Garofalo despises “alternative” label

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      Janeane Garofalo has been the darling of the standup scene since the early 1990s. The pert yet caustic slacker queen has hosted a daily national radio talk show and has worked steadily in TV (Saturday Night Live through The West Wing) and film (from Reality Bites to Jiminy Glick in Lalawood). Yet to hear her talk of it, she's a has-been at best. That's just Garofalo. Unlike stars who believe their own hype, Garofalo has a refreshing, self- effacing candour—and it's a huge part of her appeal.

      For one thing, she insists she's not a celebrity. “I've never really been that famous or anything,” she says from her home in New York City. “Celebrity, I feel like, is a word reserved for very famous people. I'm not particularly well known or recognizable. Maybe in the '90s that was true. I don't know if that's still true.”

      She also readily admits to bombing frequently, even at this stage in her standup career. (She started at the age of 19.) Garofalo, like many comics in the so-called alternative scene, works from a notebook instead of totally memorizing her bits. She does so, she says, to keep things fresh, using bullet points as a guide only. The result is an unpolished performance that either hits or misses, depending on the audience.

      But despite Garofalo's haphazard approach and supposed lack of fame, it's a real coup for CanWest ComedyFest head Will Davis and his team at Destination Funny to get her. She performs next Thursday (September 21) at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, then again at the event's Best of the Fest Showcase on September 23 at the much larger Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. Davis and his staff signed some of North America's top comedic acts, which, in turn, attracted even more comedians to our city.

      “I re-e-e-eally wanted to be there this year,” says Garofalo, “because of the comedians that were involved. I love to see them and work with them.”

      David Cross, Marc Maron, Todd Barry, Margaret Cho, Scott Thompson, Andy Kindler, Brian Posehn, Zach Galifianakis, and Jeremy Hotz are just some of the names that will be playing at various venues from Monday to next Sunday (September 18 to 24). (See www.vancouvercomedyfest.com/ for details.) They are all on the cutting edge of standup, with cultlike followings. While the ComedyFest lineup may lack supernova power, it has the comedy cognoscenti salivating.

      Those die-hard fans know Garofalo won't pull any punches when she hits the stage. She is a political creature who doesn't leave her beliefs behind when she steps to the mike. She's not trying to appeal to the masses; she's got a point of view and isn't afraid to express it. Expect lots of Bush-whacking during her appearances.

      “It's interesting that some people compartmentalize their politics, because politics to me is just life,” she says. “It's decisions you make about the environment, about your children's public schools, about the street cleaning, from civic to national. I don't know how to compartmentalize. And also, a large part of my comedy as I've gotten older has been social critique about politics, media, entertainment. To me it's all the same thing.”

      Garofalo's father is a Christian Republican. When asked if her dad is a fan of her standup, she laughs. “He just likes me. He doesn't like my work but he likes me.”

      Garofalo, along with her buddies Maron, Cross, and Posehn, has been described as an alternative comic, a term she despises. “That's a construct that does nothing but irritate people,” she says. “There were a lot of articles down in Los Angeles about comedians, myself included, that were doing shows in alternative venues to comedy clubs. We'd do shows in rock clubs, coffeehouses, bookstores, bars. And it just stuck, the name ‘alternative'. And then over the years it served to be an object of derision and mockery by certain other comedians. They'd say, ‘What it means is they can't write a joke.' And it was nothing that the comedians themselves ever called themselves.”

      For herself, she says, “I have some long-form storytelling mixed in with jokes. So I don't know what you'd call it but I do know that for many people it's not funny.”

      There she goes again. The inverse, of course, is equally true: For many people, she's hilarious.

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