Humorist David Sedaris

DATE December 28, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: David Sedaris discusses his writings and his latest
book, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're ending the year with a series called Last Laughs, featuring some of our
more entertaining interviews of 2004. We continue the series with David
Sedaris. Like many of his fans, I first fell in love with his writing when he
read his story "Santaland Diaries" on NPR's "Morning Edition." That
now-famous piece told about his experiences working as an elf in Macy's Santa
Land. Ira Glass had produced Sedaris for "Morning Edition," and when Glass
started his own show, "This American Life," David became a regular.

Now David Sedaris is a literary phenomenon. He's written several best-sellers
collecting his humorous personal essays and stories. He reads to sold-out
theaters around the country. His bookstore appearances often have lines
around the block. When he got famous in America, he moved to Paris, where he
could barely speak the language. Now he also has a place in London, where
it's a lot easier to understand what people are saying to him.

David Sedaris' latest best-seller is a book of stories called "Dress Your
Family in Corduroy and Denim." When I spoke with him in June, I asked him
first to read a story from the book called "Hejira." The title comes from a
Joni Mitchell song.

Mr. DAVID SEDARIS (Author, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim"):
(Reading) `It wasn't anything I had planned on, but at the age of 22, after
dropping out of my second college and traveling across the country a few
times, I found myself back in Raleigh living in my parents' basement. After
six months spent waking at noon, getting high and listening to the same Joni
Mitchell record over and over again, I was called by my father into his den
and told to get out. He was sitting very formally in a big, comfortable chair
behind his desk, and I felt as though he was firing me from the job of being
his son. I'd been expecting this to happen, and it honestly didn't bother me
all that much. The way I saw it, being kicked out of the house was just what
I needed if I was ever going to get back on my feet. "Fine," I said. "I'll
go. But one day you'll be sorry." I had no idea what I meant by this. It
just seemed like the sort of thing a person should say when he was being told
to leave.

`My sister, Lisa, had an apartment over by the university and said I could
come stay with her as long as I didn't bring my Joni Mitchell record. My
mother offered to drive me over, and after a few bong hits, I took her up on
it. It was a 15-minute trip across town and on the way, we listened to the
rebroadcast of a radio call-in show in which people phoned the host to
describe the various birds gathered around their backyard feeders. Normally,
the show came on in the morning and it seemed strange to listen to it at
night. The birds in question had gone to bed hours ago and probably had no
idea they were still being talked about. I chewed this over and wondered if
anyone back at the house was talking about me. To the best of my knowledge,
no one had ever tried to imitate my voice or describe the shape of my head.
And it was depressing that I went unnoticed while a great many people seemed
willing to drop everything for a cardinal.

`My mother pulled up in front of my sister's apartment building, and when I
opened the car door, she started to cry, which worried me as she normally
didn't do things like that. It wasn't one of those "I'm going to miss you"
things, but something sadder and more desperate than that. I wouldn't know it
until months later, but my father had kicked me out of the house not because I
was a bum but because I was gay. Our little talk was supposed to be one of
those defining moments that shape a person's adult life, but he'd been so
uncomfortable with the most important word that he'd left it out completely
saying only, "I think we both know why I'm doing this." I guess I could have
pinned him down; I just hadn't seen the point. "Is it because I'm a failure,
a drug addict, a sponge? Come on, Dad, just give me one good reason." Who
wants to say that?

`My mother assumed that I knew the truth, and it tore her apart. Here was yet
another defining moment, and again I missed it entirely. She cried until it
sounded as if she were choking. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry." I figured that within a few weeks, I'd have a job and
some crummy little apartment. It didn't seem unsurmountable, but my mother's
tears made me worry that finding these things might be a little harder than I
thought. Did she honestly think I was that much of a loser? "Really," I
said, "I'll be fine."

`The car light was on, and I wondered what the passing drivers thought as they
watched my mother sob. What kind of people did they think we were? Did they
think she was one of those crybaby moms who fell apart every time someone
chipped a coffee cup? Did they assume I'd said something to hurt her? Did
they see us as just another crying mother and her stoned, gay son sitting in a
station wagon and listening to a call-in show about birds, or did they
imagine, for just one moment, that we might be special?'

GROSS: Jeez, David, thanks for reading that. That's a great story.

My guest is David Sedaris, and he just read the story "Hejira" from his new
collection, "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim."

When this actually happened to you and your mother explained to you why you
were really thrown out of the house, did you think about the possibility that
your parents had just had this big fight about you and about how to handle
you?

Mr. SEDARIS: I did. And I suppose I was surprised that I was so unaware of
it happening. But I was just in the rocking chair in the basement listening
to that Joni Mitchell album, so all kinds of things could have been going on
and I wouldn't have been aware of them. But I never felt that panic, that,
`Oh, my God, they're throwing me out of the house, and they're never going to
talk to me again,' because my father's a kind of a guy who--you could have an
argument with him, and he can even throw you out of the house, but a couple
hours later, he's forgotten about it. I mean, he doesn't have Alzheimer's or
anything, but he has a really--just this wonderful ability to put things
behind him. And I've always been very impressed by that. So my dad got upset
that I was gay and he threw me out of the house, but I was back a few days
later.

GROSS: So how did he react to you being gay after that first reaction of
throwing you out?

Mr. SEDARIS: Well, I was never like a slut. You know what I mean?

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. SEDARIS: I was never like the kind of guy who dragged people home or wore
T-shirts. I was never that kind of a homosexual. And my dad--I thought that
he was used to the idea, but I have a dear friend named Evelyn who lives in
Chicago, and, gee, I've known her for 20 years. She's 10 years older than me,
and when I got out of college, I lived in her house for a while. And five
years ago, I was talking about Evelyn and my dad said, `She's a great gal.
Why don't you marry her?'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. SEDARIS: Well, A, I'm gay, and, B, she lives in Chicago--I mean, there
were, like, 18 reasons why I wouldn't marry her, one of which is I've been
with Hugh for 13 years. But he's making an effort. When my dad calls, he'll
say, `Put Hugh on the phone.' And then Dad didn't quite know what to say to
Hugh, but you know, it's a nice gesture. He won't be one of those people that
wears a T-shirt that says, `I'm so happy that my son likes other guys.' He
won't go that far, but he comes to accept it.

GROSS: You know how in the story you just read when, you know, after your
father tells you you have to leave the house and you don't know why he's
telling you that, you don't realize it's because you're gay, you say--you're
thinking, `Someday you're going to be sorry,' did you ever have the desire of
throwing that back in his face or saying, `Well, Dad, this is how
unenlightened you are,' or, `This is how mean you can be,' you know, at an
opportune time when you needed to get even with him about something?

Mr. SEDARIS: I did, but I always felt it was third rate. Like, I always felt
when I yelled at my father or if I said--I remember once I said, `You're going
to die alone.'

GROSS: Oh, very nice.

Mr. SEDARIS: And I felt like I was being so prophetic at the time.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. SEDARIS: And now I think back on it and I think, `God, parents just
must--it must be so heartbreaking to be a parent and hear your kid say
something like that, something so unoriginal.'

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. SEDARIS: I mean, if they said something original or something
thought-provoking or funny, it might be OK. But you just want to say, `Oh,
God, I said that same thing to my parents,' you know. And, you know,
`Surprise, you're going to die alone, too.'

GROSS: David, a lot of the stories in this book are set in your childhood or
in your teen years, and I'm wondering if it was like a conscious choice to
spend some time writing about that part of your life or whether this is more
coincidental.

Mr. SEDARIS: I think it's more coincidental. I'd been writing a lot for
Ira's show, "This American Life," and he throws out a theme for every show.
And so sometimes the themes just happen to work best if I looked over the
scope of my life; they happened to work best in childhood. But I didn't
consciously--I think if I was conscious about it, I would try to get away from
that. I think there are so many traps to fall in to when you write about
childhood if you don't...

GROSS: What are the traps?

Mr. SEDARIS: Well, I think you can--there's a tendency to make yourself seem
more clever than you were. And I was not a clever child at all. I was not a
well-read child. I think I was just a--I was the kind of a child that I think
you'd think, `Damn it, that's my son?'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. SEDARIS: `That has to be my son?' You know like sometimes you see
someone with an ugly baby and you think, `They must look at that baby
sometimes and think, "Damn it, I wish I'd slept with somebody else."'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. SEDARIS: And I always felt like that--you know, like an ugly boy who's
not necessarily clever and not athletic in any way and just a general,
all-around--you'd just think, `Oh, maybe he'll grow up and move away from
home.' That would be the most that you could hope for.

GROSS: You've said that when you were young, you didn't read a lot. Did you
write?

Mr. SEDARIS: No. I wrote--in high school, I had to write papers and it was
just, like, horrible for me. And I was like most people; I put it off until
the night before the paper was due, and there was no sense of style to it
whatsoever. And I wanted to be a visual artist, but I don't have any talent
for that, and--but I was still giving it a try. And then I was 20 years old
one day and I just started writing. Like, I didn't know the day before that I
would do it; I just started writing one day. And at around that same time, I
started reading everything that I could get my hands on.

So I wasn't one of those people that--I wasn't a child who thought, `I'm going
to grow up and I'm going to be a writer.' It came as a complete surprise to
me. And I think that's sort of heartening, that that can happen to anybody,
you know. Anybody can maybe tomorrow--like, a couple years ago, Hugh and I
spent the summer in Normandy, and I discovered--well, I say `discovered,' but
they already existed--spiders. And I am so incredibly interested in spiders
now. And at this moment at our house in Normandy, there's probably 800
spiders in the house, and there's one huge--it's a kind of a spider that's a
shape the size of an unshelled peanut with legs on it, the Tegenaria gigantea.
And feeding these spiders and recording their habits and studying them under a
microscope, it's changed my life.

But I didn't know the day before--the day before I saw a fly fly into a web
and be eaten by a spider, I didn't know that this would be a huge passion in
my life. And I just think that's so exciting, that we have that ability to
embrace things that we don't even see coming. I mean, it really is--it sounds
kind of corny, but it's a reason to live. And who knows what it might be
next? I mean, I'd be surprised if all of a sudden I got into that foot
boxing, you know. Like, that would be a real surprise to me. But who knows?
There could be something tomorrow or--well, actually, I have my hands full
with the spiders right now, so--but something could happen 10, 15 years from
now that might cause me to look at the world in a completely different way.

GROSS: Oh, I know what you mean, and that's wonderful to see it that way.
What is it about spiders?

Mr. SEDARIS: I think that--we have these webs hanging almost like a campaign
bunting throughout the house, and it's a three-story house. And you never
really saw the spiders 'cause they're back in their little--they live in a
little cavity at the back of the web. But then I saw a spider--I saw a fly
and then I saw this spider come out and grab it, and it was fascinating. And
then I just started catching flies to feed to the spiders. And at first, I
caught them with my fingers. The best place to get a fly is against a
windowpane. They get confused there, and so you can grab them. So for a
while, I was catching them with my fingers, but it was more practical--I
started catching them in a jar. And then I'd shake the jar up like it's a
cocktail, and I'd pour the fly into the web. And the fly lands and he's sort
of punch-drunk for a moment; hes like, `What happened? Where am I?' And then
the second he starts to move, the spider comes out. And I'm just--you know,
it's like rooting for the Nazi in a Holocaust movie. It really is.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. SEDARIS: It makes me feel bad sometimes. But you know, these are flies,
so I'm not going to--you know, they go out in the yard and they walk through
feces and then they come in and dance on the furniture. I mean, if anyone has
it coming, it's flies.

And I think more than the spiders, it was catching the flies. It just fit
into this obsessive--into it was like an obsession that has been waiting for
me all my life. I mean, it fulfills me completely. I will spend six hours at
a stretch catching flies. And when we run out of flies in our own house, I go
to the neighbors' and ask if I can borrow some of theirs. So even more than
the spiders, it's catching the flies. And the spiders in our house are full,
you know. Like--you know, they're like, `Oh, not again.' There's only so
much that they can eat. But I love catching flies. Love it.

GROSS: My guest is David Sedaris. We'll talk more after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is David Sedaris. His latest collection of stories is called
"Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim." When we left off, he was talking
about his recent obsession with watching spiders and collecting flies.

Well, I know you see this new interest in spiders and flies as being, you
know, an obsession, and you have described yourself in your writing as being
obsessive-compulsive. And you say something--in one of the stories in your
new book, you say something really funny about that. You say, `The good part
about being an obsessive-compulsive is that you're always on time for work.
The bad part is that you're on time for everything: rinsing your cup of
coffee, taking a bath, walking your clothes to the Laundromat. There's no
mystery to your comings and goings, no room for spontaneity.'

Now here's something that amazes me. If you are so involved with routine and
the kind of predictability of routine, or the reliability of routine, how have
you managed to move to foreign countries? You know, you moved to Paris; now
you also have a place in London. And in addition to that, you tour a lot.
You go on book tours and you do maybe a city a day for a month or two. How do
you deal with that?

Mr. SEDARIS: Well, if--let's say if my plane leaves at 7--Right?--then
they're going to come and take me to the airport at 5:30. Now I just up at 4
and I write. And as long as I can write every day, then that's something I
can do every day. I could take the other bits of it. Right? So if I don't
get to take a bath tomorrow, or if my suitcase is lost and I don't get to iron
a shirt, I can deal with it because there's one thing that I can still do
every day.

I sort of like those tours. I mean, people always say you get off the plane
and then someone says, `Oh, you must be exhausted,' and you think, `Oh, I am.'
Then you think, `Wait a minute. I haven't done anything. You know, I just
took a half-hour plane ride. How exhausting is that in the scheme of things?'
So I like those tours because they feel like a business trip to me. They make
me feel like--I never had a real job, so it never occurred to me that I would
get to do that. And I just put it in my head that I'm a businessman and I'm a
businessman and I'm on a trip for a month, and that helps me get through a
lot.

GROSS: I don't know if I ever shared this theory with you, but I've often
wondered if your move to Paris--well, let me put it this way. I know when you
were young, you always wanted--I think I knew this anyways--that when you were
young, you wanted to be well-known, you know, as a writer. The idea of being,
you know, celebrated was something that you wanted. But as soon as you kind
of got it, you left town. You left the country and went to a place where
people didn't know who you were and you didn't even speak the language. And
it always seemed to me almost as a way of, intentionally or unintentionally,
protecting yourself from being too well-known, protecting yourself against
celebrity.

Mr. SEDARIS: Well, I think--but that's something you can't really write
about. You know, like, if you write about somebody giving you--you know,
recognizing your name on your credit card and so giving you a free meal in a
restaurant. You can't write about that because other people can't really
relate; it didn't happen to them. And you can't complain about it because
people think, `What the hell is he complaining about? You know, I had to pay
and leave a tip.'

So--and I think I tend to write better from the viewpoint of somebody who's
having to struggle for something. And so, therefore, moving to France, it was
just sort of starting over and having to--you know, asking for even the
smallest thing, and now having been there for six years, I--it's so hard for
me to open my mouth. So I feel very foreign there.

And part of it, too, is, I think, you know, you grow up and you think, `God, I
would give anything if people--if someone came up to me and said that they'd
read something that I had written and that they liked it.' And then when they
do, you just want it to be over with. You know, you know they mean well, bu,
you know, I just sort of dig the nails of my hand into my palm to make
anything hurt more...

GROSS: Why?

Mr. SEDARIS: ...than this. It's just--I mean, you want people to read what
you've written and you want them to enjoy it and you want them to tell you
about it. Actually, you want them to tell you about it. I think what--you
want them to tell your younger self how much they liked it. Like, the
20-year-old me would appreciate it, and the 47-year-old me is just sort of
embarrassed by it.

I mean, there's a writer named Akhil Sharma, who wrote a book called "An
Obedient Father," and it was the best novel that I'd read that year. Boy, it
was just a magnificent book, and he came to my reading. And I know that I
embarrassed him because basically I should have just gotten down and knelt on
the ground before him. That's basically what I did except with words. And I
think that I embarrassed him, but at the same time, I needed to say that. I
needed to say that I think that he is probably the most inventive writer that
lives in American right now, and that one of the reasons that I do not kill
myself is the possibility that he'll write another book. And so maybe when
people say nice things to me, I understand that they need to say it. And then
you need to be gracious and you need--I guess it's just being embarrassed, I
suppose.

GROSS: David Sedaris, recorded in June. His latest book is "Dress Your
Family in Corduroy and Denim."

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, our series Last Laughs continues with Cheryl Hines. She
plays Larry David's wife on the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." And jazz
critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a CD from singer Madeleine Peyroux.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Cheryl Hines discusses her role on "Curb Your
Enthusiasm"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

We're ending the year with our series Last Laughs, featuring some of our more
entertaining interviews from 2004. In November I spoke with Cheryl Hines.
She plays Larry David's wife, Cheryl David, on the HBO series, "Curb Your
Enthusiasm." She started her career performing with the comedy improv group
The Groundlings, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. Some of the
other Groundling alumni include Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, Will Ferrell, Paul
Reubens, Lisa Kudrow, Julia Sweeney and Laraine Newman.

Cheryl Hines gets to use a lot of her improv skills on "Curb." The series
centers around Larry David, the co-creator of the series "Seinfeld." In each
edition of "Curb," he manages to insult and alienate friends, family and
strangers. Here's a scene from last season. Larry and Cheryl David are
having a ceremony to renew their wedding vows. Cheryl wants Larry to work on
his vows; she's already started working on hers.

(Soundbite from "Curb Your Enthusiasm")

Ms. CHERYL HINES ("Cheryl David"): So this is what I have so far. `May I
always have the wisdom to look past your shortcomings and appreciate all of
the goodness you possess. We promise to continue loving each other
unconditionally not only throughout this lifetime but after death through all
eternity. We stand before you...'

Mr. LARRY DAVID ("Larry David"): What? Wait a sec.

Ms. HINES: What?

Mr. DAVID: What was that about eternity?

Ms. HINES: `We'll love each other throughout this lifetime but after death
through all eternity.'

Mr. DAVID: You mean this is continuing into the afterlife?

Ms. HINES: Yeah, that's the idea. Do you have a problem with that?

Mr. DAVID: Well, I thought this was over at death. I didn't know we went
into eternity together. Isn't that what it said, until death do us part? I
thought it was...

Ms. HINES: Do you have a problem with eternity?

Mr. DAVID: Well...

Ms. HINES: We finally found each other, Larry, and we're celebrating this
for all eternity.

Mr. DAVID: I just--I guess I had a different plan for eternity. I thought
I'd be single, I guess.

Ms. HINES: I'm sorry. I'm interrupting your single life in eternity?

Mr. DAVID: No, I just didn't realize that this relationship carried over
after death.

Ms. HINES: Well, it does. It carries over.

Mr. DAVID: So I guess I just took that for granted.

Ms. HINES: OK, do you not want to renew our vows because...

Mr. DAVID: No, I want to renew our vows until--you know, I didn't--can we
take out the eternity part?

Ms. HINES: No.

Mr. DAVID: OK.

GROSS: Cheryl Hines, how did you end up joining The Groundlings?

Ms. HINES: Well, I had moved out here from Florida, and I was bartending at
a hotel downtown, and I met one of Phil Hartman's sisters at the bar. She was
staying in the hotel and she started saying that she wanted to go to this
theater called The Groundlings on Melrose because that's where her brother got
his start. And when I found out it was Phil Hartman--and at that time he was
on "SNL"--something clicked over, like, `Oh, that's how you go from
Tallahassee, Florida, to "SNL." You just go to The Groundlings.'

No, I didn't figure it was that easy, but I thought there must be something
great about that theater if that's where Phil Hartman got his start. So I
immediately went to a show as soon as I had a night off, and I was blown away.
And at that time, I didn't even have a refrigerator because I was so broke,
and I so wanted to take classes at The Groundlings and I couldn't afford it.
And every day, I would come into work and I would talk about The Groundlings
and that's all I talked about. And for my birthday, all the people I worked
with and the regulars that came in all chipped in to buy my first class at The
Groundlings.

GROSS: Oh, that's so nice. What were you--you were a waitress?

Ms. HINES: I was a bartender, yeah.

GROSS: A bartender, yeah. Well, that's really, really nice. So...

Ms. HINES: It was great, and I...

GROSS: How'd you pay for your second class?

Ms. HINES: I cried a lot. Well, you know, I continued to talk to the
regulars and tell them how I was growing as an actress, and how it was
important for them to tip me well. And what's really interesting is I ended
up meeting Phil backstage at The Groundlings a few years later, and it was,
you know, a magical moment. He just walked by and said a few funny words, and
I was certain that that's where I was supposed to be at that moment.

GROSS: What was your audition like for "Curb Your Enthusiasm"?

Ms. HINES: Well, I had an audition that was scheduled. They called me about
an hour before my audition and said, `You know what? We're really running
behind. We're going to have to postpone your audition.' And that, you know,
is kind of Hollywoodspeak for `You're not coming in,' which at the time was OK
with me, because, you know, first of all, I didn't really know who Larry David
was. I knew he created "Seinfeld," and that's exciting, but I didn't--none of
it really registered, like this was going to be a huge, big thing. It was an
hour special on HBO. From the description of the wife, you know, the part
that I went in for, I didn't think I was right for it. So when they told me
that I wasn't going in, I was OK.

And that night I was doing sketch comedy. It wasn't at The Groundlings, but
it was material that I created at The Groundlings, and the director and the
producer of the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" special was--they were both at the show
that night, and they saw one of the sketches that I had written, and I
performed it, and they thought that my sense of humor kind of matched up with
Larry's, and they called me in the next morning.

GROSS: What did they tell you about your character and about his character?

Ms. HINES: They told me, you know, that the part of Larry's wife doesn't put
up with a lot of bull, that she's heard it all from him before and she stands
up to him, basically. So that's all they told me. And I went in, and at that
point, they were thinking that we were going to have kids on the show, which
in the special, we did, but you never saw them, but we talked about them.
Anyway, so my first scene that I did with him, we were just sitting next to
each other and he said, `I don't think you put enough milk in the kids' cereal
bowls.' He said, `I don't understand why you can't just fill it all the way up
to the top.' And I said, `Well, there's no reason to. You know, if you cover
the flakes, they're fine and then you give them a glass of milk if they want
to drink the milk.' He's like, `Yeah, but we can afford it. Why don't we
just go ahead and fill it up all the way?' And I said, `Because there's no
point in it. They're just going to--there's just milk that sits left over and
it goes to waste.' And he's like, `Well, why don't you just try it?' You
know, so it was really one of those.

And then we did another scene where he told me that he wasn't going to eat
chicken. That's all he told me. And then he goes, `OK, so let's--you know,
we'll improvise the scene.' And he asked me what we were having for dinner,
you know, and I said that we were having potatoes and green beans and chicken,
and he said, `I just told you I'm not eating chicken.' And I said, `Well, so
the rest of your family doesn't get to eat chicken?' I said, `You don't have
to eat the chicken. Every time you say you're not going to do something, we
don't do it, if--it'll be--you know, we can't live like that. Because you're
a neurotic, we're not going to have to live our lives like that. So don't eat
the chicken.' But he was, like--he couldn't believe that I said that we were
going to have chicken after he just told me he wasn't eating chicken anymore.
So we laughed a lot, actually, in that audition.

GROSS: So I guess you had the personality they were looking for.

Ms. HINES: Well, they said that they were kind of running into people that
were either too pushy and too confrontational, or as soon as he got
confrontational, they would back off and their feelings would get hurt. So I
guess I was a happy medium. I don't know.

GROSS: So how does improvisation and how does all the work that you did with
The Groundlings figure in now to your work on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" with
Larry David?

Ms. HINES: Well, I'm sure that I would not have this job if I didn't have my
training at The Groundlings, because, you know, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is all
improvised. We get a story outline that's about eight or nine pages long and
then all the dialogue is improvised. So before I came to The Groundlings, I
had not had any improv training, only in acting classes for, you know, an
exercise maybe. They would say, `Do something improvised.' But it was never
meant to be funny and it was never comedy. So The Groundlings really helped
me to understand what improv is all about.

Now while I'm saying this, I can imagine Larry David listening to this
interview going, `It's not so hard.' But that's what he thinks about acting.
He always thinks of people that have had training act like it's all so hard,
and it's not so hard. He always says, `You know, if you're supposed to have a
stomach ache, you act like you have a stomach ache. It's not so hard. You
grab your stomach and moan.' So I'm sure...

GROSS: Of course, he's playing himself, more or less.

Ms. HINES: Yeah, of course. Exactly. So I'm sure if he heard me talking
about improv and how, you know, it's good to be trained, he would be making
fun of me. But it isn't...

GROSS: That's what you want in a co-star, isn't it, someone who can make fun
of you?

Ms. HINES: Yes. But, listen, I get mocked at every turn, I have to tell
you. But I would not have felt comfortable going into that audition, I think,
if I hadn't had training at The Groundlings, because it seems--it can be
intimidating, improvising, especially coming from a theater background where
they tell you that it's all about what's on the page and what other characters
say about you in the script and what your character says in the script. And
you analyze every word and every motivation. So in theater, for me anyway,
that's where you start. You start with a script. So to all of a sudden be in
a theater and you don't have a script, it's a strange place.

GROSS: What's it like to work with him?

Ms. HINES: It's like going to summer camp when you're 13, and--or it's like,
you know, when you're in high school and you go into chemistry class and
everybody gets paired up for lab partners. It's like I got paired up with the
smartest, dorkiest guy in class. And then you realize quickly into it that
you're having the best time and that he knows all the answers. And I spend
most of my drive home just laughing to myself, what a crazy job I have.

GROSS: Have you ever been absolutely speechless by something that he's said?

Ms. HINES: Well, I have been, and if you watch the show, you'll see several
times where I don't even know what to say to him. I usually--it takes me a
while to process what he just told me, so sometimes I'll just be, like, you
know, `Why would you tell someone that--why would you congratulate them on his
son having a big penis?' You know what I mean? It's like, `Why would that
come out of your mouth?' So there are moments like that where I just have to
process it before I can respond to it. I'm mostly just asking why.

GROSS: My guest is Cheryl Hines. She plays Larry David's wife, Cheryl David,
in HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Here's a scene from the first season.

(Soundbite of "Curb Your Enthusiasm")

Ms. HINES: Can I ask you something?

Mr. DAVID: Sure.

Ms. HINES: I'm just curious, OK? Why am I the one that always has to
initiate sex? You ever thought about that?

Mr. DAVID: Um, OK, I'll tell you why.

Ms. HINES: Yeah.

Mr. DAVID: I got a cramp in my foot. Um, I'm available for sex all the
time...

Ms. HINES: Is that right?

Mr. DAVID: ...basically.

Ms. HINES: Uh-huh.

Mr. DAVID: So anytime you want to have it, you can have it.

Ms. HINES: Wow!

Mr. DAVID: But any time I want to have it, I can't--so just assume that I
want it all the time, so whenever you want it, just tap me on the shoulder.

Ms. HINES: Oh, jeepers.

Mr. DAVID: OK?

Ms. HINES: That's so not how it should go.

Mr. DAVID: Well, otherwise I'll be making moves all the time. Do you want
that? Do you want somebody just mauling you all the time? That's what I will
do.

Ms. HINES: How about once in a while?

Mr. DAVID: I will treat your breasts as if they're mine. Do you want that?

Ms. HINES: Once...

Mr. DAVID: Huh?

Ms. HINES: Once in a while. I mean, I don't want you walking around like
that.

Mr. DAVID: Would you like that, if I walked around like that?

Ms. HINES: No. I'm just saying...

Mr. DAVID: Huh? That's how I'll walk around. If you--you know, I need
borders. I need boundaries.

Ms. HINES: OK.

Mr. DAVID: You know?

Ms. HINES: Once in a while, give it a try. That's all I'm saying, OK?

Mr. DAVID: All right. Well, OK.

Ms. HINES: All right.

Mr. DAVID: All right.

Ms. HINES: Oh, not now! No, not now!

Mr. DAVID: No?

GROSS: Cheryl David--Cheryl David--Cheryl Hines will be back after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our interview with actress Cheryl Hines. She plays
Larry David's wife, Cheryl, on the HBO series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

I'm sure you've had to ask yourself why does your character stay married to
him on the show when he's so inconsiderate and so tone-deaf to the needs of
other people, including his wife?

Ms. HINES: Well, first of all, she really does love him, and she finds him
very entertaining. Larry David doesn't come along every day. He's an unusual
person in real life and on the show. And I can understand how in real life
someone would be married to someone like Larry David because he's intelligent.
He sees the world through a different lens, which is fascinating to witness.
So I can understand it.

GROSS: Now have you met Larry David's real wife?

Ms. HINES: I have.

GROSS: How does she compare to the character you play as his wife?

Ms. HINES: That's a good question because I haven't spent very much time
with Laurie David. I really just sort of run into her on--it sounds awful to
say, but at award shows. It sounds very pretentious, doesn't it? But they're
two different people. You know, people always ask me if I'm doing an
impersonation of Larry's real wife, and when the show started, I had not even
met her. So I don't really know how I compare to her. I imagine that we're
pretty different, but I imagine, on some levels, there's probably the same
dynamic going on. I imagine in real life, he probably is a little annoying
but really funny.

GROSS: Have you--because you've played the part of Cheryl David so long and
because the part is improvised so often, do you feel like you sometimes go
through life as her and imagine how she would be responding?

Ms. HINES: Only when I'm with Larry, only when I'm hanging out with him
socially. You know, if we're--I don't know what we might be doing. Now I've
conjured up thoughts of us, like, hanging out watching a Dodgers game, which
we don't. But if, for some reason, we're someplace together and, like,
someone will come up and start talking to him and reminiscing with him about
something that they did, and he'll just look at them and go, `What's your
name?' Then I have to, you know, have a talk with him. I'm like, `Larry, you
don't just blurt out "What's your name?" to someone who obviously knows you.'
You know, he's like, `Well, why not?' `Because it's rude, for starters.' He's
like, `Well, if you don't know their name.' I go, `There are other ways to do
it, you know?' So, yeah, I do find myself reacting as Cheryl David sometimes.

GROSS: That's so funny. I feel like we know so much--or those of us who
watch the show know so much about you as Larry David's wife on the show, but
tell us something about yourself, about where you grew up, what your family
was like.

Ms. HINES: I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida. I grew up in Florida. I was
born in Miami and lived in a little town outside of Orlando, and my whole
family lives there now. And I have two brothers and a sister. And, you know,
I grew up in kind of a small town, so my dad's, I'm not going to say a
redneck, but, mm, kind of. So I mean, we grew up with not a lot of money.
You know, my grandfather, he had orange groves and that was--our weekend was
he would drive us around his orange grove in the back of his pickup truck and
we'd run around the orange grove. So it certainly wasn't a big-city
experience for me. And...

GROSS: Did you ever know anybody like Larry David before doing the show?
Because I don't get--I don't think--I mean, he is so urban. I mean, he's very
much out of Brooklyn...

Ms. HINES: Yeah.

GROSS: ...very much from a Jewish family, very much...

Ms. HINES: Yes.

GROSS: ...a certain type of neurotic. Did you know anyone like that?

Ms. HINES: Well, no. I had never met anyone like Larry before I walked in
the room and met him that day. You know, even growing up where I grew up, I
don't think I had one Jewish friend growing up. So when I moved out to Los
Angeles, I actually started out as a--I was bartending and then I got a job as
an assistant to Rob Reiner and his family. So that was my first introduction
to a Jewish family. And I sort of educated myself through that because I
would have to buy the kids, like, Passover coloring--no--yeah, like Hanukkah
coloring books and things like that, and so I started learning a little bit
here and there about the Jewish faith. And then when I met Larry, we starting
shooting the show, and he was thinking that I was going to be Jewish, his wife
would be Jewish. And about halfway through our first season, he looked at me
and said, `I don't think anybody thinks that you're Jewish.' I said, `Well, I
don't know what to tell you. I'm trying.' And then we decided that it would
probably be funnier if I wasn't anyway, so--but no--yeah, I had never met
anybody neurotic like Larry before.

GROSS: I think that's what--part of what makes the relationship so
interesting is that because you don't fall into predictable patterns with him
since you never knew anybody like him...

Ms. HINES: Right.

GROSS: ...there's something very kind of surprising at how you deal with him,
and that works.

Ms. HINES: Well, thank you. Well, you know, my family--I grew up--was very
easygoing. Everything was easygoing. So when I--so Larry's character on the
show is the opposite of that.

GROSS: Yes.

Ms. HINES: And so I'm always trying to adjust to it. But in real life, we
also have that dynamic, so it's kind of an easy crossover.

GROSS: Cheryl Hines plays Cheryl David, Larry David's wife, in the HBO series
"Curb Your Enthusiasm." Our interview was recorded in November. Our series
Last Laughs, featuring some of our more entertaining interviews of 2004,
continues tomorrow.

Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews Madeleine Peyroux's new CD.
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Madeleine Peyroux's new CD, "Careless Love"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Madeleine Peyroux was born in Georgia but grew up mostly in France, where she
sang on the streets of Paris and sang old jazz and blues tunes with a
traveling band. When her debut album was released in 1996, the young singer
was often compared to Billie Holiday. The much-belated sequel is now out.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says the resemblance is even stronger now that
Peyroux's voice has matured.

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. MADELEINE PEYROUX: (Singing) Dance me to your beauty with a burning
violin. Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in. Lift me like
an olive branch and be my homeward dove. Dance me to the end of love.

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

It's spooky how much Madeleine Peyroux can sound like middle-period Billie
Holiday. We don't say she's Holiday's equal, or people will listen to her in
60 years. But where other singers imitate Holiday's mannerisms in ways of
paraphrasing a melody as a stunt, Peyroux lives in that style. She sounds
inspired by the natural resemblance between her heavy-lidded timbre and
Holiday's.

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. PEYROUX: (Singing) Show me slowly what I only know the limits of. Dance
me to the end of love. Dance me to the end of love.

WHITEHEAD: Madeleine Peyroux sings two lesser-known Billie Holiday vehicles
on her new CD "Careless Love," but she makes her mark on more contemporary
songs, like that Leonard Cohen tune. Her version of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna
Make Me Lonesome When You Go" makes you wonder what material Holiday might
have recorded if she'd lived beyond age 44. She'd only been 59 when Dylan
wrote it.

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. PEYROUX: (Singing) You're gonna make me wonder what I'm doing. Stay far
behind without you. You're gonna make me wonder what I'm saying, gonna make
me give myself a good talking to. I'll look for you in old Honolulu, San
Francisco and Ashtabula. Gonna have to leave me now, I know. But I'll see
you in the skies above, in the tall grass and the ones I love. You're gonna
make me lonesome when you go.

WHITEHEAD: That's good enough to make you forget, if not forgive, the
Starland Vocal Band's version.

Madeleine Peyroux's new album has problems, but they have nothing to do with
her singing. Four tunes were written before 1931, and there's a faintly cute,
archaic quality to some arrangements. The shuffle beats and mildly fancy
chords that sound jazzy to folkies and popsters may just sound corny to jazz
folk. Even with the fine jazz organist Larry Goldings and all-purpose session
guitarist Dean Parks on board, the band can come off like kids trying on
grandparents' clothes in the attic. The style might work, but the fit was
bad.

(Soundbite of "Lonesome Road")

Ms. PEYROUX: (Singing) Why you totin' such a heavy load, trudging down that
lonesome road? Look down, look down that lonesome road before you travel on.

WHITEHEAD: "Lonesome Road" from the 1929 movie of "Show Boat." Madeleine
Peyroux's "Careless Love" includes one tune she wrote with her friend Jesse
Harris, who gave a big hit to Norah Jones. We'll sidestep that comparison,
except to note that Peyroux, a guitar strummer who records for the roots label
Rounder, sounds jazzier than Jones, who's on a jazz label.

Madeleine Peyroux's singing works for me because the more I listen, the more
she sounds like herself. She makes something authentically hers out of
something borrowed. But even if she just reminds you of what you love about
another singer, what's the harm in that?

(Soundbite of song)

Ms. PEYROUX: (Singing) So when I hear them say there's better living, let
them go their way to that new living. I won't ever stray 'cause this is
heaven to me, 'cause this is heaven to me.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead teaches at the University of Kansas. He's also jazz
columnist for eMusic.com. He reviewed Madeleine Peyroux's new CD "Careless
Love."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.