With Her I’m Something: Sandra Bernhard Makes Me Feel Cool

Right on schedule, the office phone rings and I snatch it fast to beat the interns. “Hello,” says a cool, familiar voice. Flat and a little nasal, it’s straight out of a Roseanne episode, The King of Comedy, or her seminal Without You I’m Nothing. Sandra Bernhard sounds seductive and, in moments, smug. She has me charmed and knows it. She calls me “honey,” and I feel like I’m hanging out with one of the cool kids.

Though born in Michigan, singer, comedian and actress Bernhard is all New York. Ironic, intelligent and confidant? Check. Just a tad elitist? Well, maybe. But in a world of bland celebrities — where it’s almost hard to find an actual opinion — a twenty-minute interview with Bernhard is a joy. The woman who made scandalous lesbian rumors with Madonna (in the 80s!) is still fearless. She talks politics, skewers conservatives, jokes about religion and is just ballsy and unapologetic. She dodges nothing. Even when I suspect she’s being sarcastic with me, it’s hard to mind. After all, that’s what cool New Yorkers do.

Heeb: So you’re performing at Joe’s Pub for the holidays. Five nights, right?

SB: Is it five or six nights? It’s the night after Christmas to New Year’s Eve. Let’s see, that’s Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. . .Wait a minute. I’m losing my mind. I dunno. Six nights?

Heeb: If you like, I can fact-check that before I publish.

[Bernhard and her band will perform eight shows over six nights.]

SB: Yes, fact-check it for me. Fact-check that. [Laughs.]

Heeb: Will there be songs from Whatever It Takes or older stuff?

SB: I’m doing both. Probably just one song from the new album. I just put together a new show in San Francisco, so there are new songs, tons of new material. Very improvisational, high-spirited, fun, crazy, eclectic, musical.

Heeb: How’s performing in NY?

SB: It’s always exciting performing in NY — exciting on so many levels. It’s a shortcut, you know? A shorthand of conversation with the audience ’cause people get things here that they wouldn’t get in other places and so much of my material is New York-centric: the things I read, the places I go. It’s nice not to preface things . . . hold on one second.

[Bernhard puts the phone down for a moment, but I can still what’s happening on her end. “We’ll talk later this weekend. I want to hear all about the restaurant,” she says to someone. Then, the sound of four loud goodbye kisses – on cheek or air, I can’t tell – one after the other. Mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah. Only a European, Jewish mother or New Yorker can get away with that. Bernhard, being two out of three, is fine.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she apologizes, getting back to me. Touched by the endearment, I tell her not to worry about it, and she jumps right back into her thoughts on performing in Manhattan.]

SB: It’s just nice to never have to go back and explain something, not that I ever do anyway, but there are times when you perform in certain markets when they’re not quite sure what you’re talking about. If I make a reference to the Magnolia Bakery and talk about, y’know, how obnoxious it is, people scream with laughter as opposed to laughing because the whole piece is funny. The minute you say Magnolia Bakery you laugh ‘cause it’s New York, you know?

Heeb: Lately, whenever I see you on TV, you’re taking down some conservative, usually one of the Phyllis Schlafly wannabes: Palin, Prejean or Hasselbeck.

SB: Right, right. There are so many now. They’re generational, these women. They come in and think they’re gonna change the face of postfeminism. They’re contrarians. People who have benefited from the feminist movement, people who wouldn’t be where they are without it, yet still have to shit all over it to make their point.

Heeb: Did you catch Palin’s interview with Barbara Walters? Where she disagreed with Obama for criticizing Israeli settlers because “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the coming months”?

SB: No, I didn’t hear her talk about that but, listen, I’ve been saying to the Jews — you know the Jews have been getting in bed with the right-wing for the past five years and what are you waiting for? You waiting for everybody to get to Israel so they can, you know, blow your head off so they’ll all ascend into Heaven? Then heavens open up? The whole thing is just absurd.

Heeb: On the plus side, there will be a lot of free real estate, post-rapture.

SB: There you go! And a lot of free clothes. The nice thing is that we won’t be included in the rapture, but I just hope they haven’t taken us out before they leave.

Heeb: Oh, yeah. Forgot about that loophole.

SB: Yeah, right? If we decide we don’t wanna jump on the Jesus bandwagon, we may be fucked.

Heeb: That schism in American politics keeps getting larger. As things get more progressive, the backlash gets more conservative.

SB: Right, exactly. I think so many things have been taken away from the average American and they blame it on the liberals, but it’s really, of course, conservatives, their own constituency, that ends up taking things away from them, and it’s, I dunno . . . I don’t understand why they can’t see it, but I guess they don’t want to see it.

Heeb: How do you make people understand they’re fighting against their own self-interests?

SB: I guess you can’t. I just wish there were a way that when you went in and voted, you were asked a battery of questions, and if you answer, ‘Well, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on health care,’ then you don’t get any. And the people who go, ‘Yeah, I’m willing to spend an extra five dollars to cover my neighbor . . . ” I mean, why wouldn’t you want to do that? I don’t understand that thinking.

Heeb: Let’s talk about your new album, Whatever It Takes. I read it was influenced by world music.

SB: It is, but it’s not like Paul Simon or something. There are a lot of African and Middle-Eastern guest musicians on it and the music feels like you’re taking a little bit of a journey but still more listenable–boarding on traditional rock and roll and soul.

Heeb: I feel like I should ask you some Jewish questions, but not really sure which ones.

SB: You know I’m very attracted and attached to my history and my heritage and my family — everything that represents on a spiritual level. I go to different Chabads. I go to Shabbat every Saturday.

Heeb: [Laughing] Do you really?

SB: Yeah, I hear the Torah reading. People see me all over town. And I kinda sneak in and out. I do my very quiet spiritual thing.

Heeb: Is your daughter also quite frum?

SB: She’s gonna be Bat Mitzvah’ed this next year.

Heeb: Congratulations!

SB: Yeah, thank you. She’s working on her Bat Mitzvah, but it’s gonna be an Orthodox Bat Mitzvah, so she doesn’t really get to do anything. [We both laugh.] It’s a little bit of a conflict. She’s kinda happy ‘cause it’ll shave a year off her studies. When you’re Orthodox, you get to be Bat Mitzvah’ed at twelve and she doesn’t have to do the extra year. She said, ‘Mom, after that I’m gonna make my own decisions.’

***

I’m laughing at that last joke for a while. Though she said it with the same sincerity/sarcasm mix she uses for everything, I’m pretty certain she’s teasing me about the Orthodox stuff. We make a little more small talk–a bit more political chit chat, some downtown celebrity gossip. I’m as happy as a tourist who just bought their first Magnolia cupcake. Even though I live in Manhattan, Berhnard makes me feel like an boy from Ohio who just got in off the bus. A Midwestern mom who just watched a Sex & the City marathon and and bought herself a pair of Monolos.

She tells me to make sure to say hello at the show, calls me “honey” yet again and wishes me a happy holiday. Even if I go, I won’t say hi. She’ll have charmed a hundred more people by then. Besides, I’m not even sure if she’s laughing with me or at my expense, but either way, it was so fun to hang out with one of the truly cool kids for a bit.

Sandra Bernhard’s new album Whatever It Takes is available now. To hear a track from the album, click here. Bernhard and her band, The Rebellious Jezebels, will perform at Joe’s Pub in New York City from Saturday, December 26 to December 31.

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