CHELSEA HANDLER
GOING HORIZONTAL
BY JAY S. JACOBS
If Chelsea Handler isn't careful, her career may infringe on her time and opportunities to have trysts. The pretty New Jersey native has been quite busy making a splash in the world of stand-up comedy, doing sold-out gigs all over the US. She is one of the stars of the Oxygen Network comedy series Girls Behaving Badly. She also has a recurring gig as a special correspondent for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
Now she has written her first book. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands (Bloomsbury USA) is just what it sounds like; Handler's funny tour of the modern sexual minefield. Using her life as a guide, she spins hilarious yarns about past meaningless affairs, whether good, bad or ugly. Wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, she gives you a whirlwind ride of virile midgets, gay gynecologists, male strippers, closeted leather junkies and uptight roommates.
Chelsea was on vacation, but she took a little time to phone us about the book and her career.
How did you originally get into stand-up comedy?
I moved out to LA when I was about nineteen to become a famous actress. I realized that there was a lot more competition than I had bargained for. You know, with the perfect girls. There were girls that were prettier and skinnier and all – the whole thing. I was like, well, shoot; I better do something other than try and become an actress. I wanted to do something to kind of set myself apart from everybody. I figured I’ve always had a big mouth, so stand-up would be a good idea, although I was petrified. It’s not an easy thing to get up in front of complete strangers and just try to be funny. So, I think I had about 50 margaritas before my first set. The Improv on Melrose was the first time I’d ever done stand-up. I sent a tape in of me doing stand-up in my living room about waitressing, because that was the only experience I had. I had been waiting tables for about two-three years in LA. They called me back and said, “We love your tape. Come down and do a set on Thursday night.” I did it and I’ve been doing it ever since.
How did you get into Girls Behaving Badly?
Girls Behaving Badly – they actually had seen me doing stand-up and asked me to come in and audition for them. It was kind of the perfect first big job for me, because it’s all improv and it’s all on your toes. You never really know what’s going to happen in any situation. That’s my thing – I almost prefer improv rather than scripted stuff, because it’s so much fun to be in the moment and you can say anything. Well, not anything. Sometimes I have to be told to keep it clean. (laughs) But, it’s a pretty much free-for-all. It’s real fun, when you’re in the moment and you’re in these crazy situations trying to convince people to do ridiculous and ludicrous things. So it was a perfect fit for me. We just wrapped our fourth season. It ended up opening a lot of other doors. It also helps with your stand-up, too.
Was that how you caught the eyes of the Tonight Show and started being a correspondent for them?
The Tonight Show actually saw me at the Aspen Comedy Festival. They booked me to do stand-up on the Tonight Show. The people were familiar with Girls Behaving Badly and they thought this would be a great way to have [me] come on every couple of weeks. Because if you do stand-up, you go on maybe every three or four months. If you’re lucky. It’s great because it’s all improv too. With the correspondence pieces I’m doing, you go out and you interview people on the street and it’s very in the moment. It’s very improvisational. It’s really, really a good gig, all the way around. Plus, they serve you cocktails at the Jay Leno show, which they do not do on Girls Behaving Badly.
Well, that’s something right there…
That’s a BIG bonus.
Do you come up with the ideas for the pieces, or do they suggest them to you?
We kind of talk about it together. They come up with things that are happening around the country. Basically, their theme is to be a fish out of water. Put me in situations that I would never, ever be in naturally. The last one just did was covering a square dancing convention on Oregon. That airs this Wednesday night.
The last one I saw was when you went to the line waiting for Star Wars…
Right, that was very fun.
You’re doing some serious multitasking right now – you have the stand-up, the TV appearances, the book and now a book tour. How hectic is your life right now?
The last six weeks have been pretty insane. It’s been the busiest time of my life, so far. I’m grateful for it, because I’ve been working for it for so long. The book tour has just been amazing. I’ve been going to cities that I never normally would go to. I’m able to incorporate my stand-up. I’m able to go do stand-up and then do book signings after. Most authors just do book signings at Borders and Barnes & Noble. Luckily, I can go and do a club in front of 400-500 people, as opposed to a Borders, where sometimes only 15 or 20 people show up. So it’s a huge advantage to have the stand-up. I never, ever dreamt of being a stand-up comedian. By doing it, it’s opened up so many doors for me. It’s been just an amazing experience. It’s something I’ll never stop doing. Well, I mean, hopefully when I’m not that cute anymore, I won't put anybody else through that torture, but... (laughs) now it’s okay. There’s nothing attractive about a 75-year-old up on stage telling jokes, especially a woman. I’ll have to stop at some point.
Well, Phyllis Diller still does it, doesn’t she?
Actually, somebody just gave me her CD. That’s funny you say that.
The book is very funny, but does it feel a little weird letting people in on some very personal experiences?
Yeah, I mean it’s obviously… probably postponed anybody proposing to me any time soon. But, I just wanted to write a book… Like I was writing the book and there were definitely some chapters I thought twice about putting in there. Because I thought I don’t want to just write this book and make me look funny or make me look cool or like I just get guys – whoever I want. I wanted to put the most humiliating things that have happened to me, because I wanted it to be an honest book and I didn’t want to be tooting my own horn. I wanted it to be very self-deprecating, because that’s how I am. Very self-deprecating. The stories were all stories… you know there are stories that aren’t in there. I’ve gotten calls from guys that aren’t in the book, going, “why aren’t we in the book?” It’s like, listen, this isn’t a free-for-all. I have had plenty of experiences. I wanted it to be, above all, a funny book, because I’m interested in reading funny books and I didn’t want it to be one of those romantic play-by-play books that you read about lovemaking. That’s not interesting to me. I wanted to do something that I would be interested in reading.
When guys have a lot of one-night-stands it is considered a badge of honor, but it’s not the same for women who usually hide it when they do it. Why do you think it’s such a double-standard?
I don’t know. I think that’s changing a lot. I think there’s a stigma that goes along with… You know, the funny thing is that men think that when they have sex with a woman on the first night, that oh, well, she’s not marriage material. Or maybe that’s not the type of girl I want to go out with again. What guys don’t understand is that we’re doing the same thing. If we’re having sex with you on the first night, we’re probably not that interested in seeing you again either.
My experience has been that when women don’t want to see me again, they usually don’t want to sleep with me, either. So I must be doing something wrong…
(Chelsea laughs.)
Because you’ve written a book that is greatly about sex, do people suddenly treat you like you’re Loveline or Dr. Ruth and come to you with all these sex questions?
Yeah, it’s funny. I mean, a couple of the events I’ve been doing on my book tour, I’ve been to like eight different cities in the US and I’ve been getting a lot of questions. A lot of times, if it’s a speaking engagement, when it’s not at a stand-up club like I had an event at Henry Bendels in New York, when it’s a speaking engagement I had all these girls asking me what to do. One girl was fooling around with her boss, and she didn’t know what to do. Another girl had a one-night-stand with one of her best friends and was asking advice. Then, my sister was sitting in the background going, “Oh, my gosh. This is so funny that you’re giving people advice.” (laughs) It is not meant for an advice book at all. I don’t feel like I’m anybody’s role model. God forbid. If I’m you’re role model, then you’ve got bigger problems. I didn’t want it to be like that. I just wanted to share some of my stories. I just wanted it to be about the stories that happened to me, and share them. If anything, it’s like, okay, I’ve had all these one-night-stands so that nobody else has to go through what I went through. (laughs again)
I know you said you are in New Jersey now. Are you visiting home?
Yeah, we just had our family summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. I’m back in New Jersey today and fly back to LA tomorrow.
How has your family reacted to the way they were portrayed in the book?
They all have very good senses of humor. We’ve all grown up with each other, and they’ve known me my whole life. They’re not really surprised by anything I do. People are always asking, “Well, what do your parents say?” My parents think it’s hilarious. My sisters couldn’t be any more different than they are from me. They are very quiet and conservative. My father thinks it’s so funny that I’m so out there and just have no qualms about letting all my dirty laundry hang out. He thinks it’s great. He’s like, “Good for you. Good for you for being a woman and not being timid about it.” I think he feels also that I can get away with a lot more because it’s a funny book, and in my stand-up, when I talk about men and one-night-stands; it’s all in a funny tilt. It’s not serious. I think that he likes that aspect of it, because he’s a very funny person. He likes the fact that I can take a humiliating experience and make it funny.
One chapter I really enjoyed was the one where you went home for your sister’s wedding, because it is kind of rare for women writers to acknowledge that they really aren’t having a good time at a wedding. Why do you think that weddings are of such mythic importance to many women?
I know what you mean. Everything has gotten so carried away. It’s so about the attention put on the bride. It’s not just a wedding anymore, it’s the year leading up to the wedding. The big bachelorette weekend, then it’s the wedding showers, of course and then it’s the speeches at the wedding. It seems to have lost some of its sheen. I feel like, if you’re getting married, you’re so blessed to have found somebody that you like so much, someone that you can spend your life with – don’t push it. (laughs) Don’t go register for your own gifts. Buy us gifts. We’re still single. Go buy me a ceiling fan or a bottle of vodka. Whatever. I feel like it’s gotten very carried away. When I get married, if I can’t afford to pay for everyone to come out there to the wedding, then I’m not going to… I’m not going to do it until I can do it the right way, until I have the money to do it. Because everybody who goes to these weddings ends up bitching about it. It totally backfires. I don’t want to get married having people at my wedding talking about me behind my back. Going, "Can you believe we spent this money or that money." No, I want everybody to be happy to be there. That’s why every year I have a huge birthday party and I make sure everything is included. I don’t want anyone complaining. I don’t want any gifts. No gifts. Just come and booze it up with me. That’s all I care about. Good quality alcohol time.
What would upset your father more, if you brought home the midget or brought home George W. Bush?
Ummm, I don’t know. Would the midget be black or white? (laughs)
It doesn’t matter. Okay, why not black…
I think he’d be more upset by the midget. Even though he’s not a Bush supporter, I feel like he may be a little bit closeted about his support for the Republican Party. He’d never admit it to any of us, but… He definitely didn’t vote for him. I know that. I don’t think he voted for anybody. I think he just stays out of it. But there’s definitely a gray area with him, because he won’t come out and Bush-bash, like, you know, a lot of other people will. I’m very suspicious. (laughs)
I noticed that you had a tendency to refer to a lot of the guys by nicknames – the midget, the Turtle, Thunder. Were you protecting the innocent or just forgetting the names?
No. I mean I did have a lot of nicknames. I did definitely have to change names. I changed everybody’s name except for my ex-boyfriend Peter, who personally requested I use his real name. I changed all the names. Legally, I had to. I mean, some of these people I haven’t spoken to since. Most of them. So you can’t have them coming back and suing you and saying very clearly, obviously you were describing me. You have to kind of do that legally. But the nicknames – Turtle, Dumb Dumb; all those nicknames are true.
I think one of my exes may have roomed with Dumb Dumb (the nickname Chelsea gave to a former roommate). How do two such different people end up living together and how did you keep from going crazy?
I think eventually I did go crazy. I think we both went crazy. We were the odd couple. We were so different. We met waitressing at a restaurant. We had a very sisterly relationship. We’d fight like cats and dogs and the next minute be like, okay, let’s go to dinner or go to the movies. It was very sisterly like that. We could be yelling and screaming at each other and the next minute we’d be talking like nothing happened. I felt kind of like she was this little inexperienced person and I tried to help her with her social life and bring her out. So she’d come see me perform all the time at the Improv or wherever I was performing. We got on well for a period of time. It wore out, obviously, because we are so different. And we aren’t related. So at some point, you have to be like, okay, this is not working out. It’s ridiculous. But it was a fun experience. She gave me a lot of material.
Were there any experiences that were just too weird or embarrassing to write about?
No, I think I put the weirdest and most embarrassing stories in there. There is definitely a couple that I didn’t get to put in and I’ll probably put in the next book. But I wanted it to be the most outrageous stories.
Copyright © 2005 PopEntertainment.com All rights reserved. Posted: July 24, 2005.
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#1 © 2005 Jenni Blong. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
#2 © 2005 Jenni Blong. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
#3 © 2005 Jenni Blong. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
#4 © 2005 Jenni Blong. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
#5 © 2005 Jenni Blong. Courtesy of Bloomsbury Press. All rights reserved.
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