Strangers With Candy (R), directed by Paul Dinello,
opens Friday, July 21, at the Little Theatres.
Candy land
A good comedian will do anything for
a laugh, and in the case of Amy Sedaris, this apparently included a thorough
de-vaining. As Jerri Blank, the 47-year-old
ex-con/recovering addict/former whore at the heart of
after-school-special-gone-hilariously-wrong Strangers
With Candy, Sedaris warps her face into outright grotesquery, her overbitten scowl looking like the Tragedy mask come to
life. Sometimes Jerri is painful to watch, her unsightliness matched only by
her sweetly self-serving ignorance. Fortunately, Sedaris hasn’t sacrificed her
vanity in vain.
A prequel to the 1999-2000 Comedy
Central series of the same name, Candy opens
this Friday at Little Theatres. The film follows Jerri’s fearless attempts to
turn her life around post-pokey by re-enrolling in high school and becoming
“the good girl I never was or had any desire to be.” But Jerri’s got a comatose
dad, a contemptuous stepmother, a lusty crush on a teenage jock, and somehow
she’s wangled her way onto a science fair team headed by Chuck Noblet (fake newsman Stephen Colbert), a science teacher
who believes evolution is a farce and who is trying to
end his affair (“I need more than I’m willing to put in”) with the art
instructor (director Paul Dinello). Candy‘s action hinges on preparations
for the state science fair in which Jerri’s crew competes against a team lead
by Noblet’s nemesis, Roger Beekman
(a slimy Matthew Broderick).
The humor in the script (another collaboration between Sedaris, Colbert, and Dinello) veers from the juvenile to the sublime, with a
number of seemingly throwaway lines so clever they take a second to absorb.
Cameos include Sarah Jessica Parker as a tip-fueled guidance counselor, as well
as Ian Holm (?!),AllisonJanney
and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Besides being an actor and writer,
Sedaris is also a cupcake tycoon, operating a little concern out of her
apartment. But when I spoke with Sedaris she was in the throes of a two-day
media onslaught that involved about 40 phone interviews, which probably didn’t
leave much time for mixing and frosting. So even if the sweet teeth of New York City were
temporarily denied their cupcakes, at least now they’re able to comfort
themselves with a bit of Candy.
City Newspaper: I was
listening to your NPR Fresh Air interview yesterday…
Amy Sedaris: Ooh.
What’d you think of it? You can be honest; you won’t hurt my feelings.
Truthfully, it was a
bit of a downer.
It’s funny because I kept apologizing: “I’m so sorry; I’m
really just not feeling it today.” I don’t know what it was, and I felt really
bad. I couldn’t wait to see Terry Gross; I love her program, I love her book, I
love when my brother David is on her program. Maybe I just set myself up for
some excitement and I crashed. I don’t know. But I appreciate you being honest
with me. Because I hate when people are like, “No; it’s
great!”
But with the nature of interviews, it seems like it
would be grueling to deconstruct stuff that maybe isn’t that deep to begin
with.
Yeah, it’s hard. Sometimes I don’t want to dissect
something; it’s like, “Trust me; no thought went behind this.” So people are
determined to find out about it and you’re just like, “There’s nothing there.”
I don’t know what makes someone tick; I don’t know what makes me tick. It just
is. I guess that’s what therapy is for, and I don’t go to therapy.
So why did you and co-writers Stephen Colbert and
Paul Dinello decide to revisit Jerri Blank?
We were writing the book Wigfield and we kept thinking of
Jerri Blank stuff. And so anytime we came up with something funny we would put
it in a file called “Jerri Blank,” and at the end of the book we found the
file, and Paul said, “This would make a funny movie,” and we just kind of wrote
it. And then somehow [David Letterman’s production company] Worldwide Pants got
a copy of the script — none of us gave it to them — and they called and
said they loved the script and wanted to do the movie, and so they gave us
money to make the movie.
Is it difficult to
have that many proverbial cooks — three people — working on a script?
No; all three of us have different strengths and we let each
[other] do it. We’ve worked together for 20 years, so none of us are allowed to
change; we know each other too well. So it’s kind of refreshing. If I come up
with something and it’s a bad idea they’re going to say, “That’s stupid,” and
move on. We can just be honest with each other; it’s not about “Oh, I don’t
want to hurt this person’s feelings.” We think about the script; no one’s out
for themselves.
The thing about Jerri — and now I’m going to
deconstruct — she recites that whole “boozer/user/loser” thing, but she
doesn’t seem to think she’s a loser. She seems awfully confident.
I like that. I like playing unattractive people who think
they’re attractive and that like themselves. And also, they have so much to
play against if they’re unattractive. It’s true of any of us. When you put
forth some effort to go out for the evening — do your hair, your makeup —
no matter how much you try, you are who you are. People like — I’ll use
Jennifer Aniston just ’cause she’s the first person
that popped in my head — you’d think her life is perfect because she’s
pretty, but she’s probably a wreck. And Jerri Blank, you assume she’s a wreck
because she’s unattractive.
Stephen Colbert was a scream, using that same deadpan
delivery no matter what he does. The scene where Jerri first walks into his
classroom and he crumples up her note and whips it at the chalkboard and…
“Goddammit!
We have a new student.”
“Mr. Blank.”
What I like about that line, “Mr. Blank,” is Stephen is so
above that line, and that was my line, and the way he delivers it is like he
doesn’t want to say it. I think he did it for my benefit, to give me that line
because it’s so cheap, and the way he delivers that line is just perfect,
because it’s like, “I’ll stoop this low and do Amy’s joke.”
Hey, isn’t Phil Hoffman from Rochester? He’s in the movie, too.
Yeah, he’s our huge claim to fame right now.
He’s a neighbor of mine. I’ve known Phil for years and it
meant so much to me that he would be in the movie. I like him because he’s
always listening to you but you don’t always know it; you find out later. And
he’s such a generous performer and a real person. I don’t know many real, real
people.
When they asked if I wanted to talk to Amy Sedaris my
first thought was, “I can talk to her about baking!” I was a baker before I got
a job interrogating famous people.
Baking’s great, isn’t it? It can be so mindless and
comforting. I bake or cook every day. I have to. There are these people who
say, “I want to paint but I never have time.” Well, it’s like if you really
want to, you do it. And it keeps me in the real world; I can complain about how
much butter costs. I have a cookbook coming out in the fall.
What’s your cookbook
called?
It’s called I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, meaning that
I was under the influence of Fannie Farmer, Betty Crocker, and the old
hospitality books. It’s about the etiquette of entertaining, and also about how
to be a good guest. It’s so visual; there are a lot of photographs in it, and
illustrations, and hand-lettering. Its been two years
in the making. And I’d like to do a TV show based on the book;
character-driven.
I also read that you’re doing Sesame Street.
Yeah, in October. We all compete in
our family to be the best aunt or uncle. My little brother has a baby and David
calls himself “Uncle Money,” and I can’t beat that. So I called David and I was
like “Ha ha, I’m going to be on Sesame Street.”
So I think I’ve won.
Do you like the
freedom that you have now or would you rather be more famous?
I do like the freedom that I have now. One thing I liked
about Strangers with Candy is that
Comedy Central never got behind the show, so the fans discovered it. And I like
doing stuff and then having people discover it and then it becomes something; I
don’t like to get up in your face. I like crafty projects and getting my
friends involved who are really talented and want to put on a good show. That’s
all I care about.
This article appears in Jul 19-25, 2006.
