The comedian once known only as Roseanne is back doing stand-up and she's spoiling for a fight. She tells Brian Boydabout celebrity psychosis, being silenced and why she once called Angelina Jolie "the evil spawn of Jon Voight"
NOT SO long ago she went under the name Roseanne Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas (the last three are those of her ex-husbands), but now she's simply Roseanne Barr again. The husbands aren't the only baggage she's ditched. The once XXL comedian has lost weight and the dark hair now shines with blonde highlights.
Roseanne's life changed in five minutes on the evening of August 23rd, 1985. Before then, she was just a 33-year-old Jewish mother of three who washed dishes and waited on tables in a Denver restaurant to bring in much-need extra money. When Roseanne served customers their food, she tossed in a free side order of earthy, blue-collar humour. Someone from Johnny Carson's Tonight Showwas mightily impressed by her improvised irreverence and offered her a spot on the show.
Roseanne did her turn on late-night television that night in 1985 and, afterwards, Carson (one of the most influential voices in the entertainment industry) turned to the camera and said "Roseanne is going to become the biggest woman comic ever".
Carson was on the money. Within two years, Roseanne had her own eponymously titled TV sitcom, which ran for 10 years and made her not just universally famous but, at one point, the highest-ever paid TV star. Roseanneportrayed an America which was usually kept well away from TV screens. This wasn't The Waltons:the characters were not photogenic, their life was a grind, and there were no neatly parcelled-up happy endings.
"The 10 years I spent on that show removed me completely from the world," she says. "It was very hard going and, when it was over, I felt like Rip van Winkle. Everything outside had changed. I mean, I didn't even have to wash my own underwear while I was doing that show. How mad is that? I think I did suffer from celebrity psychosis at some point. I realised I was nuts."
In Utah, where Roseanne grew up, her family had to hide their Jewish religion from bigoted neighbours. "I was one religion during the week and another at weekends," she says. Before the Carson show, she was muddling along just fine. But fame almost killed her.
"I suppose way back when I worked in the restaurant, I would have regarded myself as a feminist-socialist type of person. And my stand-up reflected that. But when you go through that experience, though, of being one of the most famous people in the world, it has a drastic affect on you. It took me years to realise that I had been through a lot, but it's only recently I've felt like I've come out the other side and learnt from all the mistakes."
Many American who once adored her no-nonsense and searingly honest portrayal of working life turned on her after the infamous incident when she performed a controversially humorous rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at a big baseball game in 1990. It was as if this woman from the other side of the tracks was deemed ill-equipped to handle all that the "American dream" had given her.
"I do think I have been silenced, or rather the American media have tried to silence me, because of what I stand for," she says. "The issues that affect working people and the corruption of our political system were the issues I was talking about when I first started. And I'm still talking about them now. There's no such thing as an "apolitical" comedian. Even Joan Rivers isn't one. Even by not addressing political issues you're being political."
As an indication of the strength of Roseanne's political beliefs, consider remarks she made last month when she attacked certain celebrities for refusing to endorse the Democratic candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. She referred to actor Jon Voight as "a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu" (Voight had labelled Barack Obama "a socialist" who would ruin the US if elected).
Roseanne then trained her sights on Voight's daughter, Angelina Jolie - "the evil spawn of Jon Voight" - and Jolie's "vacuous" husband Brad Pitt. Both Jolie and Pitt have refused to say which presidential candidate they support, leading Roseanne to say: "Angelina and Brad make about $40 million a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the Earth even more."
From the above, I guess that Roseanne is a big fan of the late and much-lamented Bill Hicks. "I adore the man," she says. "Here was someone cutting through the crap and telling it how it is. You know, he was silenced by the American media and they're trying to silence me too. I can't get a spot on any of the major chat shows. Instead, I fund my own radio programme and my own blog ."
Occasionally, she takes out paid advertisements to put her point across. The last one was in the Hollywood Reporter: "This town is back-stabbing, scum-sucking, and small-minded. But thanks for the money . . . "
Post-Roseanne, she went on to host her own TV chat show and a variety of other TV projects before she returned to her stand-up roots upon being asked to introduce Michael Moore at a political rally in Salt Lake City.
"It was a very right-wing crowd and it was obvious a lot of them were there just to boo and heckle Michael Moore. So I went out and pretended to be a Bush supporter."
She told a joke about how she was glad Bush was president and even gladder that he had vetoed the ban on assault weapons, "because you never know when God is going to call on you to shoot an abortion doctor".
She's also met George Bush in person. She went up to him and told him that she prayed for him every night. "Aren't you a good girl?" she says he replied - a remark which clearly still infuriates her.
"Put all of these things together and you'll see why I feel so energised now to be back on stage doing stand-up. The world is in such a ridiculous state at the moment that we are crying out for a Bill Hicks or a Noam Chomsky figure to deliver some home truths. All I can contribute is my little bit."
• Roseanne Barr plays Tripod, Harcourt Street, Dublin on October 24th and 26th as part of the Pod Cast Comedy Festival www.pod.ie
Too many laughs?
Brian Boydruns through a cornucopia of Irish comedy festivals
THE Pod Cast Comedy Festival, set for the October bank holiday weekend (24th-27th) and headlined by Roseanne Barr, also features performances by Sean Hughes, Glen Wool, Owen O'Neill, We Are Klang and others.
If you think it's a bit strange having yet another comedy festival in the country, pause to consider that Pod Cast is actually one of two taking place in Ireland over the bank holiday weekend. Down in Portlaoise there's the Carlsberg Halloween Howls Comedy Festival, which features 35 comedians over four days. Acts include Ardal O'Hanlon, Barry Murphy, Andrew Maxwell, Maeve Higgins and Jason Byrne (www.halloweenhowls.ie).
Just a few years ago the only comedy festival in the country was the long-running Kilkenny Cat Laughs, which takes place over the June bank holiday weekend. It has been joined in recent
years by the Bulmers International Comedy Festival, which takes place in a variety of venues around Dublin each September. This year's headliners included Chris Rock and The Mighty Boosh.
Sandwiched in between these two for the past two years has been the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival which takes place over four July days in Iveagh Gardens.
That's five comedy festivals in all for the country this year. The choice, though, is a bit illusory, as many of the acts who played Kilkenny also played the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival and will be playing in Portlaoise in two weeks.
It may seem like overkill for a country that really only has a handful of top-class comics, but all the different comedy promoters have reported full houses and healthy box-office takings. And, in the case of The Mighty Boosh at the Olympia, the ticket demand was such that they could still be selling it out night after night a month after the last show there.
Apparently, the key to festival success is to go for one big-star headliner (as in Chris Rock or Roseanne Barr) and hope that they generate enough interest to sell the others shows. And even without the big-name imports, it seems you could put Tommy Tiernan or Des Bishop in any venue in the land and the run would last for weeks if not months.
There is also the consideration that while a ticket for a big-name musical act can cost up to €60, €25 is usually enough to get you into a big-name comedy show (there are far fewer overheads in stand-up than live music).
