It is just as painful to me when I do poorly. If the fault is all mine, that's what's painful. If it's a situation where no one could have succeeded, I don't feel as bad.
The teabagger thing and the right-wing thing - they pick easy targets, and a female in the entertainment industry is low-hanging fruit. It's very easy to mock and marginalize people in general who are in the entertainment industry, for some reason. But then definitely there's the double standard and the misogyny that goes through it as well.
The directing thing, to do it well, I think you have to have a hell of a lot more discipline than I do, or be a lot more willing to really take charge of whole large group of people than I feel comfortable doing - because a director really has to run everything, and be very confident in their ability to do so.
You get pigeonholed by what you sort of look like. And I don't mean this in a self-deprecating way. I'm grateful for any opportunity to act. But I think that if you're not classically attractive or mainstream attractive, especially as you get older, there's only like three jobs that people think you do. Like, "police officer who may be gay." District attorney is a big one. Lawyer. Doctor.
You know, I have no web presence, and I don't know that there's many people who really do know me that much anymore.
Unfortunately, I am not one of those comics where it's guaranteed that I hit it out of the park every time. You know, I am not completely reliable. It's always different, and it's a complete crapshoot whether I'm going to do well.
I think what hinders the argument is when people are afraid of hurting the feelings of racists and people who are genuinely - some of them - out of their minds. They demand to see Obama's birth certificate. They claim that he wants to kill our grandparents with his health care. They want to be able to carry their guns into every public place. Why do we need to coddle these people?
I was terrified of being on television - and also I overcompensated, I'm sure, because I know I did this in my personal life too at the time, when I was younger.
I don't know why in this country we coddle corporate criminals, war criminals, and racists. People walk on eggshells around them, and yet they will say a word like "liberal" as if it's pejorative. Or somebody who wants unions or reproductive justice, they will treat them like there's something wrong with that person. Does that make sense? People seem to be more frightened of upsetting a war criminal or a racist and more willing to disparage a very nice guy like Dennis Kucinich. Does that make sense?
It's not like I would see anyone and be like, "Oh yes, that person looks like maybe I had an impact on them." I don't think I did. I don't think I ever was that well known, to have an impact. And I haven't seen comics that I go, "Oh, yes! That person is terribly unprepared, with their notebook, and going off on 50 tangents. There you are. That's me."
I definitely get the sense that I'm an elder statesman, but I don't know if there's an impact - and I'm not saying that in a naïve way. I don't know. I think anybody who's been doing it for 25 years is going to be considered an elder statesman. But I don't know if I've impacted anyone.
Like I said, I'm just grateful when anyone offers me a job. It's like, "Okay. I'll do it." FBI agent is one, too, when you get older. When you're kind of an older lady hard-ass, FBI tends to happen. It's just because I'd like to work rather than not work, so I'm just happy if somebody wants me to do anything.
I don't even know why somebody's Twittering as me. I don't understand it, and I wish that it would stop. But there's nothing that can be done. It's so terrible.
If you don't recognize the racist element in the teabag movement, you're either dishonest, or you've never seen the teabag movement, or heard of it, or been acquainted with it in any way.
I think people are very cynical with actors trying to tell them what to believe in, or lobbying for any kind of changing of government policy. Even I get cynical about it. Like, Why is Sharon Stone telling me this? And there's just something annoying about having Charlie Sheen tell me, "It's your responsibility to vote," in an admonishing way on MTV.
Sometimes there's a lot of tangents because I forget what I'm going to say so much. Sometimes there's very little tangents and stuff for some reason, and then some nights it's all tangents and I can't find my way, and then sometimes I wind up just talking about something completely extemporaneously and then never mention it again ever. It's just completely different.
As you can tell from watching the show, I'm not a strong joke writer per se.
Sometimes I am very pleased with lifestyle and sometimes I feel utterly worthless because I have so few interests.
I'm not a big fan of the comics competing against each other.
I was too ignorant to realize, "Oh, this will be difficult."
I wound up getting a lot of other opportunities in the nineties, and then sort of as quickly as it started, it just as quickly ended around 2001. And so yeah, I'd love to continue acting but it's just not up to me.
I would tell the Democrats in Washington who are trying to be civil with the "bipartisanship" to please stop and let the joker die once and for all, let the agents of chaos hit the pavement, stop picking them up.
I didn't start acting until I was 27, and that was just through Gary Shandling and Ben Stiller who I knew through stand-up. And they both in the same year offered me parts on their programs which was unbelievably lucky and fortuitous.
I was just utterly oblivious to how difficult it was, and how difficult it was going to be, and then also in the mid-eighties through the mid-nineties there was a boom of sorts. So there were plenty of stages. If I had started now, there would be very few places to get better and better.
I make jewelry occasionally. I'm not a hobbyist. I'm a reader, I'm a lover of books, I like to watch movies, but mostly a lot of nothing. I'm quite content doing very little.
