My Will & Grace spec was a disaster. In an attempt to achieve the cheeky, gay-centric tone of the show, I had written a sample so over-the-top offensively gay that it actually reads like a propaganda sketch to incite antigay sentiment.
So things were coming together nicely for me to embark on a full-fledged depression. One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It"s not like if you"re in Los Angeles, where everyone"s so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you"re down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you"re depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. But it was still hard to fail, so consistently, at everything I had once been Camilla Parker Bowleslevel good at.
Brenda and I would fix that, but we didn"t know it yet.
*It is interesting to note that this Barnes and n.o.ble no longer exists-perhaps no one was buying books there?
The Exact Level of Fame I Want
I OBVIOUSLY WANT to be super famous and for everyone to love me. That"s why I got into this racket. It helps that I love writing jokes, but let"s face it, that was just the means to an end.
Oftentimes when I"m in the writers" room at The Office, and it"s 11:00 p.m., the script we"re rewriting is halted because we"re all waiting for our boss to approve an outfit for the character Pam that shoots the following day, and my mind wanders. First I wonder if I will ever get the opportunity to live in a tree house like the one in the Swiss Family Robinson house at Disneyland, where we"d have a giant seash.e.l.l for a sink. After I realize that, no, that will never happen, I think about the exact amount of fame I want.
To me, the person with the best fame is Conan O"Brien. When I interned at Late Night, I thought, Wow, this is the guy who has totally nailed being famous. n.o.body cared what he wore (some kind of dark-colored suit), his hair was famously always the same, and he got to sit at the same desk every episode. Clearly he was a hardworking genius, but he was the only famous person I saw who was always being himself. Everyone else had to be someone else. Conan did strange little comedy bits that were completely his style, interviewed celebrities who were much more dressed up than he was, and even got to do cooking demonstrations. (When I interned there, I noticed he never ate the food during commercial breaks. I don"t understand that level of discipline.)
I didn"t want to be Regis or Kathie Lee, because their chairs were too high. I"m sorry, I"m supposed to sit like that for an hour? Too much blood rushing to my ankles. No, thanks.
Once I saw Paris Hilton leaving a restaurant in Hollywood and the paparazzi cameras were all over her. It looked so unpleasant. It wasn"t because she didn"t look sensational-she was that perfect combination of fashionable and s.l.u.tty-it was because the paparazzi guys were shouting these insanely rude and intrusive questions at her. Like, asking her who she was sleeping with and stuff. I was kind of interested in the answer, so I was glad they asked, but it was still gross.
But then, behind Paris, I saw Sacha Baron Cohen quietly exit the restaurant completely unnoticed, walk up to the valet, get in his car, and drive away. Can you believe that? I mean, it"s Sacha Baron f.u.c.kin" Cohen! (Wasn"t sure where to put the f.u.c.kin" in there, but I think I chose right.) None of the paparazzi had any idea who he was, but he was also, like Conan, one of the most respected living comedy icons in the world. And I thought, Man, I want to be that famous.
Here are some more ways I"d love to be famous (I am required to declare that these ideas are technically owned by NBC-Universal, because I imagined them while on their payroll).
I NEVER HAVE TO WAIT IN LINE FOR BRUNCH
Like everyone normal, I would never have a b.u.mper sticker, ever. However, if I saw one that read, "h.e.l.l Is Waiting in Line for Brunch," I might buy a thousand and plaster my car with them. I"d like to be so famous that if I want to lazily eat out on a Sunday afternoon, someone whisks me past a long line of poor slobs waiting in the sun and to a private table.
I GET TO SEE THE LAKERS ALL THE TIME
Look, I don"t need to have Jack Nicholson seats or whatever-honestly, who needs to live in constant peril of a sweaty 7-foot-tall, 240-pound guy falling on you?-but I"d love to be so famous that people who do have amazing tickets would be psyched to have me come with them. I just want to sit close enough so that I can ask the Laker Girls questions about their makeup regimens.
TEENAGERS IDOLIZE MY "LOOK"
I was at Benefit Cosmetics picking up some lip glosses and trying to scam some free samples one Sat.u.r.day a few months ago. While I was there, I saw two adorable ninth-grade girls getting makeovers for their semiformal, which was that night. They both had torn-out reference pictures of Emma Watson. When I was their age, I had done the same with pictures of Meg Ryan. I was obsessed with her edgy s.h.a.g from the otherwise forgettable movie Addicted to Love. The edgy s.h.a.g did not suit my face. If you must know, it made me look like a touring 1980"s road comic. A male one.
Copying a celebrity"s hairstyle is some enviable adoration right there. Since I don"t think anyone will ever want my haircut, it"d have to be something else. Maybe kids would want my perfectly hairless forearms.
IF I SUPPORT A CAUSE, I CAN ACTUALLY HELP IT
Sean Penn, like, lives in Haiti, right? That"s too much. I can"t do that. That"s some hard-core goodness right there. But I"d love to make an enormous impact by being the vocal spokesperson for a cause, somewhere on the level of Mary Tyler Moore ending horse carriage rides in Central Park.
THE FASHION POLICE SLAUGHTER ME, CONSTANTLY, AND I DON"T CARE
There"s a certain bada.s.s-ness to someone like Helena Bonham Carter, who just doesn"t give a c.r.a.p about what the Fashion Police say. And when I say the Fashion Police, of course I"m speaking of the small group of screeching gay guys and fashion "experts" on that E! show led by the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers. Joan, actually, is still pretty great. One Emmy Awards show a few years ago, she said my dress made me look like I was going to the prom from h.e.l.l. It traumatized my entire week, but even I had to admit that it was a funny thing to say. The point is, it only traumatized me because I had the time to be traumatized. I want to be so famous and busy that I only ever find these insults amusing, and chuckle at them good-naturedly before I get on my private jet to be a UN amba.s.sador to Cameroon, or wherever.
BATs.h.i.t STUFF I WEAR IS IMMEDIATELY CONSIDERED FASHIONABLE
Kind of related to what I"ve just said. I want to rock harem pants or black lipstick like Gwen Stefani does and have people be like, "That"s just Mindy," and then everyone starts doing it.
WHEN I GET OLD, I"M A SIGHT GAG FOR TV SHOWS
I want to be so famous that people put me in their TV shows as the desiccated old broad who gets big laughs simply because no one has ever seen such an old bag of bones recite memorized lines, and because the sight of me brings up warm, nostalgic memories of their youth. Future hipsters will love me ironically.