers, etc. -- is like nothing I've ever done before, so though half of the show consists of older material, it's been placed in a new context. At some point, performing changed from being a thing that I psychologically had to do into something that was actually pleasurable. Some edge in my demeanor might have been lost with those changes, but songs from that period remain, so the edginess can be dredged back up."

Byrne, as the article points out, also writes the music to the HBO show Big Love (coming back soon), which actually opens with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's "God Only Knows," so I was curious as to how he might add music to such a thoroughly branded motion picture experience.  "It's an interesting show and doing a score like this allows one to exercise some musical muscles one doesn't always use," Byrne said. "It's good to stretch oneself sometimes, to get out of a comfort zone, which forces some kind of creative response. Initially I thought I'd try to base much of the music on Mormon hymns -- not use them but write in that style. Having seen the 1st season, I sensed that many of the characters felt that their behavior and decisions were based on deep spiritual beliefs -- as wacky and unusual as some of it might seem to us. I therefore imagined that hymn-type chord progressions and melodies would hint at this spiritual underpinning without saying it out loud. The hope was also that this music would also help one empathize with the characters, even, or maybe especially, with some of the more extreme ones. Music can hint at their motivations and justifications, where their hearts are despite what we see them doing. Well, in the end, that approach only worked a few times: it tended to draw attention to itself and to draw you out of the intimate scale of the drama. That music tended to pull you back to a God's eye view of things -- yes, music can do that. So, in the end I had to use other muscles and write some other material that was subtler, more character driven."

Intriguing, especially for film music buffs (of which there are few, apparently). More au courant, perhaps, was Byrne's answer to my question about how he and Eno both influence(d) each other.  He answered: "The process of using the recording studio as a writing tool was something a few of us learned from Brian. Not that he was the only one to do it, but they way he encouraged us in Talking Heads (and myself) to start from zero and create new tracks was something we were ready for...it was the right idea, the right nudge, at the right moment. It wasn't that strange, really, as it basically was taking the writing process, which usually goes on in one's head, hidden, invisible, or little my little with a guitar in hand and some notepaper in front, and it made it all -- the creative process -- explicit, visible, and most important for potential collaborators, available for others to enter into. How did Talking Heads and myself influence Brian? I think we encouraged him to be a little more funky, more groove oriented."

Uncurbed Enthusiasm

Usher in this new Jewish year (and this is an offer  open to atheist shunners of organized religion, believe me!) with this new Salon profile of former "Curb Your Enthusiasm" director Robert B. Weide. The former documentarian sees his feature directorial debut this week, but, for "Curb" fans, his Web site, duckprods.com, offers some facts about the show you want to know.  (Incidentally, Weide won one of his Emmy awards for one of our favorite "Curb" episodes, "Crazee Eyes Killah" [related pic above]).

Rolling Shallot

See the Shallot-authored "Tales from the Writers' Room" in today's Rolling Stone (RS 1061), featuring interviews with Mel Brooks, Garry Shandling, David Wain, and other comedy all-stars.

And check out the issue's thorough survey of some of the funniest mouths on issues like their big breaks and funniest jokes, as well as a telling Letterman Q&A.

An excerpt from the interview I conducted with Robin Williams:

My Favorite Joke:
"Guy’s having sex with his wife. All of a sudden he looks over, and there in the doorway is his son, about eight years old. Kid looks horrified, and the kid runs away. The guy says to his wife, “Well, I’d better talk to Timmy.” He puts on his clothes and goes to Timmy’s room. He opens the door, and there’s Timmy nailing Grandma. The father goes, “Oh, my God!” And the kid goes, “Not so funny when it’s your mom, is it?”--Robin Williams, RS 1061

And stay tuned for more online extras from the writer's cutting room floor.

 

Oh, My Word: Omaha's "Whatevs" Disaster. News as it Breaks.

The news is slowly creeping out of Nebraska Methodist Hospital. But apparently three ordinarily healthy septuagenarian Omaha librarians are still in critical care after suffering simultaneous cardiac arrests this morning when they were struck by news so grammatically and linguistically abominable that they could not maintain homeostasis. Margaret Dubrovic, 71, head librarian at Omaha's central library system, was reportedly enjoying a routine morning when her latest copy of The New Yorker magazine arrived in the mail. Allegedly, Dubrovic looked forward with great verve to the arrival of her private subscription copy and had been rumored to read half of the entire periodical well before the end of morning on delivery days with friends and co-librarians Betsy O'Neill, 74, and Edith Cooper, 76, both of whom also suffered cardiac arrests. But this morning the group happened upon what junior librarian Thomas DeBouef, 23, could only call "literary blasphemy of the highest proportions." The insidious word "whatevs," a slang term for "whatever" used by the so-called Britney Generation and the blog whatevs.org, apparently found its way into music critic Sasha Frere-Jones's recent review of the latest Coldplay album. And while the estimable writer had likely used the term in the most tongue-in-cheek manner, it even appeared as a one-word sentence--capitalized, of course. "He didn't have to go that far," said DeBouef, whose grandfather Eli, 89, also works in the library as a volunteer and suffered minor whiplash from today's events. "There's no doubt in my mind that the act of literally seeing such a word, if you can call it that, printed in the magazine these ladies have held so dear to their literary hearts for so many years caused their simultaneous tragedies. It's a damn shame." Of course, one Generation X reporter cannot help but wonder, in the words of character Carrie Bradshaw from the HBO show "Sex and the City," what septuagenarian librarians were hoping for from a review of a Coldplay album in the first place. "They weren't as shocked as many of their friends were that The New Yorker had taken to reviewing popular music so substantively over the last few years," added Debouef.  "They rather liked Coldplay, and as the article said, they often played the album 'Parachutes' during their afternoon tea sessions as a means to relax from the stress of their jobs." For now, however, the implicit danger posed by a simple unsubstantiated slang term such as "whatevs" is all an entire community can cling to for some explanation as to why their best librarians are on leave from the city's hottest reading room. More news as it breaks. In the meantime, get better, girls.

aclu does it for the thrill of privacy

[Cross-published at The Huffington Post ]

Today the AP reports the ACLU is arguing that all those adventuresome spirits who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy. Public Bathrooms! And this is the ACLU fighting on behalf of Sen. Larry Craig. Call me crazy--or just a politician: But it's not like this wacko news is coming from the Scientology Celebrity Centre or Dr. Phil. It's coming from the ACLU. (While I know the organization isn't officially a Democratic one, c'mon.) Larry Craig needs the ACLU's help? Who's steering the ship these days?

The last time I had sex in a public bathroom—be nice, and allow a humble writer this wet-and-wild, oh-so-sanitary dream—I had no belief that my act was private. That's why I had sex in the bathroom. It's the trill of the public space that drives me and my multiple random partners. I can't speak for Craig, though. As if trying to withdraw a guilty plea in a case like this isn't silly enough? I hardly think public sex is disorderly conduct as defined by the American legal system. It's straight-up disorderly but in the more attractive, entropic kind of way. Still, them's the rules in this here country.

The point concerns privacy. Privacy isn't provided where we need it most: in the HIPAA-protected halls of our finest hospitals as doctors and nurses and health workers speak patients' names and diagnoses aloud before they render it incredibly difficult for you to get your own records—all due to "privacy." When I log onto my e-mail account, I see adds related to the subjects I've written about; I know bots aren't human—though I do suspect they're more human than some of us. Still, it's nice to know there's no privacy in e-mail. Or snail mail: More than a few letters in the past few months have arrived at my home opened and clearly fondled. I know it's exciting to read about what I owe my dentist's office--or to see a paltry check from a low-paying magazine--if not to steal one!--but at least have the decency to seal the thing back up empty.

Furthermore, I can't so much as go somewhere without the GPS chip in my cellphone—I bought it thinking it'd help me get somewhere quicker and easier—telling some large governmental agency where I am. (I guess it will save me if I go into the wild--but it will also tell them when I'm in public bathrooms having my sex.) Even this blog post will refer to an IP address that will let all of you know I'm sitting on my couch in Southern California. Thankfully, there's no record of what I'm watching on cable--wait, wrong again.

But fortunately, what I had for breakfast *is* private. It's my personal business if I should choose to eat three whole eggs and cheese when the men's magazine I write for tells me under my byline to eat egg whites. But if I buy those egg whites in a restaurant, where they take my credit card number—some still exist where they leave the full number on your receipt, as we all know—I've clearly given up my right to privacy.

And let me just tell you: sometimes I eat naughtier food than just three eggs. Sometimes I get fries. And sausage. And shakes. So why in [insert divine being here]'s name should a senator—or anyone—get a right to privacy in a bathroom where they have chosen to have sex? And why should the ACLU lobby on this person's behalf when he contrasts so clearly to the issues for which they used to stand?

I don't have the answers. But I will not stop asking the questions. Unlike Tom Cruise in his recent Scientology video, I don't "know." In fact, it seems I just know less and less every day. And I'm proud to admit that in public.