POSTED: Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:00 PM
As the longest-tenured correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, actress/comedian Samantha Bee's the alpha female of a pretty dude-heavy cast. Since 2003, she's regularly fake-reported, sometimes alongside husband/fellow correspondent Jason Jones, on topics from politics to religion to pornography to pop culture. But Bee's no slave to the topical. Her first book, I Know I Am, But What Are You? (Gallery), is a collection of autobiographical essays detailing her fairly ridiculous Canadian childhood, the result of being raised on one side of the family by a regimented stepmom and, on the other by a free-spirted wiccan mother.
In "Man-witch," Bee recounts her early infatuation with Jesus and her horror when her mother took her to a Wiccan ceremony: "What if I accidentally said Satan's name three times in my head? Does just thinking about Satan really invite him into your heart, or do you have to personally invite him the way you have to do with vampires?"
In "May December Never Come," after an older couple mistakes her and her mother for lesbians, Bee writes: "[A]n old man had just spent three seconds imagining my mom and me doing the scissors together, and when he revealed that to us, I then spent at least three of the longest seconds of
my life imagining my mom and me doing the scissors together. If you've ever had an aquarium, you know that fish can die from a disease known as 'ick,' and that's precisely how I was starting to feel."
In "Gurr-Bulls," after Jones discovers an embarrassing photo from Bee's not-so-distant past, "He was looking around the room like a caged animal. I thought he might try to claw his way out through the screen door like a raccoon that gets down your chimney and ends up trapped in your house by accident. I've always suspected that one day the jig would be up. Here we have Jason, so handsome and photogenic, and his wife, by all photographic accounts homely, and, in this case, of indecipherable gender."
The dozen essays reveal that the mother of two is as funny writing about herself as she is about oil spills or political impropriety. I caught up with her on the phone from her New York office in advance of her appearance at the Free Library (June 19, 2 p.m., free) and ended up talking about Patrick Stewart,
Cougartown and how she and Jason totally need recommendations for their upcoming weekend in Philly.
City Paper: So on a show where everyone's a senior correspondent, and that's part of the joke, you are actually the senior senior correspondent.
Samantha Bee: I'm the most senior, of all the seniors. I'm like the AARP of correspondents. Although I'm not physically the oldest. I thought that I was but I'm not. Aasif [Mandvi] is actually older than me. So in your face, Aasif!
CP: Does that come with any special perks? A tiara? A scepter? Do you get to sit next to Jon at staff meetings?
SB: I am actually holding a scepter in one hand and having interns attend to my undercarriage as we speak.
CP: Do you get more freedom with your work than, say, Wyatt [Cenac] does?
SB: Nope, not at all. Does not come with any of that. I don't want it. I'm happy with the amount of freedom that I have.
CP: Reading your book, it's hard not to imagine hearing these essays in your voice, with your facial expressions and your comedic quirks.
SB: Well, you know, there's an audiobook, which is just the weirdest thing. I recorded the audiobook and I thought, "Who in the world would want to hear this with my voice?" I would rather I had Patrick Stewart read my book. I thought that would have been a good fit. But he's expensive. Y'know, I didn't even check. I'm sure he's way more than I can afford to pay.
CP: So do you write with that intention, that these be things that could be read aloud?
SB: I do. That was kind of my plan with the book. I did try to make it as casual and colloquial as possible. I did try to hear my own voice — but like a smoother sexier version of my own voice, but still, my inner voice. I tried to hear it while I wrote it. I didn't read it out loud until I recorded the audio book. So that was kind of weird, but I actually think that I achieved my goal, because when I read the audio book, none of it seemed too writey.
CP: This is essentially a collection of memoirs ...
SB: Y'know, I know it's technically a memoir, but I feel like I don't deserve the moniker, to be honest with you. I'm thinking more in terms of vignettes, essays from my life. Henry Kissinger writes memoirs. People who do things that are scary or valuable — they write their memoirs. I just wrote a bunch of essays, don't you think? I mean, like the book only goes up to my mid-20s. I don't really address anything I'm doing now of any value. There is no value to my book.
CP: Well, it's part one. Part two will be housed in your historical library.
SB: Hah, it'll be a trilogy.
CP: Was there a point where you had to make a decision, basically, I'm writing a book and it's going to be about me. Because a lot of the writing you do for TV is, on some level or another, issue oriented.
SB: I only wanted to write a book because I'm a narcissist, pure and simple. No, it was just the only book I wanted to write. Because I don't ... I can't even articulate why. It wasn't like I wanted to make myself look great — I obviously look like an idiot. You don't come away from the book with like a great impression of my past or anything like that. But I wanted to make it candid. And I wanted it to be funny. Hopefully, I think I achieved the candid part and we'll have to wait and see how people feel about the other part.
CP: Has writing a book been on the to-do list for a while?
SB: Well, yeah, it has. It's a little surreal actually. When I was growing up I always thought, "Y'know, I'm gonna write a book." And I thought, "I'm gonna live in New York." And then I forgot about both of those dreams, and really never did any work toward either of those goals. I just sort of knew it somehow. I can't really explain this. I remember definitely knowing I would do both of those things, and then never ever doing anything to make those goals happen. And it just sort of occurred. I don't like to say that I'm not in control of my own life, but some ways I wasn't, and I ended up here. And when I moved here, I went, "Heeeey, I knew I was going to live here one day." And then I wrote a book and I went, "I kneeeeew I was going to write a book."
CP: Well, It's cool you were able to accomplish them both.
SB: Despite my own efforts. I feel very lucky.
CP: It fits with the life of leisure you say you're after in the "Sailor Moon" essay.
SB: I know! I work very hard for a person who wants to lead a life of leisure. One day I'll get back there. One day I'm just going to putter around in the garden. I swear to God.
CP: Are there more books in you?
SB: I don't know. I definitely don't have a book in me right now — I'm about to give birth again to another child. When I wrote the book, it really hit the sweet spot. I had just given birth to my second child. It hit a sweet spot creatively and time-wise. So I think I'll wait and see how this book is received. I certainly loved the process — much more than I expected to. I didn't find it tortuous at all. I found it
very enjoyable. I would love to have the opportunity to do it again. Whether anyone would give me the opportunity remains to be seen. I wouldn't do one just for my own personal pleasure, and photocopy it for my friends.
CP: No vanity publishing for Samantha Bee.
SB: No!
CP: You've got that great essay ("Man-witch") about growing up wanting to make out with Jesus.
SB: We all did. Are you a lapsed Catholic by any chance?
CP: I'm a very lapsed Catholic.
SB: I think that was the function of all those sexy pictures of him, wasn't it, to make all the young girls want to make out with Jesus so that we would be better Catholics? And give us a terrible secret to feel guilty about? Catholic forever.
CP: He's definitely portrayed as a beefcake in a lot of those church pictures.
SB: Seriously, those eyes. They just look right through you.
CP: So now that you've got kids of your own, how are you planning to handle the religion question?
SB: Well, that's an interesting question ... because we're choosing to pursue the path of negligence. We're just not really dealing with it at all. I'm not religious anymore. I have my own "spirituality," I suppose, but it's not really something that I could articulate for a 4-year-old. And Jason is not religious at all. So we're just not doing anything. We considered having our children baptized so that they could go to a parochial school, and get a really good education for cheaper than a private school. But that just seems dishonest. So we're not going to go down that road at all. We get questions like, "Am I going to die one day? Then what happens?" and we're just dealing with it very irresponsibly by saying things like, "I don't know" and "We're
all gonna die one day," which is terrible. We're doing a terrible job, but our daughter seems to accept it right now.
CP: How will you and Jason deal if your kids aren't funny? If they grow up with this, like, different religion or if they grow up and love Larry the Cable Guy? Will you have some sort of intervention like your Wiccan mother had with you?
SB: I think there's no question that they're not going to be funny. They'll probably be actually very naturally funny, just because. But they'll hate it, they'll hate comedy or something, because that will be the thing that drives us the most crazy. They'll go into money management. They'll want to become accountants and not do anything creative. We have such creative hopes and expectations for them. We just want them to
live and do what they
love in life. And we just know they're going to pick something so square and it's just going to totally kill us. But at least they'll be able to afford to take care of us in the manner to which we have grown accustomed when we get old. So there's a plus side to it.
CP: Do you have a favorite essay of the ones in the book?
SB: I do have a favorite, actually. It's the one about trying to impress my sexy [college] roommate. It's called "Gurr-Bulls" because he thought that gerbils were called gurr-bulls. He was not a smart cookie, not the sharpest knife in the drawer. And I spent so long trying to impress him with my [other] roommate. Remembering all of that was just so fun for me. If he read the story, there's no way that he would make the connection between the person that I am now and the person I was then. It seems like he would be a fan of the show, but honestly I have no idea where he is now. I don't even remember his last name. I bet that he watches the show and doesn't know that he lived with me. I hope he reads the book. I don't even know that he would... no, he would recognize himself from the book, of course, but I think it would really weird him out to read it, like, "Who
is this person, how did she
know?" It's going to be surreal for him if he reads the book. I hope he does. He's probably doing something amazing, I'm sure he's very successful, because everything he touched turned to gold, despite himself. Everyone loved him. He was just one of those people with a golden horseshoe right up his ass.
CP: The Daily Show's become a fairly formidable comedy juggernaut. It might even be starting to rival Saturday Night Live in terms of longevity and cultural significance.
SB: Nice.
CP: Would you agree with that?
SB: I don't know, maybe. I was talking about that with Jason the other day, like what shows are history making. We were having an argument about whether or not
Friends was a blip on the history of television or whether it was a monolithic show like
Seinfeld. And he was saying it was a blip and I was saying no, it was very culturally significant. Love it or hate it, it was on forever, the people who were on it still get tons of work from it. Everybody knows them as those characters. And everybody got their hair cut just like Jennifer Aniston. That's not a blip.
CP: And how can you talk down the show that's responsible for Cougartown?
SB: The show that's responsible for the
continued success of
Cougartown. I don't know that any show in the history of television is anything more than a blip. Because television changes all the time. But I don't know, [
The Daily Show]'s such a different show than SNL. I've loved SNL over the years, I always watch it. I can't not watch it. Because I want to be amused. ... I've always loved it. It seemed so illicit when you were a kid and your parents let you stay up to watch it, it was like a real treat. Now I think parents just let their kids watch
The Daily Show, like "We're going to learn about the oil spill. Watch this."
CP: The big difference is that you guys are doing it every day, or four days a week anyway.
SB: I do feel there's a huge sense of pride and achievement in doing the show every day in such a quality way. And I loved
The Daily Show before I came to work here, so I already had a great admiration for the show. It's surreal to be working in a place that I loved so much, and I continue to love it. And it continues to impress me in a fresh way. I think it's a great show, I'm so proud to work here.
CP: Are there ever any get-togethers of the current and former correspondents? Maybe a club?
SB: Ha, no, there's no clubhouse. But we do, we stay in touch a little bit. Stephen [Colbert]'s kind of off doing his own thing, but there's kinship there. I'm so happy when people go on to great success and people run into each other. Sometime we see the Corddrys when we're in L.A. and it's really nice. Actually it's so funny, Ed [Helms] is really just a lovely, lovely person, and someone here at work got caught in one of those scams, where his mailbox sent [fraudulent] e-mail that said something like, "Help, I am in distress. I am stuck here and I need money." And Ed was so adorable, he was like, "What do you need, man? Do you need me to help you?" He's so helpful and lovely. And obviously very funny.
CP: How is your family reacting to their characterizations in your book?
SB: They seem to really like it, they seem to be embracing it wholeheartedly, though they did not read the book before it came out. In fact, I'm so merciless, I've actually made them buy it. Isn't that awful? I have free copies, too! I have all these free copies. But it's actually kind of hard to send a book across the border, because the border guards think its pornography, so they tear it all apart. And it's good for me if people go to the book store and buy the book, of course. So my mother and father just bought copies of the book, and they're just reading it now. My step mother read it, and she really liked it. My mother, I read all the parts that pertain to my mother to her, I just wanted to get her blessing.
CP: I was reading the scissoring story earlier ...
SB: She doesn't shy away from these things, she's very quirky but she's also very true to herself. It is what it is. I love her. I love her. She's my mother. She's a freak. But I love her.
CP: It definitely comes through.
SB: And I don't think that she would ever deny that she's a bit of a freak.
CP: What should we expect from the Free Library appearance?
SB: I'm going to read. I like public readings. I'm starting to get into that energy. So I'm going to read and then I guess if people have questions ... they may not. I probably would field a few questions. And then I would just like to meet people and if people have something they want signed or whatever, that's fine too. But I like to meet people at these events. It's very nice. When people come to see your reading, it's kind of like a love-in. People who hate you don't come to your readings. So it's very nice to be bathed in that warmth. I'm gong to roll around on everybody. I'm going to crowd surf. Pregnant. And then somebody's going to deliver the baby. It's going to be spectacular.
CP: Is Jason doing the appearances with you?
SB: He's not going to any of the other cities but he is coming to Philly because neither of us know Philly very well. We've certainly been here for work a lot, but when you're working, you don't get to really explore. So we're bringing the children and we're going to spend the weekend in Philly, learning about Philly and doing fun Philly things.
CP: Do you need recommendations?
SB: I need a lot of recommendations. I don't know the first thing about how to have fun in Philadelphia. But I assume there is a lot of fun to be had.
Samantha Bee will read from and discuss her book on Sat., June 19, 2 p.m., free, Central Library, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.
"Without memorable characters, a good story fades like sunburn. Philly resident Justin Kramon's beach-perfect debut, Finny, is full of unforgettable oddballs — from a narcoleptic pianist to a digestively challenged father who claims he's 'brushing his teeth' every time he rushes off to the bathroom — all of whom Kramon spends plenty of time with. That way, he says, 'all of that character's funny little habits and obsessions have a warmth to them, like you're coming home.'"
That's what I wrote in this week's Kaleidoscope about Finny, the most refreshing summer novel I've read in a long time. In conjunction with his book's Tuesday debut, I asked Kramon a few questions about how he tore his characters down, how he built them up and why Philly plays such an important role in his work.
City Paper: What strikes me most about Finny is its broad scope — 360-page books don't often span this many decades of storyline. Can you tell me about why you made the decision to tell Finny's story so epically?
Justin Kramon: I got the idea for Finny from reading a bunch of coming-of-age books I love: The World According to Garp, The Adventures of Augie March and especially David Copperfield. I loved these big stories, the sense of adventure, the humor and just the feeling of wonder I got from these books. One thing I noticed, though, was that most of these raucous, epic-style adventures of young people coming into the world are about young men. So I was interested in what it would be like to tell this classic story from the point of view of a young woman coming into the contemporary world. I wanted to ask myself what would be the big adventures and meaningful moments for this kind of character.
Also, there's a special way that novels can capture the movement of time, and I love when novels follow characters over a long time. You get to know everyone better, and when you return to a character, all of that character's funny little habits and obsessions have a warmth to them, like you're coming home. I wanted readers to feel like they were living in the world of the book, and experience the same sense of enchantment I had with the novels I've loved.
