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Now available on iTunes!
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“Guaranteed Fresh” is 100% all new material and the third comedy CD from Suzanne Westenhoefer.
GLAMA winner for best comedy CD!
“I’m very comfortable confronting and bearing my soul. For some people, the thought of that is terrifying, and they would rather be dead. but this is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve worked infactories, I’ve bartended in New York, I’ve lugged stuff around — I know what Hard work is. This is the easiest thing I’ve ever done in the world. This is me being me and getting paid for it.” — Suzanne
“… like having coffee with your best, funniest girlfriend, the one who can make you laugh even on your worst day.”
– Bruce C. Steele, The Advocate
Long before Ellen and Rosie, Suzanne Westenhoefer belonged to an elite club of funny ladies who dared to be gay out of the gate. Since 1990, the riotous, openly lesbian blonde comic has made audiences—on land and water—cry from laughing. And she’s never put her sexual orientation on the back burner for an audience’s comfort level.
Before she rose to her status as a recognizable comic darling for the gay and lesbian community, she tossed her spot-on ruminations of everyday life on to straight audiences. And she’s still around to tell about it!
With a 1994 HBO special, annual summer sit-down gigs in Provincetown, Mass., nationwide tours and countless gay and lesbian cruises under her belt buckle, Westenhoefer was one of four pioneering lesbian comics—including Kate Clinton, Karen Williams and Marga Gomez—who inspired Andrea Meyerson’s documentary Laughing Matters More.
The always funny and slightly acerbic Westenhoefer—having appeared on David Letterman—also holds the hallowed title of being the first out lesbian comic to perform her material on a nighttime talk show. But the modern day “funny lady” has a serious side too.
She and her partner of12 years recently got hitched. Despite Westenhoefer’s penchant for making folks laugh, she’s worried about the state of politics in the age of Bush and a possible complacency in the era of proliferating gay-centric media. LesbiaNation had a chance to pick this makes-your-tummy-hurt comic mastermind’s brain about her work methods, politics, television and tops and bottoms.
LesbiaNation: Congratulations on your recent commitment ceremony. Did you have a big tadoo with a banquet hall and the whole nine?
Suzanne Westenhoefer: It was here in the house. It was very LA. We wore thongs.
LN: I’m guessing you mean thong shoes. You’re always on the road or on a cruise ship. Where could you have possibly gone for a honeymoon?
SW: I travel 100,000 miles every year. A honeymoon wasn’t our first concern.
LN: You’re originally an East coaster, how have you adjusted to LA life?
SW: This whole east coast / west coast thing. We’re indoctrinated to not like LA, like in New York, Philly, Boston… we come out here with a chip on our shoulder. Now I can’t imagine living anywhere else. The weather, the people, the $40 hamburgers.
LN: Yeah, you’ve been here for several years now. Are you near Hollywood or closer to the beach?
SW: Hollywood, at the base of the hills. I bought a Craftsman house about five years ago. It’s cute. It’s a bungalow.
LN: Remind me of when you began doing stand-up.
SW: 1990, near the end of the year.
LN: I saw you in Provincetown around that time. You made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt and I had tears streaming down my face.
SW: I started playing P-Town in 1993.
LN: Oh yeah. I guess it was later. You’re so hilarious and seemingly impervious to the audience around you? Have you devised an onstage persona to help you through your shows?
SW: What you see on stage is what I really I am. What I do on stage is me. I do know some comics who are like that.
LN: You mean, who create a persona?
SW: Yeah, but this is me.
LN: You pluck such plumbs of hilarity from every day life. Do you find yourself taking notes at family gatherings and events?
SW: I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t write material. I have an idea that I may or may not talk about and stories that I need to tell.
LN: That’s gotta be scary. So you riff? That’s admirable. How?
SW: It happens. It’s in my head. It’s like a separate thing. Some comics write down ideas and tell jokes at small clubs. I have none of that. If you’ve seen my show, it’s never the same.
LN: Aside from sitting down in P-Town and hitting the road extensively, you’re like Queen of the gay and lesbian cruises. How do the gay male cruises compare to the lesbian trips?
SW: For one thing, on the boy’s ship they have volunteers making sure guys aren’t fucking all over the ship. It’s called “Penis Patrol.”
LN: I guess you don’t need that on a lesbian-heavy ship.
SW: The boys party and we have to see everything in every port. Either way it’s fun, fun, fun.
LN: How do the two crowds vary in response to your act?
SW: Gay men are the best audience for anybody. I started out performing for straight people. That was scary, scary. Then I started doing Gay Prides and it was always the guys that were the best audiences. But it’s the lesbians that drive to see me.
LN: As an openly lesbian comic who continually churns out fresh material, do you consider yourself political?
SW: I’m an extreme liberal. But I don’t make an effort to create political humor.
LN: How are your liberal sensibilities handling another year of Bush and the Iraq war?
SW: Maybe it’s just me. I’m horrified and appalled and trying not to cry every day. I’m counting… just counting down the days…
LN: Until he’s out of office?
SW: Yeah, I thought the Reagan years were bad. Back then we marched. We had die-ins.
LN: You kick-started your career at the end of the Reagan era and at the start of the Clinton years, so you’ve had an arena for comment. How has the GLBT community changed since Reagan? Are we more complacent?
SW: It’s easier to just be out, which is good and bad. We’re so comfortable. We don’t feel a need to get riled up for anything. After the second time Bush took office. I say, “took” office… I wondered why I didn’t get out there and march. I marched a lot in the ’80s.
LN: What do you think changed?
SW: We’ve lost our gay leaders. People are afraid to be leaders. There’s no support for it. Now we force famous people to be as gay as possible.
LN: You mean like Rosie on The View? She’s pretty out and outspoken.
SW: Rosie is so gay and we criticize her. People say she seems really strident. Pick, pick, pick.
LN: Damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. Speaking of gay representation, we’re mid-season through The L Word. Do you watch?
SW: We watch The L Word. My girlfriend loves it. It’s fun as shit to knock it, to love it, to hate it. It’s created a lot of press.
LN: And that’s a good thing right?
LN: Which is wild. Clothes, jewelry.
SW: You can’t ask for what it isn’t.
LN: What’s your type. Are any of the L Word characters you’re type?
SW: I like a sporty, butchy girl. But those girls on The L Word. Dana… she made Chris Evert look like Martina.
LN: Do your fans hit on you because you’re a funny gal and a celebrity?
SW: I don’t get hit on. Maybe by weird people, like middle-aged, married. It keeps my girlfriend in her comfort zone.
LN: What’s the wackiest proposition you’ve ever gotten from a fan?
SW: The weirdest one I ever had was an email from a gal who wanted me to be her date for a wedding she was going to. She wanted to show her ex-girlfriend who was going to be there that she was doing great. Isn’t the ex-girlfriend going to know I’m not with her?
LN: I imagine you don’t remember but I met you at East West Grill one night and somehow we got into a lengthy discussion about topping and bottoming.
SW: That’s 50-percent of what I talk about.
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This article originally appeared on LesbiaNation.com.
Originally posted 2010-06-17 15:19:45.
