Janeane Garofalo on Ratatouille

I don't think I'm alone here, but it's not said often enough. I always thought Janeane Garofalo was hot. Remember that movie The Truth About Cats and Dogs? I hated it because I totally wanted Janeane more than Uma anyway, so I didn't buy the whole idea. (Granted, that was before Uma's buff Kill Bill days). Janeane Garofalo is still at it in the comedy world and now she's a voice Pixar's movie Ratatouille. She plays Collette, the only female chef in a French kitchen. If she really spoke with that accent, no guy could ever resist her.

Janeane Garofalo: Because it's sexy, like Betty Blue. Did you see Betty Betty Blue by Jean-Jacques Beineix? Rent it and then you'll answer your own question. When you see that girl and her French accent. Well, it's not an accent to her. It's her voice. And there's also so many, Bridget Bardot, Emmanuelle Seigner, Emmanuelle Beart. There are so many beautiful French actresses that have this quality that we view as great sexuality and they also are much more comfortable with their bodies and much more open sexually. So I think that's why it seems like it's sexier. But having said that, that's why it's one of the Romance languages. German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew when spoken by certain people sounds beautiful. There's this beautiful woman I know who speaks Hebrew and when she speaks, it's so attractive. Maybe it's who's speaking it.

Crave Online: Have you ever felt like Collette before as the only girl in any situation? On movies with all guys maybe?

Janeane Garofalo: I would say that contemporary society is fairly obviously white male dominated. That's just the nature of the beast. In stand-up, probably when I started in '85, there were certainly less women than there are now, but it's difficult for anyone transcending gender. It's very difficult when you're starting out doing stand-up. It's just that there's an added problem when you're a female doing standup that it's just an accepted trope "Women aren't as funny as men. Women aren't as funny." So you're starting at that deficit. Also, a lot of club managers, especially in the '80s, never wanted to book two women on one show because they felt it could lose the audience. So there wouldn't be as many opportunities to work. Or, if there was a female there headlining one week, they didn't want to have a female headlining the next week, even though there's not the same rules for men. But there would also be unspoken rules about comics of color back then. "You don't want to have more than one black guy on a show." God forbid a black woman. People don't get away with that anymore and there's certainly an enormous amount of diversity that exists now in the arts that wasn't there in the early-mid '80s.

Crave Online: Did you work with Brad Bird when you were on The Simpsons as yourself?

Janeane Garofalo: I don't know if he was there. I literally walked in, did that line or two, boom, thanks, bye. I met no one. I have no idea. He may very well have been there but I met no one. I literally walked in and somebody said, "Say this. Scene." That was it.

Crave Online: Is there any room for improvising in this?

Janeane Garofalo: Not really because there's people animating the dialogue as you're doing it so it would be rude to change it and then have "Hey guys, that word you spent eight hours on, she didn't say it." So no. It wouldn't have been polite to improvise too much.

Crave Online: Have you tried any recipes from Ratatouille?

Janeane Garofalo: I don't cook. And even if I did cook, it's far above my pay grade cook-wise. I don't have that kind of time. But no, I'm not a cook. I like to watch the Food Network but I don't like to cook.

Crave Online: What do you get out of watching Food Network then?

Janeane Garofalo: I don't know. I don't know but I watch Paula Deen, Nigella Lawson, and Giada De Laurentiis and Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain when he was on. Sometimes I watch $40 a Day and Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels. I don't like 30 Minute Meal and I don't like Iron Chef and I don't like Emeril. Not that I don’t like Emeril, I just don't like those shows that much. But I love a nice cooking show. It's as aesthetically pleasing as any other thing that tempts the senses I suppose.

Crave Online: Do you get requests for your old bits?

Janeane Garofalo: Unfortunately, and I don't understand that because you've heard it obviously because you're requesting it. It's weird. It's very strange, like "No, you say it." Sometimes I have the audience, I say, "You tell it. You probably know it better than me." So I like to let the person say it. And usually they get it wrong which is weird because they're the ones that seem to like it so much. And then there will be times when I don't remember at all what the person's talking about. They're like, "Well, I saw you in Houston in 1989 and you did this thing about salad dressing." Well, I have no idea what that was but thank you, that's nice that you thought so well of it.

Crave Online: How hard is it acting then, to keep the same lines fresh?

Janeane Garofalo: Very hard for me. For other actors, they don't have a problem with it at all. They're far more professional than I. It bugs the sh*t out of me to do the same thing over and over and over. Especially when it wasn't that well written to begin with. That kills me. And it's like, "I'm telling you Mr. or Mrs. Director, take 14 is not going to get any better than take two because I'll tell you, this writing stinks." That drives me nuts. Especially if they don't let you try it another way. It's fine if you do it over and over again if you're trying different ways to bring some truth to it. If you're saying exactly the same thing, exactly the same way as you're directed to do in certain circumstances, I don't understand that. Then it's not a collaboration and there's no joy.

Crave Online: What do they hire you for if that's all they want?

Janeane Garofalo: I have no idea. I have no idea. There are certain things where it's a great environment and you can say whatever you want as long as you do one as written. Then you can play around. Then there's some directors who ask for you specifically and direct you even to voice intonation. Like they felt, "I want to have your voice go up here." And I'm like, "You could have had anybody come in here and do this. You do it. Why are you paying money to fly me here and put me up in a hotel? This is absurd." And I don't mean that to be facetious. I'm saying that for real. You shouldn't waste your money and time then. You should have somebody A, who's more malleable than I, or B, you should do it because this was very expensive for you to fly me out here and put me up at this hotel for this amount of time to do something that clearly anyone could do if you're going to direct them within an inch of their lives like that.

Crave Online: What's your stand-up material about these days?

Janeane Garofalo: It always just depends on what is going on. There's obviously a lot of self-critique, politics, media, religion, culture, all stuff. It's just part of your life. Then there's whatever personally is going on and then there's a lot of silly nonsense pop culture sh*t. It changes as I do. I couldn't possibly, I started doing standup when I was 19. It would be sad if I was doing things a 19-year-old said at the age of 42. It would be ridiculous.

Crave Online: How often do you change or update your set?

Janeane Garofalo: Well, there's always new stuff weaved in, always. But there are certain anchors that stay consistent for a few months and then they rotate out because I can't find a way to make it interesting. If you say it too many times, I cannot very well say to the audience, "You know what just happened…" I just don't like that. It's fraudulent and it sounds bad to my ear. And there's stuff that I'm just sick of saying. And then there are ideas that grow, like it's not there yet but I keep it because I know someday I'll hit on what it is I wanted to say about it.

Crave Online: 20 years later, how is the standup lifestyle?

Janeane Garofalo: Well, it's very different now than it used to be. It's not grinding the way it used to be. I work in nicer venues and stay in nicer places now. There was a time when it was almost dangerous when I was younger and fly into a hub city, renting a car and hitting every sh*tty club and then hoping that I could find a Motel 6 or whatever. Sometimes it was kind of fun because you'd be with another comic and it sucked so bad it has to be good. You're very young and it can be exciting. So there were times where my friend Laura Milligan and I couldn't have been more than 23, 24, driving across California looking for crappy hotels to stay in, bombing in bar-comedy clubs or Chinese restaurants. And it was, for some reason, because we were so young and it was so awful, it was great. It would not be fun at my age now, but luckily now I get to work with great people. Laura was great too. It's not that I didn't work with great people but now we get paid a nice salary and we are put up in nice places and it's not as dangerous. It was really for women dangerous. It's not dangerous anymore.

Crave Online: What do you think of the comedy world today? Are there any people you're watching?

Janeane Garofalo: Oh, there's a million great comics. There's too many to mention. I always feel like it's mean not to say certain people but I've seen tons of great comedy, great comedy-spoken word, great sketch stuff. Oh, there's no shortage of great men and women, young men and women doing sketches and stand-up.

Crave Online: What about issues like Michael Richards and Don Imus being hot button topics. Are we missing some other points?

Janeane Garofalo: That's just a sign of how sh*t our media is. They just waste our times. Waste our time and they're just hacks. There's no reason that Imus and Michael Richards should be any more than a cautionary tale of what not to do and they should be going after the real criminals and the war criminals and the real cultural criminals. There are people offending us every day on right wing radio and there's people up in Washington killing us literally every day that should be focused on by the news. But they're just as lazy as anybody else. It's easier to cover Michael Richards than to go after Jack Abramoff.

Crave Online: He'll give them an interview at least.

Janeane Garofalo: I guess so but it's not news, is it? And we watched that more than the Zapruder film for Christ's sake. It was inspected with a pointer practically, "If you analyze this and what did he mean here and what did this gesture mean?" It's just ridiculous. It's just a sign of how poor our news media is.

Crave Online: Politically, are there any specific causes you're attached to?

Janeane Garofalo: I'm not specifically attached to anything other than trying to, in my personal life, fight against where I see right wing thinking. Whether it be around my dinner table or on the street or somebody reading the New York Post. Whatever it is, because in a public place, people love to waste our time mocking people in the entertainment industry who are mocking politics as you know. They love to sh*t on them, deride them, mock them, blow their heads off with puppets South Park style, whatever it is. So it's a waste of the citizens' time. So I try to stay out of that aspect of it because I don't want people's time wasted with me being mocked as opposed to writing about politics.

Crave Online: At least in art it's different. It's satire.

Janeane Garofalo: Right, it's not news, it's not wasting time but the message that the South Park guys were giving is "What a buffoon. She called Bush a liar and said the war was a bad idea before we even went in. She should have her head blown off. How dare she?" They don't give me any humanity or dignity and they don't see me as a tax paying citizen. They saw me as somebody to be mocked and killed for standing up for something that I believed in and that I was right. And I'm not saying I was right and there's anything to be proud of. I would love to have been wrong. It would be great if democracy was spread throughout the Mideast and terrorism is over. But the Bush administration are terrorist war criminals and we were lied to and I said that then as did millions of others who were mocked and marginalized and I say it now. So why am I to be derided and hated for saying what is a fact. That's a fact, we were lied to.

Crave Online: When you have these conversations in real life, can you change someone's mind?

Janeane Garofalo: You’re a real person in real life, right?

Crave Online: But we agree. I would really like to know if we can actually impact people with different beliefs.

Janeane Garofalo: It depends. It depends on the person because people are very wed to their beliefs. It's important to them, it's part of their identity and also pride is a factor. Anybody who's been supporting the Bush regime for eight years, or since he was governor of Texas for Christ's sake, is not about to admit right now they may have been wrong. My father's one of them. My father is a huge conservative movement guy, Bush fan, oil guy. He just now if he's had a few martinis will just say, "Maybe we've gotta rethink that." But that's only when he's had a few martinis and he's loose. But his pride and ego will not allow him to admit what he knows is true.

Crave Online: What do we do then, just stay at it?

Janeane Garofalo: Well, the thing is, you'd be surprised how many people want to have these discussions and it's always a good thing for society. You'd be surprised how many people are on the side of liberal, enlightened global citizenship and justice and social justice. You don't see them in the media but I think it encourages them to hear others talking about it. It's always encouraging to discuss these things but there's nothing gained by saying, "Let's agree to disagree." You wouldn't say that to Klan, would you? "Oh, lynch that guy. Let's agree to disagree. I don't want to lynch him. Who am I to rock the boat? To each his own, I say." There's no value in that but people say, "Aren't you just preaching to the converted?" Well sh*t, if preaching to the converted is wrong, then shut down all the churches. That's what people do, don't they? They preach to the converted a hell of a lot. That's every radio station, every niche marketing scheme, every church that's ever existed. They preach to the converted and there's no shame in that. There's nothing wrong with having a dialogue.