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ROSEANNE U.S. Actor-Comedienne (from: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/roseanne/roseanne.htm) |
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Click here for Saturday Night Live Transcript of Roseanne's February 16, 1991 Appearance
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Click Here for reviews of Roseanne's ABC show: "Roseanne"
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Behind the Scenes with Roseanne
(from: http://www.girlcomic.net/june2k1/june2k1_radar_roseanne.php)
Jen Kirkman, GC*net editor
Jen sneaks into a taping of Inside the Actor's Studio to hear Roseanne speak. Read this, for what you won't see on TV!
Law Breaker
I recently broke the law in order to hear Roseanne speak. Ok, I didn't break
the law but I snuck into a taping of the Bravo channel's
Inside the Actors Studio to see Roseanne's interview. All right, I barely even
snuck in. I arrived about five minutes before the taping.
With the aid of my friend who's a student at The Actors Studio,I calmly walked
into the auditorium-style theater. I'm here to give you
the behind-the-scenes story that Bravo may edit out! Roseanne had poignant and
pointed
thoughts about motherhood that she shared with the students of The Actors
Studio, and me, the law-breaker.
Enter Rosie
I know Inside The Actor's Studio has a stigma
attached to it (further emphasized by the spoofing on Saturday
Night Live where will Ferrell
impersonates Actors Studio Dean James Lipton) that all of the "good' actors have
already been interviewed. I was afraid that Roseanne,
being a stand-up-comic would be slightly condescended to. That wasn't the case
at all. James Lipton announced up front that due to her
"authoring and acting'" the story of one mother's life on TV, Roseanne earned
over the span of ten years:
Roseanne took the stage to a standing ovation.
Her inaugural words as a guest on Inside the Actors Studio were to tell James
Lipton that
besides "The Hitler Channel" (her name for the History Channel)
Inside The Actors Studio was her favorite show.
Roseanne then asked the
technical crew, "Are you guys gonna shove this microphone thing further up my
arse?" James Lipton laughed, with one eyebrow still perfectly arched.
Stop! Lipton Time!
Before I get started on Roseanne, I have to say it was absolutely priceless to
see James Lipton struggle to maintain control over a room full of giggling
Twenty-Somethings. As he turned to the camera to set up a commercial break, the
lines between Will Ferrell's SNL impersonation and the real James
Lipton were
blurred. I felt like I was watching Lipton parodying Ferrell, parodying Lipton.
The Only Jew In Utah
Roseanne said that there was nothing romantic about her struggle. She was part
of the only Jewish family living in Salt Lake City Utah in the 1960's.
She was
hit by a car and "checked herself into" a mental health facility for one year.
"It wasn't cool to be a funny girl, and to top it off, I was fat and poor",
said
Roseanne. She had Tourette's Syndrome as well. When asked by Lipton if she still
suffered from Multiple Personality Syndrome, Roseanne grinned,
"I don't suffer
anymore......... now I love it!"
The difference between a roomful of comics hearing
that statement and a roomful of graduate students actors is that the actors
responded with a
collective "hmmm". I felt like I was at a poetry slam or a
staged reading of a play about social injustice. Roseanne did a double take at
the audience and
screamed with laughter.
Hello Kitty!
It seemed like Roseanne was a little uncomfortable in her skin up there. Next to
James Lipton, who at times seems like a robotic Walt Disney World
museum
character, more than he does a human...who wouldn't feel uncomfortable? She
struggled to look more at ease and he wanted desperately to
look cool. What
television audiences don't get to see is that James Lipton is interviewing
actors in front of an audience made up entirely of his students
(and me the
criminal intruder). He can't let the guests shake him or throw him off or his
authority is dashed.
The ice melted and eventually a few organic moments
occurred that helped break the tension. The audience could now watch and listen
to Roseanne's
story instead of witnessing two characters fighting desperately
against appearing as their cartooned public images. Roseanne mentioned that she
was
a great tap dancer, but had to quit because the lessons were too expensive,
leaving the rich but less talented girls to continue on in their lessons. James
Lipton encouraged Roseanne to dance. An honest not put on "I don't want to
dance!" "Yes, you have to" ensued and finally Roseanne gave in. She
hollered to
the tech crew to bring her Hello Kitty socks. She
removed her sandals, donned the socks and did a sort of times-step dance that
was really
great. I know this because; I too, am an accomplished tap dancer
(thank you, no really, thank you) and was analyzing her feet.
I said a silent prayer that she'd stay in her HK socks
during the rest of the interview. My prayers came true. She kept the socks on
while sitting "Indian
Style" (is there a new expression for that dated offensive
term? Oh, I guess cross-legged) in her chair.
Lipton Says "Fuck"
She asked James if he was going to ask her about the infamous crotch-grabbing
send up of the National Anthem. To that Lipton responded, "Roseanne,
I don't
give a fuck". He was so proud of himself for saying 'fuck'. Roseanne laughed
more at him than with him, but that's okay. He doesn't need to know
that.
Half-Nanny/Half-Granny
Roseanne told hard to believe stories about her grandmother who would cook for
her provided that Roseanne inspect the corpses of tenants who died
in the
apartment buildings that she ran. Roseanne reminisced about her grandmother's
sandwiches sighing wistfully, "To this day, I like, crave
mayonnaise because of
it." Roseanne laughed hysterically and commented on how dramatic that comment
sounded by saying, "Oh my God! You hear
yourself talking about your life and the
things you say that are supposed to be important."
Out of nowhere and most likely feeling confident after
his I-don't-give-a-fuck-riff, Lipton asked Roseanne, "Is it safe to say that
you're half-nanny and
half-granny?" To that Roseanne dead panned, "No, that
isn't safe, James." Laughter erupted from these normally hmmm-saying students.
For one
moment that room was a comedy club without the two-drink minimum.
It All Started At Bennigan's
I don't want to give too much away about Roseanne's life because I'm convinced
that we'll interview her soon for Girlcomic.net, but she discussed her
stand-up
comedy beginnings in Colorado. It was her male customers at the restaurant Bennigan's that pointed out that she was more than just
work-funny and that she
should try her luck at the comedy clubs.
Roseanne told James that after years of having trouble
getting stage time at "real" comedy clubs (places with the aforementioned drink
minimums),
she found her home and honed her material at Unitarian lesbian church
basements; safe havens where people came to support comedy. After winning
a
comedy competition with the killer punch line, "Suck my dick" (which served one
night as a pre-written punch line and dual attack on a heckler in the
audience),
Roseanne was on her way.
Soon after moving to Los Angeles, Mitzi Shore (the
Goddess of comedy club bookers for women) took Roseanne under her wing at the
Comedy Store.
From there, Roseanne won her first spot on Johnny Carson and as
comics now can only dream of, became an overnight success Carson's approval of
the
Domestic Goddess.
Sex With Julio!
Roseanne admitted that one of her first gigs as a professional comic was on a
cruise with Julio Iglesias. He was the musical entertainment. She admitted
that
she had sex with him on the trip! However, Roseanne insists that now she abhors
sex. How much of that was just what she felt like saying in the
moment, I don't
know. I somehow just don't believe her. But she protested that with all of the
hormones and pesticides being sprayed into food, "Oprah's
mad cows", Republicans
in office again and the ozone layer that she didn't want to spend her time
"fucking her life away".
What I love so much about Roseanne as a comic is that
you don't see this desperate person inside trying to win your love. She's not
just the
ex-unpopular kid who still needs approval and decided to get famous
through comedy rather than killing people. Her humor has heart. It's simple. She
wants to use her gift to spread joy and to heal. One of the many brilliant
things Roseanne said that night was that "laughter is a gift from God, a
physical,
spiritual response that cleanses disease."
Motherhood
What kind of Domestic Goddess is a woman who isn't also a mother? According to
Roseanne not a very good one. James Lipton's eyebrow almost shot
through the
ceiling when Roseanne announced that, "Mothers are better than woman who don't
have kids." She also believes that there needs to be some
kind of mandatory
class that people have to take in order to raise kids properly, you know, the
way that the Domestic Goddess would do it.
Roseanne turned to the audience and told them "the
networks are never going to include this. But I have to say that most mothers
have a hard time
because being a mother means you're also a woman. When the
whole world is treating you like shit and putting you down, how can you not make
mistakes?" Roseanne ended the interview on a serious note telling the live
studio audience that motherhood is the "highest calling" and the "most
underpaid, undervalued job."
Roseanne then left the set in her
Hello Kitty socks to another standing ovation. James Lipton gathered up
his seventeen thousand blue note cards
and exited stage left. I walked out of
the auditorium feeling so privileged to have been in the same room as Roseanne;
to hear the life story of someone
who never compromised in her career and still
had the last laugh.
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COMMENTARY
Roseanne Barr: From Deification to Disgust
A heroine? A goddess? Or just a pig?
(from: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~taranto/archive/roseanne.htm)
BY JAMES TARANTO
New York City Tribune, Wednesday, August 1, 1990
The New York Post dubbed her "Roseanne
Barr-f" and put her on the front page for two consecutive days. President Bush
said her horrifying rendition
of the National Anthem, after which she grabbed her crotch and spat, was
"disgraceful."
Aren't we taking Roseanne Barr a little too
seriously? Bush's comment was indisputably accurate, but does this crude and
corpulent comic really merit
the attention of the President of the United States? Probably not.
But Bush and the Post aren't the first to
take Barr too seriously. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Adair Lara,
for example, thinks Barr is a good role
model for her children. In an article entitled "Why Roseanne is a heroine"
(written, one should note, before the recent commotion at Jack Murphy
Stadium), she explains: "I don't want my kids to swear at the world and belch
and fart and stuff, but I want them to be this real, this honest, when they
grow up. I want them to like themselves this much."
If Barr as heroine and role model isn't enough
for you, how about Barr as goddess? "Zeitgeist Goddess," to be
exact--that's how she was characterized
on the cover of The New Republic in April.
Author Barbara Ehrenreich, who is something of a
fixture in liberal opinion journals, found in Barr a "great working-class
spokesperson." In extended
review of Barr's book Roseanne: My Life as a Woman, Ehrenreich writes
that Barr represents "the hopeless underclass of the female sex: polyester-clad,
overweight occupants of the slow track; fast-food waitresses, factory workers,
housewives, members of the invisible pink-collar army; the despised, the
jilted, the underpaid."
Yes, Ehrenreich informs us, Barr is a master of "the kind of class-militant populism that the Democrats, most of them anyway, never seem to get right."
Aspiring young class-militant
populists will be interested to learn of Roseanne's path to the top. She left
home in 1971 at age 19 to become a hippie.
She ended up working at a feminist bookstore in Denver, where she developed what
Ehrenreich calls a "special brand of proletarian feminism."
Explains Barr in her book: "I began to speak as a
working-class woman who is a mother, a woman who no longer believed in change,
progress, growth
or hope."
Barr became a stand-up comic and offered her
audience such gems as this: Heckled by a man in the audience for being
insufficiently feminine, she
turned to him and declared, "Suck my dick."
"Yeah, she's crude," concedes Ehrenreich, "but so are the realities of pain and exploitation she seeks to remind us of."
You may have begun to suspect by now that Barr
has some sort of systematic political plan to ameliorate the woes of the working
class. Nope. "Not
given to didacticism," Ehrenreich reports, "Barr offers no programmatic ways
out. Surely, we are led to conclude, equal pay would help, along with child
care, and so on. But Barr leaves us hankering for a quality of change that goes
beyond mere reform: for a world in which even the lowliest among us--the
hash-slinger, the sock-finder, the factory hand--will be recognized as the poet
she truly is."
Barr, the porcine poet, was roundly booed by a
crowd who had come out to see a Padres double-header on "Working Women's Night."
She let the Left
with another fallen idol.
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Exchange (President
George Bush, Sr.) With Reporters Aboard Air Force One
July 27, 1990
(from: http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1990/90072701.html)
Roseanne Barr
Q. The national anthem -- should there be a constitutional amendment to protect -- desecration of the national anthem?
Q. Yes, how about Roseanne Barr? What was your reaction to the song?
The President. My reaction is: It was
disgraceful. That's the way I feel about it, and I think a lot of the San Diego
fans said the same thing. But anyway,
that's -- --
Q. Does this mean that Roseanne Barr won't be coming to the White House real soon?
The President. There's no change of plans in that. [Laughter]
Q. You mean, you're going to stop watching her show?
The President. Which show?
Note: The exchange occurred while the President
was en route from Washington, DC, to his home in Kennebunkport, ME. In his
remarks, the President
referred to comedienne Roseanne Barr's performance of the national anthem at a
San Diego Padres baseball game. A tape was not available for
verification of the content of this exchange.
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