Don't Worry, Be Funny |
The Sun Herald
Saturday June 26, 1993
RITA Rudner, the comedian who could read a shopping list on stage and have people in hysterics, hates telling jokes off stage.
Ask her for one those off-beat gags that audiences adore, on topics such as having a baby or keeping pets, and she whines in her distinctive, little-girl voice.
So, jokes are out. But she graciously tells one anyway - with an Australian angle.
"I think kangaroos have a good deal. I like that pouch set-up. I'd have a baby too if it would get bigger in a handbag."
Talking from her Los Angeles home, where she lives with her English husband Martin Bergman, Rudner, who is ranked as one of the world's top comics, became serious on the subject of comedy.
Away from the spotlight many comics are anything but funny, she says.
"In reality, those who become comedians are quiet people who no-one would ever think would become a comedian. People who are the life of the party become insurance salesmen.
"Most comedians have a dark side and comedy is born out of lots of things going wrong, not things going right. Whatever you're worrying about in your life makes its way onto the stage.
"My act is made up of life; whatever happens when you're awake - having a relationship with a man, growing older and worrying about the things that everyone worries about."
Rudner didn't always plan to be a comic. She grew up in Miami and left home at 15 to become a Broadway dancer. But in her mid-20s she decided there were better prospects in comedy than in dancing: "I realised that George Burns was still making movies and that Gene Kelly hadn't worked in a long time."
The career change paid off.
For more than a decade Rudner has turned her quirky observations and her angst into riveting routines, or what she calls "therapy with punchlines".
And it's all done with wide-eyed innocence and deadpan delivery, like Snow White with a bad case of world-weariness.
One dilemma she is facing now that she's 38 and married is whether or not to have a baby. And Rudner is at her best with baby gags.
"Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside. I don't want to have children because my friends tell me what they go through, that you can be in labour for 36 hours. I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours."
But Rudner is solving the baby problem in stages. At the moment she and her husband are keeping pet fish, she says in her breathy little voice.
"We're working our way up the evolutionary scale. We went from plants to fish. That's where we stopped because a lot of the fish died and we thought we should get better at fish before we go on.
"We've been discussing a dog. Martin wanted a dog lately but I don't see it yet. We've had test dogs. My friends have brought their dogs round and we like them.
"But we have a house with lots of stairs and I just picture the dogs running off a balcony chasing after a bird and I can't do that. I just can't get a dog."
After years as a stand-up comic and with of string of highly successful UK and American comedy specials under her belt, Rudner has crossed over to films
Last year she made her film-acting debut in the British-made Peter's Friends (also starring Kenneth Branagh and his Oscar-winning wife Emma Thompson).
Rudner co-wrote the film with her writer, comedy-producer husband and the couple plan to write many more scripts for American and British films. Three of their scripts are currently being circulated around Hollywood studios. And Rudner, who has done several successful comedy shows in Australia and loves the country, says whe would like to make a film here in the near future.
Peter's Friends received mixed reviews in America but was a hit in England where it won the Peter Sellers' Comedy Award.
The film is about six slightly whacky, university friends who meet for a 10-year reunion in the draughty, palatial pile that Peter (Stephen Fry) has just inherited.
It becomes obvious early on that their weekend together will be a "reunion in hell" with each character working up to a neurotic personal crisis. There's plenty of high drama and some hilarious moments.
Rudner plays an American actress, Carol ("I couldn't do an English accent")who's married to one of the members of the group. Carol is a Hollywood eccentric - picky, bitchy and obsessive, especially about fitness and diet. She travels with gym equipment in her suitcases and instead of the soup course at dinner she sips hot water from her soup dish.
Carol is a fictional character but her deadpan style and wisecracks are pure Rudner. In one scene she tries to do a makeover job on the very plain, awkward Maggie (Thompson), who's trying to crack on to Peter.
Carol says Maggie is pretty but "you make Mother Teresa look like a hooker".
Rudner would like to do more films with English comedians, whom she adores, particularly John Cleese. Her self-deprecating humour meshes easily with British comedy.
"I like making fun of myself and I think people should be able to make fun of themselves. Americans take themselves much more seriously."
Americans making speeches at the Oscars is a classic example she says.
"It's a movie. Why not get up and say 'Thank you' and just get off. They accept these things as if they were the Nobel Peace Prize."
But jokes aside, now that Rudner is tackling the Hollywood system herself she sympathises with the over-reaction at awards time.
"I'll tell you why they really do it. It's so hard to get a movie off the ground in America; a movie that's a hit that your peers like and that the critics like.
"By the time most of these people are accepting an award they have been working on a project for maybe 10 to 15 years.
"When you hear the story of how these people had to get their movie made and how many times the financing fell out and stars fell out; how the film was originally meant for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn but ended up with Melanie Griffiths and Don Johnson, you understand how they get so emotional by the time they reach the Oscars.
"And there are wonderful comedies made in America but it's not often you see vulnerability coming out in them.
"Comedy is about the funny things that are wrong with me and with everyone else. Americans have a bit of a problem there.
"That's probably why there are so many therapists in America. I've got a friend who's getting divorced and she's got a therapist and he's got a therapist.
"The kid has a therapist and the wife was thinking of getting the dog a therapist as well because it was barking more lately."
And how about a farewell joke bringing together a few of Rudner's worries.
"I worry what my children would be like because my husband is English and I'm American. They will probably be rude but disgusted by their own behaviour."
* Peter's Friends opens nationally on Thursday.
© 1993 The Sun Herald