Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policy makers
Speaker 1: and performers, to hear their stories. What inspires their creations,
Speaker 1: what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work.
Speaker 1: My guest today is actress and comedian Sandra Bernhardt. Her
Speaker 1: father was a proctologist and her mother an abstract artist,
Speaker 1: and that combination formed her worldview for many Sandra Bernhard
Speaker 1: is a comedian and she began her career at comedy
Speaker 1: clubs in l A in the nineteen seventies. Soon she
Speaker 1: caught the attention of the likes of Paul Mooney, who
Speaker 1: became a comedy mentor. She calls herself a postmodern entertainer,
Speaker 1: but you should never underestimate Sandra Bernhardt's career as a
Speaker 1: legit actress. In her three breakout role in Martin Scorsese
Speaker 1: is The King of Comedy, Bernhardt held her own opposite
Speaker 1: Robert de Niro and Jerry Lewis. Bernhardt says she never
Speaker 1: wanted to settle for just telling jokes. She always wanted more,
Speaker 1: a bigger stage, a louder voice, a wider audience. Born
Speaker 1: in Flint, Michigan. Sandra Bernhard was raised in a conservative
Speaker 1: Jewish family. She moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, and spent eight
Speaker 1: months on a kibbutz out of high school. She moved
Speaker 1: to l A in nineteen seventy four at age nineteen
Speaker 1: and enrolled in beauty school. My entire higher education costs
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty dollars. My dad wrote a check
Speaker 1: and left town. I was like, you got off easy,
Speaker 1: my dear dad. And then I was on my own.
Speaker 1: I got I got a couple of jobs, and then
Speaker 1: I landed on my feet at three one North Cannon
Speaker 1: Drive at c C I a si a hair salon.
Speaker 1: That was the name of one of the Um hair
Speaker 1: guys who owned the salon. And I was there for
Speaker 1: five and a half years, and I and I a
Speaker 1: year later, I started performing at night at clubs. What
Speaker 1: was the Jewish identity thing for you? You're growing up
Speaker 1: in Flint and you moved to Um and you've up
Speaker 1: in a very conservative Jewish household. So was it understood
Speaker 1: you'd go do the kibbutzing at some point go to
Speaker 1: Israel for si No no no I had. I just
Speaker 1: had tons of family who when they left Russia, they
Speaker 1: went to Israel and we came to America. So my
Speaker 1: brothers had all gone to work on kibbutzim and in
Speaker 1: the seventies was like it was a great fun thing
Speaker 1: to do after high school. And they welcomed everybody's you know, help,
Speaker 1: and they didn't pay you anything, but they fed you
Speaker 1: in clothes. You and what did you do? What were
Speaker 1: you doing? I did several things. I worked picking um,
Speaker 1: grapefruits and oranges, and then my main job was working
Speaker 1: in the slaughterhouse. It's called the mashta, and I was
Speaker 1: on the line, the assembly line with chickens come down.
Speaker 1: Everybody took out different parts. My main thing was pulling
Speaker 1: out the oh, the lungs. Actually I vacuumed lungs out
Speaker 1: of chickens. I know, you look at me, lengths of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: picking fruit, something very clean and wholesome and sweet, and
Speaker 1: then ripping the lungs out of vacuuming out of do
Speaker 1: you just did what they asked you to do. And if,
Speaker 1: of course, if you were if that was something that
Speaker 1: was you know, not comfortable for you, they wouldn't force
Speaker 1: you to do it. You work like from seven to
Speaker 1: like twelve, and then you have the afternoons off and
Speaker 1: you'd stay up late and hang out with all the
Speaker 1: other kids from all over the world, and you get
Speaker 1: to know people and have fun, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was like an international experience. It was incredible. Working yourself
Speaker 1: to death. No no, no, no no, because you're one of
Speaker 1: the great Cavellas of all time. In my mind, I
Speaker 1: going to see you. They're turned into somebody going how
Speaker 1: much longer have I have to go? Have to vacuum
Speaker 1: out these lungs. I mean I never complained. I'm a worker.
Speaker 1: I like to work, and when I have to do it,
Speaker 1: I do it. I like I like manual labor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to clean. I like to do laundry. I
Speaker 1: like to wash dishes. So I mean, if everything the
Speaker 1: bottom fell out, I'd be fine. I think that is
Speaker 1: why do you think you like? I'm taking seriously, you like, Manu,
Speaker 1: what is it about? Because it's it's it's freeing, you know,
Speaker 1: it's and nobody is there to tell you to do it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're doing something right, you know, if
Speaker 1: you're cleaning a toilet or you know, a shower or
Speaker 1: a sink, or or washing a dish, and drawing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's it's liberating. You're doing a
Speaker 1: load of laundry and it does it's it's it's meditative.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because my wife is constantly
Speaker 1: uh badgering me, because we'll have dinner and we'll cook dinner,
Speaker 1: or even if we order food in and played it
Speaker 1: for everybody and eat uh here in the city or
Speaker 1: out on Long Island where we live. And when we're done,
Speaker 1: I'll say to everybody, get out of this room, take
Speaker 1: your wine bottles in your glasses, and go in the
Speaker 1: other room. And I want to be left completely alone
Speaker 1: here to clean this kitchen. And there's a tremendous sense
Speaker 1: of compersixation when it's over in the kitchens gleaming and
Speaker 1: all the dishes are put away, and I feel what
Speaker 1: a people who need to occupy themselves that way. I
Speaker 1: take your mind off there. I think it's I think
Speaker 1: it's an escape from you know, the intellectual and I
Speaker 1: go beta, I don't think so much. I'm just gonna relax.
Speaker 1: It's relaxing. It is. It's totally like focused on that.
Speaker 1: It's a freeing experience. You come back from and you
Speaker 1: go to l A harmony. How do they influence you? Well,
Speaker 1: they believed in me, and they thought I was the
Speaker 1: funniest thing they'd ever seen. And you know, I just
Speaker 1: thought I was adorable and fresh and crazy, and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody had seen a five ft ten, you know, nineteen
Speaker 1: year old, you know, wearing a Safari jacket, Safari short,
Speaker 1: some lace up espadrill's a little hat, you know, just
Speaker 1: full of like vim and vigor and pissing vinegar. And
Speaker 1: I was just like, I was like a wild, a
Speaker 1: wild card. What's the first club you got? You did
Speaker 1: open mic? This was at the Little Club in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: They had opened mic on Monday night. Is also where
Speaker 1: Joan Rivers used to break in her new material back
Speaker 1: in the day. So I got up and I did
Speaker 1: my first joke, I'm I'm a medium. I understand you're
Speaker 1: a small you're an extra large. Um. That was my
Speaker 1: first joke, and then it just kind of went out
Speaker 1: from there. And then I started incorporating my singing, you know,
Speaker 1: which was really my first love. I really wanted to
Speaker 1: be I really wanted to be another Bette Midler. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be like a wild singing edgy, crazy entertainer,
Speaker 1: a post modern entertainer, which I became in my own way.
Speaker 1: I did at least a year of you know, the
Speaker 1: little club or UM Rusty's Bagel. This guy named Rusty Blitz.
Speaker 1: He was actually had a little part in UM Young
Speaker 1: Frankenstein and he had a little storefront where he had
Speaker 1: served bagels and you'd get up and do your five minutes.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot, lots and lots of little
Speaker 1: clubs like that. And then within a year I started
Speaker 1: going to UM the Improv and the Comedy Store, and
Speaker 1: UM that's where you know, I started getting my chops together,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, and I started getting I did
Speaker 1: the Richard Pryor TV show because of Paul Mooney. He
Speaker 1: did a short lived show on NBC, last six episodes.
Speaker 1: Well you know, it was sketches. I was a regular
Speaker 1: and you can see it. It's disavailable. People come up
Speaker 1: quite often and say, oh, well, you you know a
Speaker 1: durable that we did a roast. We roasted Richard. I
Speaker 1: was one of the people who roasted him. So that
Speaker 1: was like that, you know, again, just thrown into like
Speaker 1: this major situation, and I just, you know, you just
Speaker 1: learned how to stand on your own two feet. You know.
Speaker 1: It didn't really involve acting school or you know, I
Speaker 1: never really studied anything formally. It was just all my
Speaker 1: sort of you know, fascination and imagination that you know,
Speaker 1: carried me through at every different juncture. But when you're
Speaker 1: with someone like Prior and you're young, described to me,
Speaker 1: is Prior calling all the shots with some producer, writer,
Speaker 1: director to know it was. It was Bert Sugarman, I
Speaker 1: think was the executive producer, which was I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was just sort of like incongruous, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the people involved with it. But Paul Mooney was
Speaker 1: the head writer, UM Robin Williams. It was his first
Speaker 1: big gig. It was like a lot of people that
Speaker 1: familiar faces, um now and so Paul would write little
Speaker 1: parts for us or a little you know in the
Speaker 1: sketches and we just did it. And Prior was just
Speaker 1: like beyond. He would just stand there and like laugh
Speaker 1: at everybody. You know. He he was a fish out
Speaker 1: of water. He didn't like that format at all. He
Speaker 1: didn't like being under the thumb of NBC or being censored,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's why it only lasted for six
Speaker 1: shows that I can't do this no more. This is
Speaker 1: this is the sad news. Prior is very bottled up.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't see much emotion from Richard Pryor. It was
Speaker 1: all done in you know, the dressing room. But he
Speaker 1: was very supportive of yea and always he just he
Speaker 1: loved to laugh at at young up and coming entertainment
Speaker 1: and totally not threatened, no need to control. If he
Speaker 1: had a suggestion, he would whisper it to Paul. It
Speaker 1: was very all, very subtle. And then what happens after that, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just performing during the day, I'm doing gigs.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm all not how would you see your
Speaker 1: performances are changing? Well, they opened a room at a
Speaker 1: comedy story called the Belly Room, which was for only
Speaker 1: women performers. So it was the woman who owned it,
Speaker 1: Mitzy Shore, who's still around barely. She was very like
Speaker 1: she was. She was like a segregationist, you know, she
Speaker 1: separated the men from the women, and she loved the men,
Speaker 1: she didn't like the women. She didn't think women really
Speaker 1: belonged in comedy. And it was now very strange. So
Speaker 1: but I got a lot of confidence in this Belly
Speaker 1: Room because people came to see women and they weren't
Speaker 1: expecting you to do male driven comedy, and it was
Speaker 1: just different. So it freed me up to to do
Speaker 1: what I did, which was very completely postfeminist. I refused
Speaker 1: to be self deprecating and nobody had done that yet, No,
Speaker 1: no woman comedian performer hadn't done something where she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm so ugly or this roun that and single.
Speaker 1: And I was really young, so it wasn't like I
Speaker 1: didn't feel like, what am I? Why would I do that?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm hot, you know. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: my attitude. And of course I was always nervous, but
Speaker 1: like everybody starting out, but I covered it up by
Speaker 1: being this sort of character, you know, the super areadite, sophisticated, groovy,
Speaker 1: swinging you know, uh huh yeah, all over it. So
Speaker 1: that's that was the direction I kept going in, and
Speaker 1: I did. I did a couple of little movies, little parts,
Speaker 1: little bit, little of this, and then I auditioned for um,
Speaker 1: The King of Comedy, UM the Robert Your Jerry Lewis
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese vehicle, along with a lot of other people.
Speaker 1: And you know, at that point I was like, I
Speaker 1: didn't even think about it. I just did it. They
Speaker 1: wanted somebody who could improvise, which I did, and after
Speaker 1: like about a month or two of auditioning, several several
Speaker 1: auditions for a different levels, um, I got the part.
Speaker 1: And that was, you know, a game changer for me.
Speaker 1: And after that, I I didn't have to perform at
Speaker 1: the comedy clubs anymore. I would I would miss that. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I never wanted to go back to the
Speaker 1: comedy club because I didn't like that scene. You didn't
Speaker 1: know that wasn't That wasn't for Sandy. Now then I
Speaker 1: could start, you know, playing rock and roll clubs and
Speaker 1: doing concerts and like that. Even if it's just like
Speaker 1: a rock and roll club, it has a different connotation
Speaker 1: because then I have my band and I could sing
Speaker 1: and do all the things that I do, because I
Speaker 1: wanted to do a whole performance, a whole evening, not
Speaker 1: just like you say that. Scorsese and the people involved
Speaker 1: with the film. I guess auditions several people for quite
Speaker 1: a while to get down to casting you, What was
Speaker 1: your interaction with him? Did he work with you a lot?
Speaker 1: Did you go in and see him a lot? And
Speaker 1: working material with him a lot. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: my initial audition was for Siskorm and the casting person
Speaker 1: and she was like visibly stunned by me, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what that meant, but she's, I think Marty
Speaker 1: needs to see you. She had me back the next
Speaker 1: day and and and Deborah Winger was driving a Volkswagen.
Speaker 1: And I had known Debora Winger because she was a
Speaker 1: waitress at the improv and she said, Sandy, it's me Debbie,
Speaker 1: and I look, I said, I'm like, yeah, hi, Tim.
Speaker 1: So then I got nervous and I thought, was she
Speaker 1: must be up for the film too. I'm sure she was.
Speaker 1: It was up at the um Chateau Marmont. That was
Speaker 1: all the all the auditions in l A were at
Speaker 1: the chateau. So the next day I went back and
Speaker 1: I read for Marty and he loved it, and then
Speaker 1: he brought me back to read for him and Bobby
Speaker 1: de Niro and yeah, they just kept and then they
Speaker 1: came to see me perform at the Comedy Store and
Speaker 1: Richard belzer Um did a little improv with me, which
Speaker 1: was really sweet because then they could see how I
Speaker 1: interacted like with somebody who was you know, sort of
Speaker 1: like the movie was going to be, and they loved that.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't hear from anybody for a month.
Speaker 1: And then they flew me to New York and I
Speaker 1: stayed at the Mayflower Hotel, which is now you know
Speaker 1: that bigot. Where was all happening to me? Biddle Barrows
Speaker 1: was her name, Yes, madam, Yes, I don't know that
Speaker 1: from I don't have her business card in my well.
Speaker 1: But the hotel a lot was happening, I can tell
Speaker 1: you that much. I mean every action. Remember that they
Speaker 1: sold the contents of the hotel. They tore down the hotel,
Speaker 1: and before they did, they offered people a chance to
Speaker 1: come in and buy the contents. They sold like an
Speaker 1: estate auction, the drapery and the furniture. It was the
Speaker 1: worst stuff in the world. I mean, it was like
Speaker 1: from you know, from from a million years ago, but
Speaker 1: it was it was a fun place to be. And
Speaker 1: then that was the audition where I was going to
Speaker 1: read with um Jerry Lewis. Now, yeah, what was that like? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think it was great, but I was that That
Speaker 1: was the only time I was really nervous in the
Speaker 1: whole audition process because of Erry Lewis, and he's an
Speaker 1: intimidating yeah figure, you know, and when I met him,
Speaker 1: he's kind of a no nonsense guy. Well he's no
Speaker 1: nonsense and he knows everything. You know, he's like the
Speaker 1: no at all. But it's interesting how you Um, I
Speaker 1: don't consider myself a comedian, but I've done a lot
Speaker 1: of comedian comedy programming and I'm around these eighth degree
Speaker 1: black belt comedy people, and some of them are it's
Speaker 1: almost inconceivably dry and very droll when you meet them
Speaker 1: in person and their own persona a couple I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of is very ANTIQ and very nutty and silly, and
Speaker 1: then you see them backstage and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: you think that you're talking to a politician, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister of England and you were not going to
Speaker 1: state visit or something. They're very proper and buttoned up
Speaker 1: and no jokes would have and he strikes me that way.
Speaker 1: He's pompous, imperious, very imperious. What I think, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's clear everything has been said that there
Speaker 1: is to say about Jerry Lewis something until now. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's still he's still unbelievable he's still that same person.
Speaker 1: And he hadn't really worked with a woman like me before,
Speaker 1: he don't, you know, he used people like Stella Stella
Speaker 1: Steven's sour name is sort of like, you know, foil
Speaker 1: a foil. You know, women weren't there to actually hold
Speaker 1: their own there, Margaret Dumont and that woman from the
Speaker 1: from the Mark Brother the Foil exactly. But when you're
Speaker 1: there with him, um, you know, that's Marty in and
Speaker 1: around in Raging Bullet came out a little bit before that,
Speaker 1: just a couple of years before they get in like
Speaker 1: nineteen or something. You know, that's Marty right, questing at
Speaker 1: the peak of his power, making this film with you.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering, does de Niro and Marty obviously have
Speaker 1: and I can't even define it, their own legendary kind
Speaker 1: of battery between the two of them and how they
Speaker 1: work and the unspoken and the spoken and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to someone like Lewis to see defer
Speaker 1: to Scor says he discussed. He didn't know Scor says
Speaker 1: he deferred to him. He wanted he had to do
Speaker 1: very self directing, yeah, self tracking, but also Marty would
Speaker 1: like I guess, humor him in a certain way and
Speaker 1: say well what do you think about this scene? And
Speaker 1: and to be handled a certain Yeah. So Jerry was
Speaker 1: made to feel like he was his expertise, he was
Speaker 1: the eminence, perfectly said. But the scenes, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been in films before with people and some of
Speaker 1: it this um dichotomy with them, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say tension, but some of that relationship with them resulted
Speaker 1: in a really good film for Stage Place, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it didn't. People always say, oh, you you this kind
Speaker 1: of crackle that you create. There's a magic that happens,
Speaker 1: and there's something that happens that's palpable on screen. I
Speaker 1: don't always buy that. However, you and he, it is
Speaker 1: mesmerizing you and he on screen together. I can't think
Speaker 1: of who's going to break a glass and shove the
Speaker 1: jagget edge? Whose neck first? Yes, well that's you know.
Speaker 1: That was because I just stayed in the moment, and
Speaker 1: as intimidated as I was, didn't. I didn't. I didn't relent.
Speaker 1: I held my ground, which you know, was he expecting
Speaker 1: you to relent? You think? Was he expecting you to
Speaker 1: kind of break down? Maybe weaker on the film need
Speaker 1: you to Be and that, and then that kept rising
Speaker 1: the temperature, you know, for him. I was respectful and
Speaker 1: slightly in awe of Jerry Lewis. You're in a movie
Speaker 1: and you more than with your own. I mean, you
Speaker 1: were right up there delivering the goods in the film
Speaker 1: with Robert de Niro and Jerry Lewis in this quirky,
Speaker 1: weird movie that everybody loves I know who no knows
Speaker 1: that movie and loves you in it, and the weirdness
Speaker 1: of it, you know, you and him, everybody all taped
Speaker 1: up and everything in the way you had all that done.
Speaker 1: Uh what happens after that? I mean, does everything just
Speaker 1: change for you? Well, it did change for me. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I don't know if I was
Speaker 1: savvy enough at that time to like things were different.
Speaker 1: I mean, now you're like every young actors are like
Speaker 1: they they're plugged in like that. You know, they've got
Speaker 1: their machinery all ready to go. I got a team,
Speaker 1: and back then it was just sort of more like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I just did this great movie. But now I want
Speaker 1: to kind of just go out in the road and
Speaker 1: do my shows and you know things, Yeah, things, of course,
Speaker 1: we're at a different level, you know. But looking back,
Speaker 1: had had it been now, I guess I probably would
Speaker 1: have been more craven in a certain wors. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like young actors are they're
Speaker 1: just so like everything is just like a machine, like
Speaker 1: I said, a machinery, Like somebody grabs you, and there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's the public system, and there's the agent,
Speaker 1: and there's the manager, and then there's the handler, and
Speaker 1: then there's you know, and everybody's just like kept, you know,
Speaker 1: in a certain sort of position where they're not really
Speaker 1: free to like move and be like totally outrageous or groovy.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, I think that there's certainly people who
Speaker 1: in my life, to myself included who and this is
Speaker 1: a big swing here. I don't don't necessarily think you're
Speaker 1: gonna mind agree, but I tend to think that years ago,
Speaker 1: when I was first making films, and I don't mean
Speaker 1: small parts and films in the eighties, but playing lead
Speaker 1: roles in films in the nineties, You do a movie
Speaker 1: and it was over. Yes, you shared about I want
Speaker 1: to go on the road and do my show and
Speaker 1: what have you. But I had much more faith in
Speaker 1: providence about what was going to happen. I kind of
Speaker 1: lead back and I go, well, I'm gonna go do
Speaker 1: a play. I'm gonna go do this. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: only a fool thinks you can really manage this whole
Speaker 1: thing and make yourself successful. That's that's luck. And I
Speaker 1: get a script sent to me, and I would evaluate
Speaker 1: the script based on the instincts I had, and I've
Speaker 1: been scripted and I go, I don't think this is
Speaker 1: very interesting. And my agents would call me up and go, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you need to come in here and read the script again.
Speaker 1: In my office, I have a special lamp I have
Speaker 1: on my desk and we're gonna put that on the script.
Speaker 1: And the lamp is a lamp that projects onto each
Speaker 1: page the amount of money you're going to be paid
Speaker 1: for this movie, because it's some millions of done. And
Speaker 1: now I feel like people have bought so many young
Speaker 1: people have they're making movies they don't want to make.
Speaker 1: They're making you they don't even know if they want
Speaker 1: to make, but they've been sold on the idea that
Speaker 1: this is the movie they should be doing to stiff
Speaker 1: in their career. Right. Well, Also there's there's a many
Speaker 1: films now that you know, the big you know, um,
Speaker 1: either sci fi or you know, or the superhero. It's
Speaker 1: just it's a different time. It will never be what
Speaker 1: it was in the eighties and nineties. Let's face it, though,
Speaker 1: you and I we chopped one of our hands off
Speaker 1: to be in one of these Marvel movies. You know,
Speaker 1: I think and I think we'd both be great. I
Speaker 1: think I'd be a great kind of evil. Um. So yeah.
Speaker 1: So then I after that, you know, I did did
Speaker 1: a little bit television, I did a little bit of film,
Speaker 1: and then I did a lot of performing, and then
Speaker 1: I sort of, you know, really broke out as a
Speaker 1: live performer. I did my first one woman show here
Speaker 1: in New York without You I'm Nothing, which was legendary
Speaker 1: and became an actual film, not like a special, but
Speaker 1: we made it into a film that was quite interesting
Speaker 1: and you can still see it um and it was
Speaker 1: sort of like a breakthrough performance film that a lot
Speaker 1: of people try to emulate and copy because it was
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a well. I was collaborating at the
Speaker 1: time with this um, this artist named John Boskovic. He
Speaker 1: had directed the show, the live show, and then somebody
Speaker 1: gave him, gave us some money for him to direct
Speaker 1: the movie. And Nick Rogue, who I had done a
Speaker 1: film with called Track twenty nine, he was the executive
Speaker 1: producer and he just sat on the set and kind
Speaker 1: of oversaw, you know, the shots and everything, and we
Speaker 1: turned it into this sort of like um, very very
Speaker 1: crazy commentary on performance films. It was sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of went in on itself and nobody
Speaker 1: had ever seen anything like it, and so that kind
Speaker 1: of established me in a whole other way too, and that,
Speaker 1: you know, that was a great stepping stone for me
Speaker 1: in terms of like being you know, an iconic live performer,
Speaker 1: and that's kept me going throughout the years when other
Speaker 1: things weren't happening coming up. Bernhard talks activism and empathy
Speaker 1: and why she never wanted to be the poster girl
Speaker 1: for just one cause. Explore the Here's the Thing archives
Speaker 1: where you can hear my conversation with another iconic New
Speaker 1: York artist. I was an attention getter, but I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be Eve Arden. I really didn't. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Why Well, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a funny girl. That's just cracking wise cracks
Speaker 1: or staying up with the you know, with the rollers
Speaker 1: in her hair. Take a listen to Elaine stretch a
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing, dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing. Sandra Bernhardt got her
Speaker 1: start in comedy clubs in the nineties seventies, but she
Speaker 1: quickly moved on to television and movies, and today she
Speaker 1: still performs live regularly. She doesn't prefer one form over
Speaker 1: the other. Well, I think everything feeds for the other.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, if you're not if you're not
Speaker 1: on television, you're not doing films, it doesn't support your
Speaker 1: live performing. You've got to have a certain amount of exposure.
Speaker 1: And it's also good to mix it up and be
Speaker 1: collaborative and not always depending on your own you know,
Speaker 1: creative source, which sometimes you need a break from that
Speaker 1: because you can't I mean, you know, writing a show,
Speaker 1: writing material, it's it's it's it's a big undertaking. You
Speaker 1: can't always. I witnessed that other people I did. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, but when I worked with Tina even
Speaker 1: witness you know, yeah, yeah, I'm sure that, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that show is I mean that's a whole different ball game.
Speaker 1: That was you know, it was her producing, end righting,
Speaker 1: writing and starring. Yeah, I'm sure, but but you know great,
Speaker 1: you know the results were great for her and for everybody.
Speaker 1: In the end. You left l A. And when you left,
Speaker 1: you moved to New York. That was weird. Never I
Speaker 1: mean for for years I just went back and I
Speaker 1: kept I kept a house out in l A in
Speaker 1: the valley. You got your first home here. We're in
Speaker 1: the valley North Hollywood, like Blex, between Kling and Clump
Speaker 1: off of Riverside, my little Spanish bungalow that I bought
Speaker 1: six for like just about I lived in the valley.
Speaker 1: I lived up above Taft High School and Woodland Hills
Speaker 1: with my ex wife. I was there for ten years
Speaker 1: and I was with my ex wife with her and
Speaker 1: married to her, and then for but seven years. A
Speaker 1: little bit after I was divorced, I went back there
Speaker 1: and rented a house around the corner from them. So
Speaker 1: if my daughter forgot something, which was very common, she
Speaker 1: could go back home and get it. The valley has
Speaker 1: its like do you like that? I love the valley.
Speaker 1: What do you like about the valley? It feels like
Speaker 1: you just somewhere else. I like the valley because it's
Speaker 1: just unpretentious. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's not l A.
Speaker 1: It's not you drive down the Bulevard and all that
Speaker 1: shitty architecture. It's wonderful. You become comforted, Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: don't feel like you have to come up, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, to rise up to anything. There was a no,
Speaker 1: there is no pretense in the valley. Let's do our valley.
Speaker 1: Let's let's valley off right now. Where would you go?
Speaker 1: Where would you go? Well? Back then, I mean, you
Speaker 1: know there's Umjinkies for breakfast, the mainly breakfast place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: breakfast places, pancakes on the boulevard over near and in
Speaker 1: Roja for sushi over there, cold Water Canyon right. Well,
Speaker 1: like New York, like any place but New York. You
Speaker 1: can get quicker, you know, to you know, if you
Speaker 1: want to go for Italian, there's you know, you can
Speaker 1: go downtown, uptown, you can stay in Midtown. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a million places to go. But l A, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a big schlap. Well, as my friend
Speaker 1: Ken Paige told me, the great Ken Paige, who worked
Speaker 1: on Broadway, Forever and cats and different shows like that
Speaker 1: Ken page it to me, he said, uh. He said,
Speaker 1: New York is a river and l A as a lake.
Speaker 1: He said, in New York, you step out the door,
Speaker 1: there's a current that pulls you in a certain direction.
Speaker 1: You just go. If you walking down the street with
Speaker 1: your friends smoking a cigarette down Columbus Avenue, you're doing
Speaker 1: something and you certainly land much somewhere, he said. And
Speaker 1: you'll land somewhere, he says, l A. You gotta put
Speaker 1: your oars in the water and a son of a
Speaker 1: gun to where you want to go. You have to
Speaker 1: make plans, tests, friendships. Yes, so you know. So I
Speaker 1: never really left l A until I guess until my
Speaker 1: daughter was you know, five or six, and it was
Speaker 1: school became more serious, and then we stayed here most
Speaker 1: of the time. Now you're are you married? No? No, essentially,
Speaker 1: But my girlfriend and I she's your partner. She's very
Speaker 1: much so. And she's someone who, if I read her
Speaker 1: bio correctly, she basically did one show. Did she do
Speaker 1: the show with you? Does she continue to write or
Speaker 1: she's not writing anymore? She writes, she know she's never written.
Speaker 1: We've written, We've written scripted projects for a TV but
Speaker 1: to no avail so far. But she worked with you,
Speaker 1: didn't you know? Okay? I met her. I met her
Speaker 1: when she was working at Harper Bazaar. She wrote a
Speaker 1: show on IMDb. It's like the Sandra Bernhard Experience or something. No,
Speaker 1: she that was my my short lived talk show on
Speaker 1: any and she she was she was on it as
Speaker 1: my side. She didn't know how the hell she ended
Speaker 1: up there. She was like, if the show gets picked up,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this anymore. She's a very She's from St. Louis.
Speaker 1: She's no nonsense. She's like, she's not she's not in it,
Speaker 1: you know, for the for the fame or the attention.
Speaker 1: She's just the opposite, which is so refreshing. You first
Speaker 1: got your first home here when um, well, we bought
Speaker 1: our place in two thousand in um West Chelsea. What's
Speaker 1: changed for you about New York? Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: home now, for better or for worse. Since two thousand,
Speaker 1: which is sixteen years ago. What's changed, um emotionally? Or
Speaker 1: the city? Well, the city is you know, as as
Speaker 1: we all know, it's become sort of a Hackney conversation.
Speaker 1: Is not the city we all loved in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties. I mean it's you know, start breaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's lost. It's um it's some core, you know,
Speaker 1: it's lost its ability to to welcome people, um who
Speaker 1: are just starting their careers. They can't. You can't afford
Speaker 1: to live here. You know, years ago there were pockets
Speaker 1: of communities of affordable housing which were very often u
Speaker 1: utilized by artists. And the artistic community here seems to
Speaker 1: have left slowly, whether it's visual artists, everybody's left. And
Speaker 1: I mean and and you know, yeah, I guess some
Speaker 1: people moved out to Brooklyn and Queens and but you know,
Speaker 1: if you're starting out and you are like literally like
Speaker 1: a visual artist, like a painter, I think people are
Speaker 1: going all over the places. Are going to Detroit, They're
Speaker 1: going to Pittsburgh, going down south. You you got to
Speaker 1: go someplace where there's a community, but where you can
Speaker 1: afford to have I mean, you can't. You gotta if
Speaker 1: you're painting, you need space. You can't painting like you know,
Speaker 1: one tiny little room and lived there too. Was The
Speaker 1: city has changed, uh, in hand in hand obviously the
Speaker 1: people who live here is changed. And it's like that's
Speaker 1: what I find is that New Yorkers themselves. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: there's still people, you know, there's still people that you
Speaker 1: know had rent control, so there's still you know, there's
Speaker 1: still a few of the old you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of Woody Allen asked New Yorkers that you see that
Speaker 1: you think, oh, they'd be great and Woody Allen film,
Speaker 1: you know, like the older Jewish couple, or you know,
Speaker 1: just the sort of you know, interesting, flamboyant people that
Speaker 1: populated this city when I first used to come here,
Speaker 1: you know, and now there ums of them, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and every time one of them sort of leaves or dies,
Speaker 1: you go, it's, you know, we're closer and closer to see.
Speaker 1: It's a creative extension, you know, and and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's you know, and yeah, I don't know. I still
Speaker 1: prefer living here than l A at this point. I
Speaker 1: love to go to l A. I like to spend
Speaker 1: time there. I guess if they call me and said
Speaker 1: you're gonna come do a TV show in l A,
Speaker 1: I'd run as fast as I could because I want
Speaker 1: to work. And I'd be fine because I have a
Speaker 1: lot of friends out there too, and there's lots of
Speaker 1: things about l A that I still love, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Everything is different, The world is different. We're
Speaker 1: on the precipice of total craziness, you know, the the
Speaker 1: band aid's been ripped off the wound the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: We see what people, a big swath of people in
Speaker 1: this country really feel. The racism, the fear, the xenophobia,
Speaker 1: the misogyny, um on and on and on. The morning
Speaker 1: for a way of life, this ending, that's that's been
Speaker 1: American supremacy and the fact that we're going to go
Speaker 1: into other countries and interfere with their lives, and we're
Speaker 1: going to exert our military power in every corner of
Speaker 1: the world to our advantage, to our standard of living,
Speaker 1: to keep our standard of living. It isn't working anymore.
Speaker 1: It's the time, plocks, It's the time of change, and
Speaker 1: it's the time of you know, in a certain way,
Speaker 1: of anarchy, you know, on both sides of the of
Speaker 1: the of the aisle. And you're not sure how it's
Speaker 1: gonna all shake down. Do you write every day? Are
Speaker 1: you well? Especially now that I have my own radio
Speaker 1: show on Andy Cohen got his own channel, it's called
Speaker 1: Radio Andy, and he asked me if I would do
Speaker 1: a show every day, and I said, yeah, I'll do
Speaker 1: it because you know, I'm here in the city most
Speaker 1: of the time or a lot of the time, and
Speaker 1: I thought that would be fun. And it's really been great,
Speaker 1: and it's really been, you know, very like I've been
Speaker 1: to do a show every day, do a show five
Speaker 1: days a week, live, live, twelve to one. Now, do
Speaker 1: you find you've been very um, this is such a
Speaker 1: tired way of putting this out the other way, but
Speaker 1: you've been very supportive and very up front of the
Speaker 1: LGBT community and your work. And do you find it's like,
Speaker 1: are you glad you came? You came and I came out,
Speaker 1: but you lived your life bisexually or whatever ever wait
Speaker 1: at the time you did, or do you wish you
Speaker 1: were here now? You don't know because I was never
Speaker 1: It was never really about that for me. You didn't care. No,
Speaker 1: of course I care, I can. I want, I want
Speaker 1: rights for everybody. I want everybody who's unique to be
Speaker 1: comfortable in that setting. So that was always my from
Speaker 1: my point of view, like if you are a freak,
Speaker 1: fly your freak flag and be comfortable and know that
Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine because I can't always hold your
Speaker 1: hand through it. Because I was of the belief in
Speaker 1: the lgbt Q. The thing really blew up. It was
Speaker 1: like kids, we all have to buck up, you know,
Speaker 1: we all have to be soldiers, we all have to
Speaker 1: be more. You were there, You like that you were
Speaker 1: there for the fight, so to speak, No, because I
Speaker 1: wasn't there for the fight. I mean now, I believe
Speaker 1: that the fights an individual fight, and I'm not this
Speaker 1: is this is like a whole, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a very I'm just paring it down. Of course, I
Speaker 1: stand in solidarity to everybody, you know, and that goes
Speaker 1: for everybody who deserves support. But what I'm saying for
Speaker 1: myself personally, I never needed that. I wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: validate me except me. I'm I feel comfortable. I was
Speaker 1: always comfortable in my own skin, and I liked who
Speaker 1: I wasn't it was. I didn't define myself by my sexuality.
Speaker 1: I defined myself by my desires and my imagination and
Speaker 1: all the things that looked you know, like a buffet.
Speaker 1: I like a buffet. I don't like one dish. So
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes I'm dating boys sometimes I was dating
Speaker 1: girls when I first moved to l A. And then
Speaker 1: over the years, I had you know, I had relationships,
Speaker 1: but I was always just like, whatever I was into
Speaker 1: my career, I wanted to have fun. So until I
Speaker 1: met my my present um girlfriend, Sarah, who was amazing,
Speaker 1: and she wouldn't take it any other way because she's
Speaker 1: you know, she doesn't she doesn't take any prisoners, and
Speaker 1: she shouldn't, um, but she's done so like she's like,
Speaker 1: this is how it is, the world needs. Everybody needs
Speaker 1: to buck up, get tough. So I've just never been
Speaker 1: one to like, oh my god, let me hold your hand,
Speaker 1: oh my baby, sweet. You know, it's like, and I
Speaker 1: understand some people are born into circumstances. If you're transgender,
Speaker 1: or you're you're you've been thrown out of your home
Speaker 1: because you're gay. It is the worst possible thing in
Speaker 1: the world. Of course, I have wells of empathy, and
Speaker 1: I've done, you know, and I will do and I
Speaker 1: have done benefits to raise money to be there, and
Speaker 1: I'm a vocal spokesperson. But I also see people on
Speaker 1: the train. I see, you know, people of color, I
Speaker 1: see old people, I see all kinds of people. Who
Speaker 1: are just barely hanging on. So my empathy is like
Speaker 1: from one end of the rainbow to the next, and
Speaker 1: it's never been specifically LGBT. It's like we're all in
Speaker 1: this fucked up soup together and everybody who doesn't have
Speaker 1: enough is suffering. So you've got to spread the shift
Speaker 1: around and you've got to spread the empathy, and you've
Speaker 1: got to also say to those who are a little
Speaker 1: bit like take care of me, Like, Okay, you gotta
Speaker 1: take care of yourself right now that I'll circle back
Speaker 1: to you when I have time. I'm over here right
Speaker 1: now trying to help you know, this person, because it's
Speaker 1: just there's too much going on. What was it like
Speaker 1: for you being a mom and raising your daughter amazing? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, also we're it's a rarefied atmosphere. You know,
Speaker 1: we have help, we have people that are there. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a support system. Yeah, I got to keep working,
Speaker 1: but um, it was it was a leap of faith
Speaker 1: for me. I mean it wasn't like I was like
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up thinking oh I've got to have
Speaker 1: a kid. But suddenly, like when I was four days,
Speaker 1: I think I just better do this because I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna regret it, and I would have regretted it.
Speaker 1: And it's a work in progress. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you have an older kid, and I'm sure that there
Speaker 1: are times when she still calls on you and you're like, uh,
Speaker 1: because you want you want, you want them to just
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna do now from now on, when
Speaker 1: Ireland calls me my daughter. If you're listening, i'm gonna
Speaker 1: call her. After this is over, I'm gonna say Ireland
Speaker 1: when you call to go. But sometimes, you know my daughter, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: My daughter just started college, so I can't mean, of
Speaker 1: course she's still a baby. She want to study, she
Speaker 1: wants to write television, trants to write comedy. I don't
Speaker 1: name the school, but if she go East Coast West
Speaker 1: Liberal Arts, great college. She got in. She did it.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So you know, I got no complaints. Now, um,
Speaker 1: you ever thought about doing a drama, like a one
Speaker 1: hour drama? Or is that too much work? I'm ready, honey,
Speaker 1: while you got something in mind for me, call me up.
Speaker 1: I think I do. Actually call me. I'm ready to
Speaker 1: go to work, infancy. I'm ready to go to work tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'll work the long hours to York. Honey, hallelujah. I'll
Speaker 1: be there. I'll be there with bells on. Speaking of
Speaker 1: being there with bells on, you are at the sorting
Speaker 1: room at the Wallace. It's called the Wallallis Annenberg Performing
Speaker 1: Arts Center in Beverly Hills, December eighth night, two shows
Speaker 1: a night, and then I'll be back here. It's called
Speaker 1: Sandra Monica Boulevard, Coast to Coast. I'll get back in
Speaker 1: my car, drive back to New York. Joe's Post, Joe's
Speaker 1: Romance of It, Joe's Pub December twenty six through New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve. It's My, My, My, My holiday tradition. Two
Speaker 1: shows a night, twelve shows, six nights. I take no prisoners,
Speaker 1: We kick ass. We have a ball. I collapse at
Speaker 1: the end. And it's a new Year. I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask my wife. Now here's a real thing I got
Speaker 1: going on. My wife is what you would call a
Speaker 1: queer dear. She's encrusted in gay man. All her friends
Speaker 1: are gay man. So we're gonna bring a whole gang
Speaker 1: of them. Yes, yes, coming the jockstraps. Is that what
Speaker 1: people do they do? Is there like a thing? There
Speaker 1: was a theme. Now there's no thing. Okay, I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe it has a really cool now, But I like
Speaker 1: if some drag queens still come dressed, you know, in
Speaker 1: full regale, you know like they used to in the
Speaker 1: old days to pay homage, maybe I'll pay homage. And
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to see you in drag
Speaker 1: want soon, like white cream colored nigh that I wouldn't mind.
Speaker 1: Just don't, just don't wear a wig. Thank you then, um,
Speaker 1: thank you. What a pleasure. Sorting room at the Wallace
Speaker 1: Annenburg in Beverly Hills December and December through New Year's
Speaker 1: Eva Joe's Pub, rocking, rolling, kicking ass, still loving it.
Speaker 1: I'll see you on the set of your new show.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be playing Prosecutors, Honey, Sandra Bernhard. She'll be
Speaker 1: performing live later this year. This is Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: you're listening to Here's the Thing.