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No celebrity off-limits for comic Kathy Griffin
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Kathy Griffin never turns off.
Before we even exchange greetings, she begins ripping into some of her favorite fellow television personalities.
"I believe Oprah Winfrey and Ryan Seacrest are trying to kill me,"
she says. "Something is going on where the two of them are out to take
over the world, and they must be stopped."
Then the 47-year-old comedian mentions how much she hates the Jonas
Brothers: "Now we have a gay Hanson in suits, and I'm supposed to be
happy about it?"
And it doesn't take long before she turns on her interviewer.
"I feel like I'm talking to an autistic child," she howls.
Hello, Kathy.
There's good reason why the 5-foot-4 anti-star has so much on her
mind. Last month, she started the fourth season of her Emmy-winning
reality series on Bravo, "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List." She's
in the middle of a live stand-up comedy tour, headlining her biggest
venues ever, including a stop Saturday at the Sleep Train Pavilion in
Concord. And she has just released her first CD, "For Your
Consideration," which is basically just a shameless bid to win a Grammy
Award.
"I thought, 'What's the most pathetic thing that no celebrity would
do?' " she says. "I can't even get tickets to the Grammys. So I could
either start going out with Clive Davis or I could do a CD expressly
for getting nominated for a Grammy."
Of course, the woman who has made a career out of mercilessly
bashing the Hollywood star-making machine all the while desperately
looking for mainstream acceptance won't just take any Grammy.
"I want to get into the spoken-word category over the comedy
category, because I would like to beat a president or Maya Angelou,"
she explains. "If it's the comedy category, I'm assuming it's just me
and Larry the Cable Guy."
But suggest to Griffin that it doesn't matter what she wins because
basically anybody can win the trophy - Men at Work, Milli Vanilli,
Herbie Hancock, even Barack Obama - and she reels.
"If I get nominated," she says, "I'm going to shove it up your ass because this is a very prestigious award."
Besides, like everything else that has propelled her forward until
now, Griffin sees a potential victory as the key to her next
opportunity.
"Who's to say that maybe I don't become a recording star like Eddie
Murphy? This could be the gateway to my hip-hop CD," she says. "Or it
could lead to me being a mentor on 'American Idol' next year. I can sit
there and tell people they're pitchy. How hard is that? And I take far
less drugs than Paula Abdul."
This coming from the woman who lost her job as E! Entertainment
Television's red carpet reporter at the 2005 Golden Globes after joking
that Dakota Fanning had entered rehab.
Since moving out to Los Angeles from Chicago at 19, Griffin has
found success as a stand-up comedian and peripheral television
character, landing her biggest break at 35 with a regular role on the
NBC sitcom "Suddenly Susan." She says she has also managed to get
herself banned from just about every talk show, including Leno,
Letterman and Regis. But Griffin seems happy enough that Carson Daly
will still have her.
"He has tens of viewers!" she says, laughing.
Ask her if most of her jokes are inspired by jealousy or repulsion and her answer is candid enough.
"I am jealous of some, repulsed by some, bitter about some and genuinely trying to be funny about all of them," she says.
At the same time, Griffin has gone to Madonna-strength lengths to
keep her name flying around Hollywood. When "My Life on the D-List" won
its Emmy in 2007, she strode up onstage and said, "A lot of people come
to up here and thank Jesus for this. He had nothing to do with this.
Suck it, Jesus!"
She has toured Iraq, Afghanistan and high-security prisons, often
with disastrous results. And when she briefly dated Apple co-founder
Steve Wozniak last year, she wore a gigantic fake engagement ring
during their red-carpet appearances together without his knowledge.
She genuinely doesn't care about backlash or blacklists. No target is too big or small.
"Let's take Miley Cyrus," Griffin says. "To me, she was a little bit
off-limits because she was so young. Now, forget it. She's putting
pictures of herself on the Internet where she's chewing her own
T-shirt, lifting it up and showing one of the Jonas Brothers -
self-proclaimed Christian virgins - her lace panties? Enough is enough.
I'm only human."
It's this attitude that keeps viewers coming back to her television
show, in which camera crews trail her various attempts at staying
relevant - whether it entails playing sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall,
hosting the Gay Porn Awards, making DVD-signing appearances at empty
bookstores or, during Season 3, divorcing her husband, Matt Moline.
"I want people to look at my life and say, 'Stuff happens on that
show that doesn't happen on any other show,' " Griffin says. "You know
how people always go on their deathbeds, 'I wish I spent more time with
my family and kids'? Not me. I'm going to be on my deathbed going, 'I
wish I spent less time with my family.'
"I love working. I love every second of it."
