|
News
&
Events
Words
Images
Links
Archival Abby
Abby's Bio
|
Andy Richter & Sarah Thyre
An Interview at Billy's Topless
This was originally printed in Gallery magazine.
Andy Richter has been seated beside Conan O'Brien as Late Night's
sidekick for over four years now, and he's achieved more fame and
acclaim than your average assistant talk show host, with his own fan
club and soon, his own brand of pasta! Just joking. Seriously now, Andy
is also a happily married Manhattanite with some surprising opinions
about sex, nudity and scatalogical humor. I had drinks with Andy and
his wife, Sarah, in a Chelsea cocktail lounge and here's what they had
to say.
G: I remember being at that roof party with you and you were going, "Well, it looks like I might be a sidekick."
A: When I first started working, it was a little bit like that. They
said, "Come be a writer, but we'll find a place for you to perform
somehow." Initially, I wasn't that helpful as a writer. Because, if you
tell me what the bit is, I can come up with jokes for it. I can write
dialogue, but what they needed was guys who could say, Okay, it's a
machine where you put in a piece of fruit and pull on this lever and
out comes a celebrity joke. Things like thinking of putting lips on
peoples' faces on the video monitor. We just did a bit tonight,
celebrity resumes. I'd never think of that.
S: But you were the first writer they hired and they didn't know what they were going to do with you.
G: Do you think they picked you because you were funnier?
A: It's a dangerous thing to try and quantify. I think it's one of those things that just felt more right.
G: Did he [Conan] have something to do with it?
A: Oh, I think so. And he's told me that after meeting me and hanging out with me, he wanted to have me there to hang out.
S: I think it's because you ordered borscht when you went out to lunch with him.
A: Yeah, I ordered borscht and a knish.
S: He eats funny food.
A: I ordered borscht—I guess he'd never seen it before—and a knish, and
the way that they made the knish, it was round and had a sort of knob
of dough on the top, and when they set it down, I said, "Ooh! It looks
like boob. Tee-hee!" And I laughed at my own joke. Which I think is
what probably got me in, being unashamed to be retarded. I took the
risk of being completely childish, and luckily that scores big points
with him.
G: So how do you react when people say you're funnier than he is?
A: I just say thank you.
G: You're in a position to be funnier. You get to throw in the asides.
A: Conan has to provide so much more talk than I do. He has to be
interviewing. I get to sit there and if I don't say anything, there's
no loss. And if I say something that falls flat, I can get away with it
because I know how to go, oh well, who gives a fuck? I've always looked
at it as being a supporting player. When I'm thinking of myself in a
good light, I think of myself as a character actor, like Peter Sellers
or Alec Guiness or Robert Duvall or George Kennedy or Joe Don Baker,
all those big Nordic actors. But I always thought of it as a supporting
role. And I don't have a problem with that, because I ain't no leadin'
man. And it's more fun. I don't have all the pressure on me. I wouldn't
want to be a talk show host. That's another awkward compliment people
make. "You should have your own talk show." And I think, no thank you.
Why the hell would I want to talk to the latest Baywatch beauty? Or the
author or 101 Japanese Gadgets.
G: What was going on for you before you got the Late Night gig?
A: I was in L.A. and Cabin Boy had finished shooting. Robert called me
and said, "I'm gonna be working with this guy Conan O'Brien who's
taking over Letterman's show. Do you wanna meet him, maybe get a job as
a writer on the show?" And I said yeah, I'm tired of eating baloney. I
had started to apply for day jobs, which up till that point I had been
able to avoid for three years, you know, waiting on tables or whatever.
I had gotten a second interview to be an assistant manager in a movie
theater in Westwood. And I had such a horrible fear that I would get
the job and be there when Cabin Boy opened. And people would come out
of the theater and see me there behind the counter, making popcorn.
S: But you would have been the assistant manager, so you would've been sweeping up.
A: That's right, and telling someone else how to make the popcorn. I
would've been hiding in the back office, not working. So I met Conan at
a deli and submitted some material. A few days later I was on a plane
bound for New York.
G: What was this about you two at Billy's Topless?
A: I was on the Stern Show and they asked me about going to Billy's.
S: He was on Howard Stern playing the Mike Walker National Enquirer
game. And they were, like, "We never hear any dirt about Andy."
A: And I was like, 'Cause I don't rate, why the fuck should ya? I'm not exactly Madonna.
S: And a guy called in and said, "I've seen Andy and his wife at Billy's Topless."
A: And they asked, "Why do you take your wife?" I said cause it's fun! We have fun. It's that kind of place.
S: But Howard Stern said, "You go to a strip club to get away from your
wife. Why would you go to a strip club with your wife? And Andy
said—and I'll quote you on this—"Because it's like sitting your
grandmother in front of a slot machine with a bunch of quarters in Las
Vegas." [laughter]
A: I said, "She just sits there and feeds the girls dollar bills. It's
so funny to watch her. She's like, "Honey, nice leopard print. Here ya
go."
S: "You have breast implants, but you have cellulite, so here's some
money." But you know, women don't get to see naked people that much. So
it's interesting to me.
G: I think to your average joe, for a married couple to go to a topless bar together is tremendously interesting.
A: I don't understand the mysticism of seeing people naked. It has all
this power. But I also feel that it doesn't mean that much. There's the
classic office situation, especially in our office, where we often say,
if there were transcripts of the conversations, everyone would've been
fired for sexual harassment. Just because it's a rough crowd. They play
rough. They make jokes and the women that work there have to be ready
for the fact that there's a bunch of primarily men around there who are
gettin' paid to get a rise out of people and they're gonna do it around
the office too.
S: And most of what you say around the office will never make it to the air anyway. It almost mitigates what makes it to air.
A: Most of the jokes we make to each other are totally scatological.
Like today, on the commerical break, we're coming back from the first
break, and the audience was really good today, and Conan really focuses
on the audience, it's real important to him whether the audience is
good or bad, and we're coming back from commercial, they start the
camera up on the band and he says This audience is so great. We can do
no wrong in front of them. Oops I shouldn't say that. And I said, Yeah,
where's that baby we keep around here for fuckin'? You know, I meant it
as a joke, something that would turn the audience off to us. And that's
the kind of jokes we make to each other, horrible jokes. Horrible,
dark, blackest of black humor to each other. One of the writers and his
wife just had a baby. He has pictures on his desk and Tommy and I came
up with this game: "Man you can see under her hospital gown, she ain't
wearin' no bra. Oh, man, I bet those titties are drippin' milk. Gasp! I
went too far!" The joke of, Oh! I went too far! Oops! Which is
something that we I do around the office constantly. You want to talk
about shit eating necrophiliacs? Okay, let's talk about it. Someone
will make an off color joke and we're like, alright, let's get specific
and people always go, alright, that's enough! And it's like, well, you
brought up shit eating.
S: Why not fuck the dead? [laughter]
A: But what I was gonna say is I don't understand things like sexual
harassment, people objecting to pin-ups. It's hypocritical. If
somebody's looking at pictures of naked people and you go, "Oh I don't
want to see that," you're lying. Cause naked people are always
interesting. Always. Whether they're beautiful, or naked or 500 pounds.
S: We have an awesome book we got in Key West—we always vacation in gay
and fat places, those are our favorite places to vacation—Provincetown,
South Carolina, or Greece, where you can swim naked . . .
A: Well, South Carolina isn't exactly a bastion of openmindedness.
S: No but there were some obese people there who made me feel thin. But
anyway, we got this book that's like The World Guide to Nude Resorts...
A: By Lee Baxendall [sp?]. It's one of the most fascinating books you've ever seen.
S: There are obese naked people, amputee naked people
A: There are naked people in boots on a mountain top firing guns.
S: Yes, just things you do for leisure while you're naked.
A: Or nude resorts with people shopping, or standing in line at the Baskin Robbins.
S: Actually, at the nude Baskin Robbins, there are a few clothed
people, a few naked people and one woman who's naked from the waist
down, but wearing a zip-up jogging jacket. Like, ooh, it's chilly out
here, but I still want my ice cream.
G: And I want my snatch blowing in the breeze.
S: Yeah. [laughter] And people with baskets in the grocery store totally naked. I love that!
A: There's the most impossibly leathery, bearded, guru-looking type guy
standing on top of a mesa going, Hooray! And it's one of the most
hilarious, joyous things. It looks like Howard Hughes nude on top of a
mesa.
S: Or there's this picture of a couple, sitting naked with hiking boots
on a snowy mountain top with their asses in the snow, looking off into
the distance, like, what a nice vista. My vulva isn't freezing at all!
[laughter]
A: We've been swimming at nude beaches and I love to go skinny dipping,
but I'm sorry, sitting on top of a mountain, that's just, you're trying
to show off or something. That's ridiculous. Cold snow . . .
G: I think a good sense of humor is sexy. Discuss.
S: I actually did an article for Cosmopolitan magazine where I
interviewed comedians and comic actors and that was the premise. That
was the all male issue—I know this is supposed to be about actors, but
I can't help it: "I think a sense of humor is sexy. Discuss." Of
course, I could never sleep with anyone who didn't make me laugh. After
I interviewed these comedian guys, I was like, I'm not attracted to any
of you guys. You're so emotionally retarded.
G: Do you do comedy routines in bed?
A: Yes. We do comedy routines constantly.
G: Who's funnier, of the two of you?
A: We just crack each other up.
S: I root him on when he masturbates. You know, like, see, he's a morning hard-on guy, and I'm let's have sex at night.
A: That's because I'm a guy.
G: It's good that you've pointed that out.
S: Right, right. But you know, when I get up in the morning, I'm, "Here I go!"
A: So she'll be out tinkering, and I'll be . . .
S: He says, "Come back to bed!" And I say, "No, but I will root you on." So I do root him on.
A: But there are plenty of times where we'll wake up and I'll kinda paw
her and she'll say, "No, I've got chores to do, I gotta get up." So
she'll get up and get out of bed to be productive. She's like a kid on
Christmas morning who can't stay in bed, or she'll miss something. And
it's just us, what's she gonna miss?
S: So as I'm picking up around the apartment, I'll say, "Go, go, go! "if he's masturbating.
A: [sarcastically] Which is a real turn on.
S: Or I'll do some poses for him, stick my ass in the air. He always
wants to have sex right when we're getting ready to go somewhere. This
one time he's laying on the couch kind of like rubbing it and watching
TV, and I'm primping or whatever. And he's like, "Come on, come over
here, wink-wink."
A: Yeah, I'm like, "Come on, woman!" S: I'm like, "What are you
watching?" And he's watching the Golden Girls. And I said, "If you can
get an erection watching the Golden Girls, you don't need me!"
G: Do you watch porn videos?
A: No. The only porn tape we have, well, we had Debbie does Dallas that Becky gave us.
S: And we had some stuff that Tiffany Million gave us. My sister and I
dubbed it Big Pussy Casserole. Extreme genital close-ups tend to bother
me a little bit. I owned a speculum for years, and part of our early
dating experience was me showing Andy my cervix.
G: How very Annie Sprinkle!
S: Yeah, well, I don't know what it was. But I was sort of like, "I have things in there!
A: Look, it's a little donut! [laughter] Well, she was fascinated with the damn thing.
S: I din't know that I had a separate hole, my vagina, until I was 13
years old. Nobody ever gave me any sex education. So I think it becamse
sort of a fetish for me.
G: Geez, you didn't get any [sex education] in school?
S: No, I went to Catholic school. We had Christian sexuality.
A: But you come from a long line of self-examiners, too.
S: Christian sexuality consisted of them showing us slides of fetuses
in garbage cans and x-rays of babies born with IUDs implanted in their
spines. So that's what it was, Don't do that, don't do that.
A: We don't really watch porn, per se.
S: We watch Midnight Blue, and we watch Channel 35 sometimes.
A: And we do go to Billy's every once in a while. We have one porno
tape that a friend of mine sent me called The Sophisticates. It's from
the Seventies, from Canada, and they had a rule that there couldn't be
any oral-genital contact. So it's sort of softcore, but it's hilarious.
It's obvious that it's all in one basement against a Z-brick wall.
Remember Z-brick? They dress it up different. One time it's the sheik
and his harem, then it's the Mexican prison, then it's beach party! And
it's these little vignettes, but always the Z-brick wall in the
background. But they lick the air around the genitals. It's hilarious.
G: And are the people wailing and screaming?
S: Yes. And a couple of times they're actually laughing. It's so
ridiculous. I mean, it's a guy without a hard-on humping somebody.
A: What's great, too, it's a super-8 reel, super-8 epic, because it's
about an hour long, but there are points where they keep cracking up.
The people all start laughing and the camera stops. You know the guy
with the camera was going, "Come on guys, stop laughing."
S: That's a good indication about how much humor is infused into our sexuality.
G: That's what people want to hear.
A: I can't watch porn anyway, because I always just think, man look at
that bruise on her leg, or look at that cheap fuckin' bed. Is that a
motel?
G: The best is they're all wearing shoes that have never touched the ground.
A: Right. Cause they buy 'em and take 'em back.
S: We have a book called Daughter's Horny Family.
A: Yeah, and the writing's like, "Shit, your pussy feels so shittin'
good!" Stuff like that. "Fuck! Give me that fucking pussy, you shitting
little pussy shit."
S: And every other pussy or shit is misspelled. You should tell the story about the Playboy magazine.
A: I have an aunt Pat, and she was the celebrity of my childhood. She
had a bunch of husbands and would swear, and she dated Robert Goulet.
She was a percursor of the sexual revolution. She was sleeping around
before it was fashionable. Her husband had Playboys and I was
fascinated with the Playboys, so for my fifth birthday she brought me a
copy of Playboy. My mom thought, whatever, hah! Whatever. Because you
know, I was fascinated. Once again, it was like, Oh! Naked people! And
I was lying on the livingroom floor in my grandparent's house and I was
looking at the Playboy and I got an erection.
G: At the age of five? New flash: Andy Richter had erection at age of five!
A: Yeah. [laughter] I took the magazine back to my aunt and said,
"You'd better take this back." When she asked, "Why?" I said, "It makes
my weiner hurt." I could tell she was stifling a laugh. And she went,
"Oh, really?" And I said, "Yeah, especially this picture right here."
And it was it was in the front of the magazine, where they would have
the latest happening at the mansion, you know, after the car stereo
article. There was a photo spread from a ski party, you know, Playboy
Bunny Ski Lodge. And I remember a picture of a woman dancing, shot from
a low angle, and she had a Nordic sweater on, with the deer across it
and all the little patterns. She didn't have any pants on and it was a
shot of her bush from below. And that was the one. I said, "Especially
that one. That one really makes my weiner hurt." And she went, "Okay,
I'll take it away." My older brother subscribed to Playboy at 13, 14
years old. And my mom was like, fine, you wanna look at naked ladies,
whatever. It didn't matter. I'm three years younger than him, so from
the age of 11 there were Playboys available at all times and there was
no reason to hide them or keep it a secret. So there was no sort of
great cache of looking at porno. It was no big deal.
G: The perfect example of how porno doesn't corrupt minors.
A: Right, I don't think so at all.
S: Yeah, but he does beat me all the time.
A: Yeah, but that's because you've got a big fuckin' mouth. [laughter]
I think corruptable people are going to be corrupted regardless.
S: It's so interesting. Politicians say, "I don't want to bring my
children to the newsstands on Sunday morning to get a Times and see
Juggs!" It's like, that's just the human body. It's up to you to tell
your kids about those kinda things.
A: Or not tell them at all. Just say, "This is the human body." It's a
particularly American thing. If a kid lives in France they see tits on
TV in ads for orange juice. It's like who gives a shit?
S: Maybe even celebrity tits.
G: Say something about the Girl Next Door, in Gallery.
A: Oh! I love the Girl Next Door!
G: Who do you think are the sexiest people in show business?
S: It's hard for me to say. Hmmm, women I will Madonna and Holly
Hunter. They're sexy. Funny woman . . . I'll say Amy Poehler from the
Upright Citizens Brigade, which will be on Comedy Central after South
Park starting in August. Men? I really like funny guys. I mean, Brad
Pitt sort of leaves me cold. I think David Cress [sp?], of Mr. Show on
HBO is sexy and funny.
G: How about you Andy? Sexiest and funniest.
A: Funniest? Now? I kinda feel like I know the funniest people. I guess
Bill Murray. It's really, really hard for him to do wrong in my
estimate. We just rented The Man Who Knew Too Little, and it's a pretty
misguided movie. But there are things that he does that are so funny.
Some people are born with a brain that has this weird, magical
mathematical thing that makes them an amazing jazz musician. He has
this mantle of funny, in the way that some people are born Caucasian.
He was just born funny. Funny women? There ain't none. [pause] No,
there's just you [to Sarah]. No, funny women?
G: Do you guys think Ellen [DeGeneres] is funny?
A: I think she can be. She hasn't been funny lately. Since she got a
cause and stopped being funny. I think she's real funny, but lately
it's all been hearts and flowers and tears and saving teenagers and
creating a role model. And that ain't funny. No giggles there.
S: Janeane Garofalo.
A: Yeah, Janeane's really funny. Part of her off-handed style is that
sometimes she'll do a stand-up set, it's like, she'll do it, and all
the people that I like the best, it's like you've gotta go out there
and perform like you don't give a shit. I mean, you care, but you
don't. And there's times when she'll be up, where she's in a bad mood
or whatever, and then there's other times when she's just hilarious.
There's not that many funny women that I can think of.
S: Who do you think is sexy, men and women?
G: David Duchovny, man.
A: I actually do like him, so I suppose, you know . . .
S: We played a parlor game recently where you had to name two people
you were attracted to and it was me and Neve Campbell. I said Holly
Hunter.
A: I like Holly Hunter. Now there's somebody who's funny. Funny and sexy.
S: Andy did an HBO movie with her, The Positively True Adventures of
the Texas Cheerleader Mom, and he said she's just really nice and she's
incredible in it. She does this scene, and she does this thing that my
mom does, where she's eating dinner, and she'll wink at us, like, check
it out! We got food! And she does that in that movie. When I saw that,
I thought, she is amazing.
A: She's great. She's really amazing. Thank you for reminding me. But
sexy men, I would say Cary Grant. And as far as sexy goes, it goes back
to Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly. My tastes are a little older.
Because of what I do for a living. Those women were untainted by too
much knowledge of what goes on. I think Rebecca Romaine [sp?] is an
amazing specimen. That's how I think, very clinically, you know, Wow.
That's somebody who's really met up with the arbitrary ideal of beauty
that's been cooked up by somebody somewhere.
G: Did you both go to your high school promos?
A: Yes, I was prom king.
G: You were prom king? So you weren't a big loser in high school?
A: No, I was popular. But what prom king meant was sixth most popular.
Because homecoming came first, and there was the homecoming court. The
five guys on homecoming court were disqualified from being in the prom
court. So being prom king was being sixth most popular. What the fuck?
Who cares?
S: I always dated guys who were two years older than me, so I had these dangerous guys who I brought to my prom.
G: Guys with switchblades?
A: No, guys with El Caminos. [laughter]
S: No, LeSabers. Guys with really sharp watchbands.
A: With hanger racks in the back.
S: They were good to hold on to when they were eating me out. [laughter]
G: What would you like to be doing in 10 years?
A: Movie acting. And maybe writing. If I ever get off my lazy ass and
start writing my own projects. Movie, book, whatever, writing the
history of various hybrids of tomatoes in America.
G: Expound on the sexual topic of your choice.
S: We love titty. A: That is one of my favorite non-sequiters. I love
to turn to someone during a lull at work, and say, "Man, I love pussy!"
Or "I love to party! Man, I love to party. I love to party and pussy.
The two Ps, man!"
S: You should talk about your first experience with alternative porn, the stuff in the plumbing place. It's very porn intensive.
A: Yeah, I should talk about that. My stepdad had a plumbing business
and back in the plumber's break area—of course, back by the toilet, the
filthy, horrible, disgusting toilet—was a foot locker. My brother and I
would go on Saturday and spend eight hours at the plumbing shop and
explore—it was a huge place. And we'd go back to the foot locker and
look at all this weirdo porno, most of it was typical, but there was
some really odd stuff. One of them was printed on pulp paper,
newsprint, like crossword puzzles are printed on, and it was all
drawings of Betty Page fetish scenarios. But there was one book that
was all death related, like women in bondage situations where the
ultimate result would be death. And the one that I still remember very
clearly was a woman in a classic Fifties rubber outfit and high Betty
Page heels all bound up, and she had a platter, a big round tray with a
chin strap, strapped to her head. She was standing on a huge block of
cheese and it was actually written CHEESE with an arrow pointing to it.
Between her height and the platter with the cheese, she met up with a
glass dome that was suspended from the ceiling. Inside the glass dome
there was a little sign that said POISONOUS SNAKES, and running around
the room at her feet were mice and rats. So the mice and rats would eat
the cheese and then, as the cheese slowly fell, she would slowly lower,
the poisonous snakes would escape, because the tray would lower from
the suspended dome, and the snakes would come out and bite her. And
this was 50s, early 60s stuff. Can you imagine? And every single one of
these was a scenario like that. I was 11 or 12 years old, and I
remember thinking . . .
G: Was it even sexy?
A: Well, that's what I remember thinking! I understood that looking at
porn was supposed to be titillating. And something to jerk off to. It
impacted on me in such a way, like, being stunned and shocked, like,
who is jerkin' off to this stuff?
G: And these were drawings?
A: It was drawings, kind of like those Taschen books of old fashioned fetish magazines. It kinda looked like that.
S: Oh, we do like old porn!
A: Yeah, old porno is the greatest. We've rented some at our local
video store, which is mostly gay, you know, living in Chelsea. They
have some that's antique porn. And it's absolutely amazing to watch,
because some of them are flickering images of people fucking, before
Charlie Chaplin was making movies. And it's like, people were fucking
back then? [laughter] I still regard it from this real childish level,
where I look at this stuff and think, man, people didn't have sex until
1968. Nobody fucked until then. Up till that point there were just
makin' out.
Abby Ehmann is the editrix of her own magazine, Extreme Fetish, and
contributes to a number of other pornographic publications as
well.Thanks to Milton Anthony and the girls of Billy's Topless for the
accompanying photo shoot. [The photos were shot by Warren Tang, so I
don't have any....—Ed.]
[Written in the late '90 sometime...]
|