INTERVIEW, Page 82Slightly to The Left Of NormalROSEANNE BARR, TV's hottest star, as unfetteredoff camera as on, talks about the pain and angerthat produce her unique brand of humor
By ELAINE DUTKA, Roseanne Barr
Q. Mark Twain once said that the secret source of humor is
not joy but sorrow.
A. True, in my case. Humor was a coping skill, I guess you
could say. A way of responding to the intense agony of my
family. Performing was a way of being O.K. in a world that
largely disgusted me. A friend once told me, and it's true, that
one foot onto the stage and you're suspended in another world,
a world you control totally.
Q. Why the need to escape?
A. I grew up Jewish in Salt Lake City, a very conservative
Mormon place, in an apartment building full of Holocaust
survivors. It was very painful to be different and not
understand why. I heard things as a kid that were horrifying.
I thought the world was like that. It was also the blacklisting
time, full of anti-Semitism. The only positive images of people
like me were the comedians on Ed Sullivan. That show was the
lifeline to the Jewish people, maybe even more important than
Israel. It gave a positive, warped view of what it was like to
be Jewish. I'd ask my father if Totie Fields was Jewish. He'd
say yes. Bob Hope? "He used to be."
Q. Was your family a very religious one?
A. Nah. My father was actually kind of an atheist. He sold
crucifixes and 3-D pictures of Jesus door to door. Our house
was full of them. You'd walk by and Jesus would blink or his
hands would spread out. My mother liked Mormons. I'd go to
church on Sunday and synagogue on Saturday. Later on, when I
became a member and got baptized, my mother told me not to take
it too far, that it was just the way we stayed safe.
Q. How did that affect you?
A. For one thing, I got a pretty good course in comparative
religion -- all based on xenophobia. And since I felt on the
fringe anyway, people's approval never mattered to me much. In
fact, I thought it was my God-given mission to shock and upset
people. I was always smart. I always knew what to say. When I
was eight, I'd go around to churches talking about being a
Mormon and a Jew. They call it manipulation when women do it.
With men, they call it will.
Q. When did you first get in touch with your will?
A. After a car accident I had when I was 16. That was a big
one. Some lady had the sun in her eyes and ran her car into me.
The hood ornament rammed into my head. I had days of
semiconsciousness, an out-of-body experience. I saw the tunnel,
the light, the whole deal.
Q. Were you frightened?
A. Nooooo! It was better, in a weird way, because
everything was O.K. There was sense in the world. I went deep
into my subconscious and had access to two different vantage
points. I still feel that there are two worlds: the mirror world
and the other one. Reality is the one that I see, not the one
most people see, except in their dreams. Because I'm from that
world, just pretending to fit into this one, the creative space
in my head is freed. There are no limits. Nothing is imposed.
Q. Any aftereffects of the accident?
A. Ten years of nightmares, dreams of not waking up.
Feelings about being buried alive. Once, when I was 17, I'd been
walking around days without sleep and collapsed on the
living-room floor. I realized that something was really wrong
with me, that I needed to be hospitalized.
Q. You told an interviewer in January that your parents
forcibly initiated your eight-month stay at the Utah State
Hospital.
A. I was another woman when I gave that interview. I'm not
a stationary person, but a chameleon. My husband Bill says that
I've been about 15 different women in my life. Every so often
something will come along and fill me so that I change. I came
away from that interview very cleansed. It was like a dam. All
the water ran out and everything flows better now. I'm now
seeing that that was a real positive period in my life.
Q. How so?
A. I'm not saying that some real intense things didn't
happen there. They gave lobotomies. A couple of my friends hung
themselves in their cells. It was like Cuckoo's Nest. I was
struck by the truth of that movie. I saw it as a metaphor for
society rather than a nuthouse. Still, the place was a respite
from the world. They drugged me, so at least I slept. I was
popular, the vice president or the secretary of the student
body. And hearing the door slam internalized the idea of limits
and taught me to set goals. If I hadn't learned that, I'd have
rolled with the punches instead of seeing them coming and
anticipating them better as a result.
Q. Were you more mainstream when you left the institution?
A. No. After I got out, I headed for Colorado and holed
myself up in a trailer for seven years. It was a form of
agoraphobia, but I don't recall that being a real negative time.
I had three kids in three years and was into being pregnant and
a mom. I had a very active inner life. Bill liked it. I'd wait
for him to come home at 4:30, serve Hamburger Helper and Jell-O
and a salad, and we'd sit for hours passionately discussing
music, art and philosophy. I've always been either "in" or
"out." Rarely in-between. When I'm in, I gain weight to protect
myself, think a lot, write a lot. I get into solitude. When I'm
out, I lose weight and like to be with people. Now I've managed
to integrate both for the first time. I'm losing weight, being
social but creative.
Q. How have you managed to sidestep the usual hang-ups that
come with being heavy?
A. To me, being fat isn't a negative. Being fat is a
response. If you eat, you're choosing to be fat. Fat is a great
friend. It's a cushion, very comforting at times. I feel sexy
when I'm fat, but then I feel sexy when I'm skinny too. Being
fat, for a woman, also means you take up more space, so you're
seen -- and probably heard -- more easily. It's real ironic. At
the same time that women were encouraged to be politically
active and speak out, we unconsciously started to starve
ourselves skinny, which is what men want us to do. That's very
much a part of this wave of feminism, an epidemic among women.
Q. How close is the character you play to your real-life
persona?
A. That's me up there, but there's a deliberate choice of
what to expose. I like being naked. I'm one of those weirdos who
ain't never frightened when I perform. All comedians, the good
ones at least, are psychic, mental, emotional exhibitionists --
though a lot of them hide it by attacking other people. I call
my stuff three-day comedy. First they laugh, and three days
later they go, "Oh, God, this is what she was talking about."
Once the brain is stretched, though, they can't go back. It's
too late.
Q. What are you trying to get across?
A. I want to be a voice for working women, to get the same
kind of roar from them that Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor did
from their subgroups. I see myself as a role model for people
left of normal, a three-dimensional woman, not a token, not a
supermom. I'm trying to show that there's a lot more to being
a woman than being a mother, but that there's a hell of a lot
more to being a mother than most people suspect. Motherhood
emotionally and physically changes a woman. Your head and your
body get connected so fast. Cloning, all that biological stuff,
is male motherhood. The whole technological age is an attempt
to have men give birth.
Q. Your TV show is currently No. 1. You're starring in a
movie, She Devil, with Meryl Streep. You have a book, Stand Up!
My Life as a Woman, coming out in August. What's left?
A. I'd like to make films. My sensibilities are a cross
between Woody Allen and John Waters. In about eight years I'll
retire from show business and devote myself to politics. I
probably won't run for office, but I will do fund raising for
people I believe in. People whom I train (laugh). I have plans
