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EDDIE IZZARD - May 7, 2000
GUY MACPHERSON: Are you in Australia now?
EDDIE IZZARD: Yup, I'm in Adelaide.
GM: How long are you down there for?
EI: I'm in Australia for the rest of this week. I've
been here about a month.
GM: And how's it going?
EI: Great. Yes, it's my first time here but it's been
selling out. So very good. Just how I like it to
happen, rather than to come in and have three people
there, and next time, hey, you got ten people in. It
gets a bit disspiriting constantly having to build
everything up from ground zero.
GM: Well, you're a worldwide phenomenon, aren't you?
EI: Well, I'm doing a world tour, but when you look at
the globe, it isn't actually the world. We seem to
have missed Asia out.
GM: You'll have to pick up a few Asian languages.
EI: Yeah, I think I do.
GM: You've already got the French down, I hear.
EI: Yeah, the French is pretty good, but the French
people... I still haven't broken Paris.
GM: We have a French-speaking province up here.
EI: Yeah?
GM: Quebec. Yeah, you can play Montreal.
EI: Oh yes. I thought you meant in Vancouver.
GM: No, no, no.
EI: I thought, wow, how'd you get that? You crazy
people.
GM: From what I've read, you change your act quite a
bit as you go along.
EI: I just get bored of doing stuff. And I use my own
boredom threshold to change material. But I can't
rewrite it.
GM: Why's that?
EI: Em, I just don't have the ability.
GM: Do you take notes? Do you have a notebook with
your ideas?
EI: I used to, but I've lost it.
GM: Maybe someone somewhere is doing your act.
EI: No, it's an electronic organizer type thing, so
they hopefully can't get into it. But even so, it's
only little headline notes. No one knows what it means
except me.
GM: Has your boredom threshold been reached and will
you be changing it by the time you get to Vancouver,
or does a new country rejuvenate it?
EI: It changes every day. I just get bored every day.
The majority of the show is the show I did the day
before, so I improvise as much as I can in every show.
We started the tour on October 16 last year -- in the
last millennium -- and the show was entirely different
to what it is now.
GM: And when does it end?
EI: It ends at the end of June, in New York.
GM: Have you figured it all out yet? The whole reason
of being?
EI: Yeah.
GM: You got it all sussed out.
EI: Yeah. It's all a gravy factory.
GM: We're all in a gravy factory?
EI: I don't know what it is. The meaning of life is to
live it, though.
GM: Is there a moral to your tales?
EI: The moral is, Never stick your dick in a toaster.
GM: Ah! You learned that the hard way?
EI: Yeah, well I think it's one of those morals that
should be in every American sitcom. They get so
moralistic. It's bizarre. But Canadian sitcoms aren't
so moralistic, are they?
GM: We don't have sitcoms.
EI: Really?
GM: Yeah. Because we're so bad at them. We have sketch
comedy, and we have dramas, but not sitcoms.
EI: That's right, you don't, do you?
GM: We did have The King of Kensington when I was a
kid in the '70s. That was a big Canadian sitcom.
You've probably never heard of it.
EI: No. I've heard of Kensington.
GM: This is the Kensington in Toronto. And it starred
Al Waxman.
EI: God, you know, you're like the Irish.
GM: Why's that?
EI: The Irish don't have any sitcoms. Because they're
right next to Britain and they watch all the British
sitcoms and they couldn't persuade their own
television company to make any sitcoms. The analogy's
Canada, obviously physically a much bigger country,
but you're right next to America and you get all their
sitcoms so the CBC just won't make 'em.
GM: I wonder if New Zealand is the same with Australia
right there.
EI: Could well be. They have one soap opera only,
whereas Australia has a bunch more. And the difference
in size is bizarre between New Zealand and Australia.
GM: You're not going to New Zealand, are you?
EI: Yeah, we've already been to Auckland and
Wellington. It sold out there, as well.
GM: It's tough being right next to this giant country
that invades our pop culture. And I guess it's the
same for Ireland. We take what they'll give us and
then create some other things.
EI: But Canada has been taking over a lot of the
comedy in Hollywood.
GM: Maybe that's why we don't have sitcoms, because a
lot of our comics go down to the States and make them
down there.
EI: Yeah. And you do seem to have done very well in
that area. Even better than the Americans.
GM: I don't know about that. Maybe per capita.
EI: Well, Mike Myers and Jim Carrey, if you add those
two together... gross box office earning points, you
know, dingle dangle. That's got to piss on a lot of
American comics. I'm just trying to give you a sense
of national pride.
GM: I feel a lot better now, actually, talking to you.
EI: Good.
GM: How would you describe your standup? It's
different from American-style, isn't it, the British
standup?
EI: Em, even though I can't use this analogy, I will
use this analogy, but I'm not trying to say it's me.
You take the Beatles. The Beatles listened to a lot of
American music, you know, R&B and stuff, and then came
back with their stuff, which Americans said, Hey, this
is our stuff. No, it's not our stuff. Oh, it is our
stuff. No, it isn't our stuff. Yes, it is. And I think
that's what's happened in Britain. We've all seen a
lot of American comedy -- a lot of North American
comedy, I should say, a lot of Canadian comedy that
comes out of America -- and we said, Hey, we know this
stuff. And then we got what we like to do. And so in
North America it does look similar, but someone's
grown up in a different continent.
GM: You bring your own sensibilities to it.
EI: Yeah. It's going to be quite a lot personal, and a
certain amount because I'm European. But it's
influenced heavily by North American stuff, that sort
of post-Lenny Bruce, alternative comedy. But we've got
the biggest comedy scene in the world in London.
GM: Really!
EI: Yeah. We have 85, 90 clubs.
GM: Wow.
EI: And New York has five. L.A. has five. And
Vancouver's got about two! We've got 90! It's insane.
A lot of these are one night a week. They're not this
big sort of full thing with the bar and the whatever.
Probably because of our situation of having rooms
above pubs, historically have been there forever, and
they're quite often empty. But we've got a lot of real
estate just lying empty. So it worked well for us. But
it does exist and people do go to them.
GM: With that many clubs, and that many comics, I take
it, are there a lot of hacks, as I guess there would
be? Because you've got to fill the rooms.
EI: There is, but there's a number of good people as
well. I mean, I don't actually sit on the circuit a
lot. I mean, I will drop into a comedy store and see
stuff. But it's like anything: the best stuff is good
and the weaker stuff you think, hey yeah, I've seen
this before.
GM: When I think of British comedy, I think of sketch
comedy or comedic actors, like Monty Python. Is
standup relatively new? I know people like Billy
Connolly have done it for years.
EI: Well, Billy was out on his own, really. Standups
been around, but it's kind of a mainstream thing. But
we developed alternative comedy before anyone else. We
actually set up a circuit in '79 at the end of punk.
So since 1979 we've had an alternative comedy scene,
which things like The Young Ones came out of, some of
the people from Black Adder have come of. Absolutely
Fabulous came out of. So that's been going since '79.
That's been a sort of a post-Lenny Bruce influenced,
alternative standup thing.
GM: Is that standup, though? Black Adder and
Absolutely Fabulous, isn't that sketch?
EI: I'm saying the people from it came out of that
scene. But as you say, there's no standup there that
I've mentioned. And our television broadcasters have
more of a downer on specific standups. Like, they
don't want to put standup on television, whereas in
America, they'll put the standup on television because
it's cheap, then they'll take the standup and say, Why
don't we develop you and make you a star. Jim, what do
you wanna play? That kind of thing. But they just
don't do that in Britain. Well, they've been slow at
that. They watch what Americans are doing and
sometimes screw it up.
GM: Is your standup different from other British
standup?
EI: To an extent, because I just do so many gigs. And
my personality's different and people get confused
about me being transvestite and think that has
something to do with the comedy. So that visually gets
in the way. But I think I'm probably similar to a lot
more of the Irish standups. In Dublin, they couldn't
get a scene going because the average Irish person
wouldn't want to go and watch them because everyone is
so naturally has a good wit about them. So they go
down to the pubs and everyone just tells stories, and
the idea of paying someone to do it is a bit of
anathema. But they all came over to London. There was
suddenly a massive exodus -- or mass influx -- of new,
young Irish standups. And so there's a lot of good
Irish stuff around. I'm probably more like Irish
standup because I think there's something Celtic going
on with me. I have red hair and freckles. That's what
I think.
GM: Ed Byrne has been touring around here. He's been
to Vancouver. I don't know if you've heard of him.
EI: Yeah, absolutely. He comes out and gets it about.
He's probably the other person who's been pushing it
as much as I have, a fellow who's just jumped across
the Atlantic and gone for it.
GM: You think they eat you up over here because of the
accent?
EI: No one's ever, ever said to me, Oh, I love your
accent. No one has EVER said it. I expected it at
least once or twice.
GM: I love your accent.
EI: Yeah, no one has ever said that to me.
GM: No, I'm just saying that to you.
EI: I know, but even you haven't said it to me because
I deny that you said it to me.
GM: Are you a fan of comedy?
EI: Oh yeah. Big student.
GM: Who or what makes you laugh?
EI: Well, my infuences were Richard Pryor and Steve
Martin's standup, and Billy Connolly's standup. And
Monty Python. And the Goons, as well. Did you get the
Goons in Canada?
GM: Yeah, my dad was a big Goons fan.
EI: Is he Canadian or Brit?
GM: Canadian.
EI: Oh. That's good.
GM: And Billy Connolly's coming here a couple days
after you.
EI: Oh really? Because Billy came over to sort of get
North America. Is he well known in Canada?
GM: He plays a big theatre here once every few years.
EI: Right. Getting America was one of his things and
it didn't seem to quite come off. Well it did, but I
got kind of confused. When you're in Britain, you
can't tell how someone is doing over there.
GM: It might be different in the States. Like, we got
Monty Python before Americans did. So he might have
made more inroads in Canada because of the British
influence.
EI: Yeah, I think it was. Because for us, getting
America was the key thing. That's why I've put a lot
of time into that. I wanted to play Canada and
Australia as well. In fact, it's interesting, but I am
better known... I'm selling out quicker in America
than I am in Canada. I'm doing Vancouver, Seattle, San
Fransisco, L.A., and then New York. And they're all
going to sell out because of this HBO Special. But
Vancouver's going to be my tough one.... I played
there twice before.
GM: Where did you play?
EI: The Comedy Festival down on the island. I played
there twice. People came and they went, Ha ha. They
laughed. And then they went away and there was no
buzz. It was really quite odd. And people viewed it
and said pretty good things, but it didn't build any
momentum up. I was below the profile level. Sometimes
if you're below a certain level it just doesn't
ignite.
GM: But I think now with your success in the United
States... I mean, we get all the shows. We've seen you
on Politically Incorrect and the HBO Special.
EI: Did you get the HBO Special?
GM: I think occassionally the Comedy Special will pick
up shows for HBO. I have seen it, yeah.
EI: Oh, right.
GM: Do you like any of the new comics?
EI: That new show, Kids in the Hall, that's quite
nice. No, I like Kids in the Hall, but it's obviously
not new and up-and-coming. It's a little difficult
because I could mention people and you'd say, well,
who are they?
GM: Do you like playing theatres better than the
clubs?
EI: I don't really play the clubs anymore. There's a
certain thing you get. You get a certain attention
span and you know they're coming for you. It gives you
a better clout situation. It's more tactical if you
can play the bigger numbers, say playing a
2000-seater. But you simply can't play a 2000-seat
club. So in my North American thing, I haven't played
any-- well, I've popped in and played clubs.
GM: I'm just thinking about bands, where on the way up
they'll play clubs and then they'll graduate to
playing the big halls. And a lot of them actually
prefer playing the small clubs, but they can't anymore
because they're too big for it.
EI: I don't mind playing either. I can play small
clubs and I can play big theatres. I did one arena and
the night before I played a 200-seater. And you
approach them in the same way.
GM: How much has being a transvestite helped your
career? Everybody needs a hook. And you're the
transvestite comic.
EI: Well, when I first came out... It's like, how much
has being a lesbian helped Ellen DeGeneres' career?
GM: It probably hurt her career.
EI: Yeah. I think that's the analogy. If you ask
anyone, they'll say, why don't you say you're a
transvestite. Someone erroneously reported in America
that I wasn't getting anywhere until I came out as a
transvestite. I was already [Parry] nominated, I was
selling out theatres across London when I told them I
was transvestite, so that it didn't get too big before
I launched it to the press. I had to sort of
tactically bring it out so I didn't lose my career.
Because as you know, even now, people in Hollywood
will not say they're gay or lesbian even though they
are for fear of losing their career. So the idea of
saying, you're not even gay or lesbian, you're
transgendered, which even now is still considered way
on the fringe of alternative sexuality, the poor
relation to gay and lesbian people... The idea that
that could be positive is obviously insane.
GM: Transgendered? Is that what you are?
EI: Well, you know, it's [mumbled] for our
conversation if you want the whole in-depth thing on
it. But it's just weird. People just think it's just a
gimmick or this gimmick works for you... Jesus Christ.
If being a transvestite is a gimmick, then I seem to
have spent my entire life acting out this gimmick and
I seem to know way too much about it. I'm taking it
far too seriously as a gimmick. I think gimmick is
putting on a pair of big ears or something. And you do
it once on a Sunday.
GM: Well, there aren't many/slash/any transvestite
comics.
EI: I would like there to be a bunch. Yeah. How many
lesbian actresses around when Marlene Deitrich started
putting herself out as probably being a lesbian and
putting the trousers on. People probably said, Oh,
it's a gimmick. But she was just pushing that side of
her sexuality. But it's a responsibility of creative
people to break the barriers, because we're in a
position where we can. And if it is your sexuality,
it's your responsibility to get up and be truthful
about it and stop lying, basically. So if I'm not
lying, and people say, oh, it's a gimmick, I find it
annoying.
GM: Do you talk about it on stage?
EI: I used to talk about it endlessly, but it's not
really anything to do with the comedy. So if it
pertains to a subject I'm talking about, I will. Would
a heterosexual guy go on and talk about it? He might
say, I was with my girlfriend. So therefore he's
already implied he's heterosexual. So in that way we
all talk through it and about it, but you don't
actually have to put a big flag up and say it.
GM: It kind of speaks for itself.
EI: Yeah. That's sort of understood. But eventually
I'm trying to express a feminine side of myself. If I
happen to look rather blokey, [mumbled]. Imagine if
you had to launch a positive image of being
transvestite around the world. How would you go about
doing it? It's quite a tricky thing to do and get it
to land perfectly. But just the fact that my career
hasn't gone down the toilet is a big plus, I think.
Any comedian, any actor, even any artist, sculptor,
whatever, to say, Hey, why don't you tell them you're
transvestite? That's going to be the great career
move. Just how many agents are putting that one
forward at the moment as a gimmick? Probably zero.
GM: Well, it's probably hard to hide being a
transvestite, as opposed to being gay or lesbian.
EI: It's very visually in your face. That's a bit of a
problem. But if it was the great gimmick, then
everyone would be doing it now, wouldn't they?
Wouldn't everyone be saying, Yes, I'm a transvestite!
There's a transexual MP now in New Zealand who I just
met. So that's good. People in the transgendered
community need to come out. They need to come out when
they're in their teenage years and get it out there so
it's boring. And then people will stop saying, what
about this gimmick? Because it just pisses me off.
GM: I guess everyone asks you about it. Do you tire of
it?
EI: I tire of the idea that it's a gimmick because I
did this thing, it scared the shit out of me. And I
get insults on the street and I get people asking me
for autographs at the same time.
GM: You must expect it.
EI: Well, now I do because everyone bloody asks it.
Can you imagine? Just put yourself in my place when I
was coming out. I didn't even think it would work. It
was about 40-60 that it would work. Everyone advised
me not to do it. I could ask 6 billion people in the
world whether they think I should come out as being a
transvestite when I fancy women, and I should just
continue to pretend that I'm not a transvestite and
I'm just some straight bloke, everyone would have said
no. 'No, don't come out. God, you'll just blow your
career.' And then to come out and no one saying
anything like, Hey, that's pretty good that you came
out. But no one seems to mention that it was a scary
thing to do. That's fine. But the first thing is like,
Is it a gimmick? And I understand journalistically
that you need to ask that, but it just comes over and
over again.
GM: You say sometimes you'll go on without makeup,
sometimes you'll go on with.
EI: Just like a woman. Ask any woman, What do you wear
and how do you choose what you wear? I just decide
what I want to wear. And some women will get up in the
morning and go, Aah, I couldn't be bothered with
makeup. Or some women never wear makeup. It's a
complete cross section.
GM: Is it always women's clothes that you wear on
stage?
EI: No! It could be bloke's clothes. I don't sex
clothing, really. I think it's insane that they zip up
a different way, they button up a different way. Who
invented that? Some real weird pervert. These are
going to button up the left way because it's a woman
and right way because it's a man? It's insane! There's
no logic to it.
GM: How tall are you?
EI: Um, 4-foot-3.
GM: Really. You seem much taller than that.
EI: I'm 5-foot-7. And a half.
GM: We'll stop talking about that. You talk about
philosophy and history. Do you have more than just a
passing interest or knowledge of them?
EI: I'm fascinated by them. I don't know why. I think
it's a family interest. I think it's a genetically
inherited thing. But I sort of want to read all the
philosophers and read all of history and know it all.
Having said that, I keep not reading about
philosophers' theories. But I think I'm going to wade
into it and just go, Oh God, I'm getting through this
really slowly. I don't think they're going to be easy
reads.
GM: You've got to get one of those Philosophy for
Dummies books.
EI: Yeah, I think so. Yes, that's true. I should get
one of those, shouldn't I? But I find them
fascinating, and I do find the great, interesting
thoughts, especially if they've been around a long
time, I'm interested in them. And how people have
thought these things and no one's acted on them, or
whatever. It's like transvestite people and
transgendered people and gay and lesbians, they've
been around for centuries. But only now, only since
the fifties, has it started loosening up. Why does it
take so long?
GM: This must be your favourite period of history
because had you lived in another time, it could be
tough on you.
EI: Yeah. Absolutely. But then, I could have quite
liked to live in 2100, when they got those cars from
Bladerunner and zoom up in the air. That could be
quite fun.
GM: What other interests do you have outside show
business?
EI: Nothing, really.
GM: Just that's it.
EI: Yes. Just moping around, complaining about being a
gimmick. I don't read. I watch television endlessly.
Films and television.
GM: You've done film.
EI: I've done seven.
GM: Any coming up?
EI: One called Shadow of the Vampire. I think it's
coming out in America round about now. I love films. I
live for films. I've wanted to get into films since I
was a kid. I've studied them backwards and forwards.
GM: Are you more an actor than a comedian?
EI: Um, no, I like to do both. I like to be greedy. I
love them both, but they're different things.
GM: Why is it that you wouldn't want to do comedies in
film?
EI: It's that if you do them really well, you get
known as a comedy person. If you think of Jim Carrey or
Robin Williams doing a straighter role, there's a
reluctance from the audience to let them do that role.
You get comedy baggage. People just want to see you in
the comedy role. They don't want to see you do a
serious role. So I'll stay out of doing comedy roles
and just try and do serious roles.
GM: Establish yourself as a dramatic actor first, then
you can do comedy.
EI: If you do that and then you do a comedy, people
say, Hey, you do comedy as well! Because it may be
thousands of people have seen me doing comedy, but
millions of people haven't. Thousands have people
maybe have seen the standup, but millions of people
have seen nothing. To them, I'm just a blank sheet.