30-Aug-1995 Wednesday
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To speak to Janeane Garofalo, you would swear that the woman is trapped in
some nightmare of a Hollywood downhill spiral, shaking a tin cup on a
street corner to subsist and busting down doors pleading for an audition.
"I honestly feel like I've already peaked, I swear," Garofalo said recently. "I just came off of a hiatus during which I thought, `Oh my God, what if I never get another job in this profession?' I just hope there's a next thing. God, I really hope that." Uh-huh. Right. Perhaps somebody ought to tell Garofalo that she happens to be the busiest comedy actress in Hollywood and, at 28, a young up-and-comer on the comedy circuit. The woman is everywhere these days. Consider all that Garofalo has done, or is doing, of late:
She just can't get a job. This is all on top of the great notices Garofalo received for her scene-stealing turn in the feature "Reality Bites" and her work in Fox's short-lived "The Ben Stiller Show," which won an Emmy for best comedy-variety series during its lone season. Some people just seem to insist on being unhappy, discontented and angst-riddled, no matter how positive their karma. Garofalo happens to be one of them. And she's not happy about that, either. "You think I like being this way?" she asked. "It startles me that some people would think I actually put this on. Why would I? It's not appealing or becoming." Don't even ask Garofalo if she believes that fame, rather than a land mine, might lurk around the next corner. "I tend only to believe my disparagers. I figure they know something that I don't." Mind you, 95 percent of what is said about Garofalo is positive. She simply refuses to trust it, likewise refusing to believe that she is on the show-business A-train or that she even has what it takes to catch the downtown bus. So rather than try to nurture her burgeoning feature career, what does Garofalo plan to do? As soon as the seasons of "Larry Sanders" and "TV Nation" wrap at the end of October, she's out of here -- moving back to New York along with her good pal Margaret Cho. They plan to room together. What's in New York? "I just prefer my lifestyle there," she said. "I also want to get into stand-up (comedy) a lot more there. I love it. I mean, to me, having to say other people's material in a script can be so painful. It's a pleasure and a release for me to do my own material on stage." Industry attitude It seems as if Garofalo has this all backward. The prevailing industry attitude seems to be that once a performer makes it in movies and TV, she or he can leave stand-up comedy behind. "It was never my ambition to use stand-up as a tool to be an actor," she said. "If anything, doing acting could help me grab a larger audience that will help me tour with my stand-up. It could help me sell tickets. Stand-up is No. 1 for me right now." This is probably not the preferred approach one might use to endear oneself to casting directors and development types. But that's just it. Garofalo doesn't much care what they think. That's evident when you hear her say that she believes most any situation-comedy experience on TV is likely to be lousy compared to "Larry Sanders," and that, "Every comic in the world has been offered a TV development deal, including me, and I'm not interested in the least. I'm not a TV snob. I just know that any show won't be as good as I want it to be, so why do it?" This is the dichotomy that is Janeane Garofalo. She wants to do movies, but she'd rather do stand-up. She's worried about her next job, but she gripes that she "hated" being the co-star of "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" and didn't much like doing bit-part throwaways in movies, either. Perhaps this attitude is a tad more understandable given what happened to Garofalo during one brief period about 19 months ago. She got mugged in front of her house on a Friday, endured the Northridge Earthquake the following Monday, had her car stolen that Wednesday and then had a car plow into the house she was staying in the following Saturday. "I haven't felt real comfortable in Los Angeles since then," she said. But Garofalo has managed to calm down long enough to forge a relationship with a boyfriend, Greg Barrett, a comedian and musician. But he will not be joining Garofalo when she moves to New York ("We'll be bicostal," she said). Yes, Garofalo seems to be living her professional life under the theory that just because she neurotically believes that her world is on the verge of to collapse, it doesn't mean it's not true. Garofalo also hopes that America will appreciate her humility when everything finally does come crashing down. "The fall of an arrogant person is painful for everyone," she said. "I like to think that when I fall, I'll have already prepared the world. And if I somehow don't go splat, I'll be pleasantly surprised. So I can't lose."
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