David Sedaris:
15 Minutes: a podcast about Fame
Transcriptions: Episode 38:
rather listen?
https://soundcloud.com/15minutesjamieberger/episode-38-david-sedaris
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Intro:
Jamie: Hello, everyone, welcome to 15-minutes: a podcast about Fame, Episode 38. I’m Jamie Berger and my guest today is David Sedaris. But before we get to our conversation, this is wrapping up our 1st anniversary month and because the guest is David Sedaris, we’ll have, I’m guessing a few new listeners. So welcome new listeners! I hope you’ll indulge me in a 2-minute description and pitch based on an email I sent the other day to a media professional.
15-minutes is pretty much exactly what it says it is, a Podcast about fame, except episodes aren’t 15-minutes long, they range from 5-minutes to over an hour, usually around an hour. I’ve talked to everyone from my neighbors in Western Mass to an old friend who is an arborist (aka tree trimmer) back in San Francisco, to the likes of John Hodgman, George Sanders, comedian Maeve Higgins, “On the Media’s” Brooke Gladstone, the list goes on, about the many splendours of fame, and what I’m calling Fame Culture (copyright 2017 Jamie Berger).
While we have a lot of fun on the show, we also talk about the rise of fame in and of itself as a virtue, which I feel is as responsible as anything for much of the horror that we see around us today, some episodes are much lighter than that, most of them are, really, but most are kind of serious and most are a mix of the two. It’s pretty much as organic conversation as I can muster with people that interest me, famous, anonymous, and everywhere in between. Okay, here’s the pitch part.
15-minutes is completely independent and based physically, as I mentioned, in the woods of Western Massachusetts. You might be curious about our traffic, frankly I stopped looking after a month or 2 out of frustration of trying to get accurate numbers and, because this is my lone creative endeavour and whatever else it becomes, I’m trying to let alone, for now. Let’s just say we’re large enough that some fancy people I have no connection to have come on, but it’s small enough that if a network or other entity wanted to take us on, we’ve got 38 episodes that are at least not bad and some quite good with 25 or so guests of note. Episodes that can be easily relaunched on another platform with almost no audience redundancy. I go on from there in the email to ask if someone, in this case it was a comedian and writer, Jonathan Katz, most famous for the brilliant animated show Doctor Katz, which is being relaunched as an audio series on Audible, if he would come on the show. I haven’t heard back yet [update: it happened, and is Episode 43 http://www.15minutesjamieberger.com/news/2017/8/3/episode-43-jonathan-katz], the point is, to keep this show going, let alone have it grow, we need a home somewhat more prominent than my spare bedroom in Turners Falls, MA — if you like what you hear, please pass it on with a share, a retweet, an email, be the connectors, help us find that home. You can find us at http://15minutesjamieberger.com ,or on Instagram or Twitter @15minsjamieb, or on Facebook, or you can email us at info@15minutesjamieberger.com.
Alright, consider yourself pitched. Here’s my conversation with someone who doesn’t need much introduction to people listening to this Podcast, I’m guessing, but we’ll just say New York Times bestselling humorist, author and one of my heroes — I’m always encouraging people to ignore the old adage and go the hell ahead and meet your heroes, what’s the worst that can happen!? — David Sedaris. We spoke on the phone in May.
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15 Minutes - Conversation with David Sedaris
(begins with Jamie calling the author at his hotel during a visit to in New York, June 2017)
Receptionist: Good afternoon, thank you for calling [unclear 06:14 DS’s NYC hotel room] how may I direct your call?
Jamie: Could you please try the room of David Sedaris for me?
Receptionist: David who?
Jamie: Sedaris, S as in Sam, E, D as in David.
Receptionist: Okay, let me transfer you over, I’ve got it, one moment please.
Jamie: Great, thanks.
Voice recording: (phone rings, then voicemail) The guest you are trying to reach is not available right now, please.
Jamie: Strike 2. (I had already called once and gotten no answer)
Receptionist: Good afternoon, thank you for calling [unclear 06:59] this is Claudia, how may I direct the call?
Jamie: Could you please try the room of guest David Sedaris.
Receptionist: Let me just see if we have that guest, how do you spell the last name?
Jamie: S as in Sam, e-d as in David, do you need more?
Receptionist: No, thank you. (laughs)
Jamie: Okay, thanks.
Receptionist: One moment, please.
David: Hello.
Jamie: Hello, David Sedaris. This is Jamie Berger from the.
David: Hi Jamie, I’m so sorry, I had another interview and I didn’t know how to do the pause thing on the phone.
Jamie: Oh, that’s quite alright. I’m just glad I’ve reached you, do you have another tightly scheduled one coming up? Because that would change how I approach this.
David: No, no.
Jamie: Okay. So …
David: Sorry, how do you spell your last name?
Jamie: Berger. With an E.
David: B-e-r-g-e-r?
Jamie: Yes.
David: What’s your address?
Jamie: My physical address?
David: Yeah, your home address.
Jamie: (And then I gave David Sedaris my address.)
David: 01376, okay, I’m sorry, go on.
Jamie: Well, thank you for asking, well, you may remember we met in Wooster and I told you about the Podcast I do about fame?
David: Oh, yes.
Jamie: And so here I am finally reaching you.
David: Okay.
Jamie: I wrote to your publicist one last time just today after trying a few times, and so I was like, ‘last chance, is this going to happen?’ and they were like, okay, how about 03:30 today? So, I haven’t done my homework quite as thoroughly as I’d like to but I have been thinking about this for a long time.
David: Oh, I was just wondering, how long would we be talking?
Jamie: Whatever works, it could be 10-minutes, it could be half an hour, it could be whenever you go to dinner. Episodes range from, you know, from 5 minutes to an hour.
David: Okay, right. Because I’ve got like half an hour.
Jamie: That’s beautiful.
David: Because I have to go on TV tonight, so I have to get ready.
Jamie: Well, what are you on tonight?
David: Colbert.
Jamie: Oh, wonderful.
David: They’re taping it tonight and won’t go on until tomorrow. That’s a good thing to remember, they’re taping it tonight, so that way anything could happen between, so it could get bumped or if it’s really sucky maybe they would say, ‘ You know what, let’s just not do it, let’s do him a favour and just burn the tape. ‘
Jamie: And the way things are going, we all might not even be here tomorrow.
David: You’re right.
Jamie: (before I ever thought of making this show) I used to talk about my ideal level of fame would be to have David-Sedaris-15-years-ago fame.
David: 15-years ago?
Jamie: Well, I tarted saying that years ago, I don’t know, (the kind of fame where) you publish when you want in the New Yorker, you make a decent living, you can go on TV sometimes but you can still be invisible out in the world.
David: Yeah, I mean, that’s now, too.
Jamie: And you get to collaborate with great people, yeah, I know it’s now, you still can walk around the world without being, you know, un-slaughtered. (this clearly isn’t the word I said, but I can’t figure out what it actually would be and kind of like “un-slaughtered” in terms of being a celebrity facing his/her public)
David: Correct.
Jamie: And so, I’m glad to be finally talking to you, because you used to be my paradigm of ideal fame. I don’t know if you’re tired of talking about the new book or you’re delighted to, I know that’s what you’re supposed to be doing (in interveiws). After the reading (I saw him most recently in Worcester, MA, in Spring 2017), when you mentioned that you thought of it as being something great to read in a more of an “I Ching” fashion, just jumping in at random spots. I’ve done that and I really enjoyed it and the thing that, one of the things that I come away with is, you know, as with your other work, it’s the intimacy that is so pleasing. But you don’t often write, at least of this first two (diary) volumes leading up to 2002, about yourself as more than just a person in the world, not as a public figure, as someone gaining success, things like that. Is it something you just don’t write about?
David: Well, you know, I’d have to say out of all the things that I was uncomfortable about putting in the book, it was, that made me the least comfortable. I mean, I did write about, you know, getting a review for play in the New York Times and what that felt like. And hearing that my book was on the bestseller list, and, but a lot of that I kept out of the book just because that seemed much more intimate than anything that I wrote about, you know. About meeting someone at a laundromat and going home with them, you know, it just seemed much more revealing with my enthusiasm and my delight and my fear concerning that.
I mean, (at) La Mama I filmed this interview yesterday and they wanted to do it at a place that held significance with me and so I said La Mama, which is a theatre in the East Village where we used to do our plays, my sister Amy and I used to do our plays. And they had the archive there which I was surprised to see it, a folder on each of the plays that we had done at La Mama. And the plays got progressively thicker, you know, but for the very first one, it just had flyers and a list of people who came this night and the other night. Then they (get) thicker and then there were flyers and magazine profiles, I mean, reviews and magazine profiles and, you know, a lot of press. But I remember the woman who got us started there at La Mama, her name was Meryl Vladimir … I did a reading there, and when she called me in later, she said I’m going to make you a star. And it’s just what you dream of when you’re a kid, you know, you dream of somebody saying that and
I remember Amy and I, we were brought in to the William Morris Agency and the guy turned to Amy and said, “You’re a star,” and he turned to me and said, “You’re a star writer.” And again, it’s basically your 12-year old self, like this is the dream, that you’re in this office and this person is saying this thing to you. And, you know, I think one of the reasons, too, I didn’t put it in the book because it’s like, well, I’m a pretty sorry excuse for a star. I mean, people would laugh and then say, what, you think you’re a star, so I think that’s one of the reasons I didn’t put it in the book because, again, I’m a sorry excuse for one but still hearing those words from somebody was just so heavy, it just, and you want to believe them but then you’re afraid to believe them at the same time. You think, well, you’re crazy if you think that, but then you think, but wait, I think it, too.
Jamie: Oh, yeah, and then you don’t and then you do.
David: And again, you’re right, the level of whatever it is that I have is a perfect level, you know, sometimes you go to the airport and they’re like, are you the writer, and sometimes they’re like, sorry, we can’t. [Unclear 15:18 — it had to do with being bumped out of coach for being a celebrity, or not]
Jamie: Yeah, I had to spell your name calling the front desk (just now) so that’s a sign of a healthy anonymity still.
David: Yeah. And then there’re other people that say, I mean, it’s kind of sweet, I mean, people will say, well, you’re not registered under your own name, are you? I often do “commercials” when I go on tour, I do a commercial for whatever place sometimes I will be in a really great hotel and I’ll do a commercial for it, I go on stage and I’ll say, you know, if you have anybody coming to town or if you ever, you know, need to celebrate something. You need to go to the Four Seasons, I said, now this is a hotel, and I go on and on about it, no one has ever called me at the hotel, nobody has ever pestered me in any way.
Jamie: I’m surprised.
David: The same just exists in other people’s minds and it’s true, when you meet somebody, when I meet somebody who is, you know, who I consider to be famous, I’m very aware of people looking at that person. That person is not aware of it at all and, you know, I’m just thinking this person is so huge, and they’re not thinking that, they’re just thinking, oh, look, we’re out for coffee together and we’re getting to know each other.
Jamie: Yeah. Yeah, and after a few minutes it becomes just that.
David: With a gracious person.
Jamie: Yes.
David: I mean, a gracious person will see that you’re nervous and now, I mean, I don’t want to sound like a name dropper but Whoopi Goldberg, I said something nice about Whoopi Goldberg in the New York Times and then she sent these cookies to my house. And she said, you know, if you’re in New York we should have dinner, and I was going to be in New York in a couple of days and so we went to dinner and I was a wreck because Whoopi Goldberg did this one woman show in like 1984 and it was brilliant. I mean, it was brilliant, it had a huge effect on me and, I mean, I have watched it over and over again on HBO, HBO had just started. And I met her and I was nervous and she was so gracious, she just doesn’t allow for it and she just makes herself human to take that away from you, she doesn’t, it’s not doing her any good for you to be nervous in front of her. Because you’re not being yourself, and so a gracious person like her, that’s the first thing on their list, is to make you yourself again, and an ungracious person, they don’t care. They just as sooner keep you that way.
Jamie: Right, and yes, and then there’s the super ungracious who would prefer that you stay uncomfortable.
David: Right.
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Jamie: Your Letterman appearances were always very pleasing to me.
David: He is one of those people that, you know, you don’t see him until you’re out there.
Jamie: Yeah.
David: I mean, Jon Stewart would come into your dressing room and hang out, he remembers your friends’ names and he just gets you really comfortable and says, let’s continue this on stage. And then one time on Jon Stewart, I said, can I tell a joke?, and he said, yeah, but don’t tell it to me now because I don’t want to fake laugh, and I’ll set you up for it. And he set me up for the joke, he is a lovely, lovely person, just really, because not everybody is an actor and not everybody is fast on their feet, and not everybody is comfortable. You know, I think sometimes TV people think, ah, it’s just, you know, it’s just TV, but … the audience didn’t come to see me, right. I had to go on that Jimmy Fallon show. Reese Witherspoon was on, now that’s a star, now that’s who people came to see, right, and so they didn’t come to see me and so they’re like, the people who go to those shows, they live in New Jersey and they live on Long Island and they have company in town and so they got tickets.
They got tickets to a taping of the show and they have no idea who I am, and they just taking all their cues from the host, if the host seems to like you then they’ll like you, if he doesn’t then they won’t.
And it’s all, you know, it’s all pre-arranged, you know, there’s a pre-interview and you show up and they have, these are the questions and here’s your answers written on a sheet of paper, and if your answer, you don’t have to be verbatim, but, if your answer on the telephone was a minute long, it better not be a minute and 10 seconds long because then they’ll just cut you off and make a joke about what you were just saying and there goes your whole setup to the story, and you just sitting there, it’s bad enough when that happens at a dinner party, but this is on TV. Do I sound panicked enough for you?
Jamie: I promise you, you’re going to be fine.
David: I wish that was you, I wish I was anybody who didn’t have to go on TV tonight.
Jamie: Assuming you don’t feel awful, will you feel great afterwards?
David: I’ll feel relieved afterwards, that it’s over. I mean, I’m not afraid of, I know Stephen Colbert from when he was with my sister in Second City and, you know, I haven’t seen him in a while, but, you know, it’s not like we talk on the phone or anything like that. But if he saw me on the street, he would say, David, and I would say, Steven. So, it could be worse.
Jamie: (laughs)
Yeah. … about you and Amy, you know, you went to William Morris, you wanted to be public people.
David: They called us in.
Jamie: Right.
David: They called us in and I never signed with them, I already had, like a literary agent who I was signed with.
Jamie: Right, my question, though, is, so you and Amy wanted this public life, how did Paul and your mom and dad take to being famous and/or infamous?
David: Well, like my brother, Paul really likes it, you know, I mean, and my dad, he likes it. You know, we don’t always do stuff that he wishes like, you know, he’ll call Amy and say (shifts into dad voice, why’d you have to make yourself ugly? You know, Jesus, you’re a beautiful woman yet you get on TV and you’ve got the hump and you’ve got the mole with the hair coming out of it, why in the hell did you do that? And then he will call me and why, when I first started on the radio, why did you have to talk about that, why did you have to say you were gay? Why did you have to do that, are you rubbing people’s noses in it, nobody wants to hear that, and again it’s not like my dad is Mr Radio, if it was like how to design a computer, yeah, please give me your thoughts but, you know, he doesn’t know anything about entertaining people or writing. But he likes he likes getting people free stuff, like oh, I can get him to send you a book or, no, I can get you tickets, how many do you want, 15? That’s no problem, I’ll get you 15 tickets, so he likes that.
Jamie: You wrote recently about how, you know, when you were in the New Yorker but weren’t getting a review in the Charlotte Observer, he didn’t think you were famous?
David: No, what happened is, I was on the New York Times bestseller list and he said, well, I said, Dad, I said, I’m #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Well, you’re not number 1 on the Wall Street Journal list. And I said, you know, the Wall Street Journal list isn’t the one that counts, you know, for book people. Oh, baloney. Any other father would be like, oh, my God, I don’t believe you’re number one on the New York Times list, that’s great! But I mean that’s my dad, and he has always been my dad and I would be surprised if he said anything else.
Jamie: Speaking about your dad, and we love him out here in the world, we do, but your mom makes me think of my mom who died about eight years ago and, because she’s the person who always got what I was always trying to do very well, there’s this feeling still remaining that I never got to really show her something. How old were you when she died, if I may go a little dark?
David: Sure, let’s see, I was 33 when I moved to New York, I was 34 when my mother died. So, I hadn’t published a book and I hadn’t, you know, I hadn’t had anything, I mean, I had a couple of things published in magazines that no one has ever heard of. She certainly didn’t see her investment pay off.
Jamie: And did you have or do you still have feelings about that, like do you wish she had seen more of that?
David: I just wrote about that in the New Yorker, I mean, it hasn’t come out yet but it was about that, in part, it was mainly about my mother’s drinking. But then it was about, too, how
I would have loved to have spoiled her, you know, I mean, being now in a position to do so, you know, just to take her to places that she had never been before. You know, if my mother were alive right now I would say we’re going on tour and we leave in 2-weeks, and I’ve got all the tickets and everything and you’re going to be introducing me on stage every night. And my mother would have loved that, and she would have, I mean, to have an audience, I mean, she’s the one that really taught us that when you walk into the dry cleaner, everybody who’s in there is your audience.
Jamie: Really?
David: Yeah. They’re not just people, they’re your audience, and you’re going to win that audience or are you going to turn your back on them.
Jamie: Did she teach you that by example or did she say that?
David: She taught it by example, but also it was just sort of, I mean, just the way that she could, like I said, the difference between treating people. Like if I am ever on trial for murder … I’d turn to the audience and said, how can I have killed him, I never even met him? Like I wouldn’t think I turn to the “jury,” I would think I’d turned to the “audience” and that is something that I get from my mother. The firing squad, so I turned to the audience and I said, I don’t need a blindfold.
Jamie: Tough way to look at the audience. Speaking of which, I have seen you really a couple of times and I love that you bring in jokes that you’re told and I love that some of them are challenging to your base. In Worcester, you told the pizza joke and your reaction to it, (actually, could) you tell it, or else people won’t know? You’re on the spot, can you tell the pizza joke?
David: Oh, yeah, so I was doing the show and I was in New York State, right outside of the city and, golly, I don’t remember the name of the town right now, and this kid came with his gay father. And the kid was 11-years old and he said, I’ve got a joke for you, he said, What’s good on pizza but not on pussy? And I said, I beg your pardon? (the kid repeated) What’s good on a pizza but not on pussy? And I was thinking, well, lots of things, you know, mushrooms, piping hot cheese, and he said, crust, and I couldn’t — I mean, one of the things that was the whole reason why I wrote about that is he has no idea what’s good on a pizza but not on pussy.
Jamie: Right.
David: And he’s telling (the joke), and his dad has no idea (either).
Jamie: He knows what’s good on a pizza.
David: Yeah, exactly. But he doesn’t know, and so none of us had really any idea what was good on pizza but not on pussy.
Jamie: But crust is probably bad.
David: What killed me was how proud he was and how proud his dad was of him, and I thought, I don’t know, that seemed weird about it to me. But so much has come from it because I told that joke one night and somebody said, my mother heard me say the word pussy when I was 10-years old and she made me eat a bar or larva soap with a knife and fork. Isn’t that great, a bar of larva soap with a knife and fork.
Jamie: That’s horrible. What I enjoy because I guess I enjoy groans and awkwardness is, the audience was a little stunned. Is that a goal, do you like that reaction?
David: No, but I kind of insist that that’s an interesting and funny story. And if you don’t, then, you know, that’s okay and stuff but I get a lot of letters from people and they’re like, I heard you on the radio and I heard you tell that Santa Elf story and that’s what I was hoping for when I came. And instead you told a joke that I won’t even get into, it is so filthy, and I’m thinking, well, I mean, if I told that joke and nobody laughed, right, I wouldn’t tell it again. But, I was there, okay, and it’s the biggest laugh of the night.
Jamie: And so you have been using it on the tour?
David: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was there so don’t just don’t tell me that it wasn’t funny and that nobody laughed. I don’t understand getting upset by language, I’m not a person who is offended, not even if someone uses the word faggot. Offended is not what I feel, I mean, if somebody would roll down the window and says, get out of the road, you faggot, you know, I’m not offended by that. I don’t like it at all but I’m not … offended is not the right word for me to use, I don’t know, it, there’s another word for it.
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Jamie: I try to avoid bringing people misery by bringing in the president but when you talk about offending with words, it’s hard not to think to go there. Do you think you’re going to talk about politics (on Colbert) tonight?
David: I don’t know, I feel like I probably read the same things that you read, and we probably sound alike if we were to talk about politics. I mean, how many times have I found myself in a conversation lately where, oh, the person just said the line I was going to give so I will give this line, but they were just about to give that line. So, it’s a mish mash of stuff that we’ve heard, like Bill Maher, it’s like, please talk about politics, please. Sarah Vowell, please talk about politics…. But I don’t feel like I’m an original thinker in that way, I don’t think I’m saying anything that your cousin hasn’t said.
Jamie: Yeah, the reason why I bring it up is because I really appreciate that Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers have decided to go there, instead of, you know, they’re middle America TV … but they’re like, no, fuck this.
David: I have been on other shows before where like, the host is like very clear, like he does not pick sides, right. But, you know, I wrote a story about the election and I was reading it on my tour, and every night there would be people who would walk out and I would think, who do you think I voted for, you know. I mean, my sister Amy had something on her Instagram account one time and I couldn’t believe the hateful things that people wrote in, and again, I felt the same thing, like who do you think she voted for.
Jamie: Yeah.
David: I mean, why would you think for one moment that she would vote for Donald Trump?
Jamie: But they’re there to be angry, that’s why they’re on her Instagram account.
David: You’re right.
Jamie: It’s a hobby.
David: (laughs) It’s a hobby.
Jamie: Well, I look forward to seeing you (on Colbert), I hope the world doesn’t end and it won’t get bumped.
David: I would be fine with any.
Jamie: If the world ended, or you got bumped?
David: If the world has to end for me to get bumped, I can’t, I just can’t tell you how much I dread it, I just want, more than anything, I just want it to be over.
Jamie: But you like performing at a reading though, or don’t you?
David: Yeah, no, I love that but it’s different, the audience came to see me.
Jamie: Right.
David: I’m exactly who they came to see. So, I’ve already won in a sense.
Jamie: Maybe I can give you a little something to take with you to go on tonight, and think about the fact that you’re not Meryl Streep (the person that everyone came to see) on the show but you’re a bonus. You’re an unexpected pleasure.
David: Well, you know, the thing to do is, I mean, I often feel like, when I’m not on stage and I have done a show and there is Q and A. I’m not even thinking about it, I’m just kind of being myself and then afterwards I think, wow, I mean, especially, you know, if … all along the way I said, just don’t be yourself and you’ll be okay. Just cover up who you are and you’ll be okay, but then, to make a name for yourself by being completely yourself …
… and so when you go on TV you just have to think like, wait a minute, if I’m myself, I’m okay. The problem is trying to bend myself to somebody else’s will or trying to make myself likeable to people who I don’t know anything about, that is just a losing game, you know. So, all you can do is go out there and be yourself, but sometimes you have to remind yourself to be yourself.
I mean, at least I know who that person is.
Did you see that mini-series “Feud” about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis? It’s so good and I thought it was going to be campy but it’s not at all, and you know, the point at the end where Joan Crawford says, I spent my whole life being “Joan Crawford,” this woman who I invented, and when I’m alone, I don’t know who I am. It just tore your heart right out when you heard her say that, and Jessica Lange is amazing in this show, you should watch it, it’s so good.
Jamie: Yeah, I remember reading about it and then forgetting about it. Yeah, but that sounds, yeah, I love Jessica Lange, so that’s okay.
David: Yeah, she is superb in this, you can’t take your eyes off her.
Jamie: “The Postman Always Rings Twice” was a pretty formative high school experience for me…
Well, try to have a little fun tonight.
David: Okay.
Jamie: And maybe I’ll see you in Brattleboro in the fall.
David: Oh, that will be perfect.
Jamie: Thanks.
David: Thank you.
Jamie: Take care.
David: Bye.
Jamie: Bye-bye.
***
Outro:
Less than a week after we recorded, I got a lovely postcard in the mail — there it is right down there, as magnetted to my fridge. The words on the back will remain between David and me.
If you enjoyed this episode and/or others, please consider my pitch back at the beginning there and pass us along in whatever way you know how, or maybe drop us a line even. David Sedaris is touring all over the place throughout much of this year reading from his wonderful new book, the first of two volumes of his diaries that range from 1977 to nearly the present. Volume 1 of which is called “Theft by Finding.”
As ever, Ed Patenaude is our stalwart engineer, keeping the 15-minutes train on the rails and blowing the whistle when we pass through your town.
This is 15-minutes, I’m Jamie Berger.
http://15minutesjamieberger.com
(All episodes available on iTunes and pretty much every else pods are cast.)
Copyright 2017 but the guy in the conversation who’s name isn’t Sedaris.
