Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians Read Free

start imitating heterosexuals, it could be a very slippery slope.’ That’s usually enough for me, but to kick it a little bit, ‘What’s next, monster truck rallies?’
     
    Corey: It’s one of those issues I’ve been torn about. We did get engaged moving to California. That does leave us in limbo right now.
     
    Lily: You certainly didn’t have same sex marriage in Missouri, did you?
     
    Corey: That was one of the first states to vote in the amendment.
     
    Lily: Amended the Constitution, right. Maybe because we’ve been here so long, I don’t know. Just Jane won’t go on the road. They’d be saying at the church, ‘Well, where is Jane? Someone call the house and see if she’s ready.’ ‘She’s en route, but she’s stopping at Neiman’s to buy a scarf.’
     
    Corey: As collaborators over the years, how do you balance the professional with the personal?
     
    Lily: I’m extremely flexible. We have such a similar sensibility. Of course, Jane really is not driven to work as I am. I like to perform. She doesn’t really want to work that much. She does when she has to. If I beg enough.
     
    Corey: Do you get sentimental at all or schmaltzy as you approach 40 years together?
     
    Lily: Not in that kind of overview. Here’s our 40th anniversary. Not like that. It’s such a daily thing. It’s so organically part of the base that I don’t. Just like I had my birthday, and I couldn’t be less interested in my birthday. It was nice. I got a lot of stuff from people, greetings and stuff. That’s a nice way to stay in touch from time to time.
     
    It’s just totally in our skin. We live it in the skin. If I planned a big party for her, she would kill me. Nothing she would hate worse than to walk into a big surprise party, but she’d be so gracious. She’s Southern. She’s from Tennessee. Totally Southern girl. Everybody adores Jane. They’re tried of seeing me because she won’t go half the time. When Jane comes, it’s a real event. And they all seek her counsel. She’s very, very engaging.
     
    Corey: Your comedy is not, as I like to call it, mean comedy. There’s the roasts on Comedy Central, playing up stereotypes. What is it you feel about comedy these days in general?
     
    Lily: You mentioned the roasts. Joan Rivers is a good friend of mine—has been for years and years. I wanted to do the roast for Joan, but I could not bring myself to do it. If they don’t get more inventive, it’s gonna get tired, too.
     
    There’s enough of, ‘living in a dirt bed,’ or ‘the dry vagina.’ And everybody’s, ‘It’s not the first time he got paid for sucking.’ The culture’s brutal enough. That’s not the part that bothers me, the sexual stuff. It’s the debasing and dragging you down.
     
    Someone should really compartmentalize the jokes and see what they are. They get tiresome. I know this because I had to watch the roasts to decide if I wanted to do Joanie’s. I hate the ones that really … how can I say all this?
     
    Don Rickles was on ‘Laugh In’ one year. He is a very loveable guy in real life. After a week of being brow-beaten and cut to ribbons, everybody on the show was a little bit…their guts were hanging out. There were people in their dressing rooms tearful. They’d have to flee to their dressing room.
     
    We’re not so validated anyway that we can take a whole lot of devaluing. And I’d rather see the best expected of us than the worst. Not that there’s not a place for it. I would not be one to censor anything one says.
     
    The worst thing that was said on a lot of the shows was when Farrah Fawcett was on. I think it was the William Shatner roast. She seemed to be out of it. She got up to the podium and said, ‘I’m not as out of it as I look.’ When Betty White said, ‘I feel a real affinity with Farrah. I’m in my 80s and that’s the last decade she meant anything,’ it’s too close; it’s too diminishing. I don’t see any point in it; it’s a cheap and