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Boosler: One of the wise guys
Hey, don't let all that curly hair and those girl jokes fool you. Elayne Boosler's wit is razor-sharp.
By PETER SMITH
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2001
[Publicity photo]
“I’m just a person trapped in a woman’s body,” Elayne Boosler says.
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Elayne Boosler has some new stuff to say.
"I get requests for the old material, so I do a little of that," Boosler said in a recent interview, "but the show is mostly new, always."
Boosler, a Brooklyn native who attended the University of South Florida for two years, is recognized as one of the seminal comic minds of her generation. Her beauty and wit set her apart from standard comedians when she began. "It wasn't just women who were frumpy when I began," she said, "all comics were, like Jackie Vernon or Rodney (Dangerfield). Then my group came along, Robert Klein, David Brenner and Seinfeld, and were a little sharper in our approach, a little more wise-guy."
And, in Boosler's case, with a definite feminist edge. Sample Boosler joke: "When women get depressed we go shopping, or eat chocolate. Men invade countries. A whole different way of thinking."
While she seems to be less visible recently, she says she's still doing the same amount of TV that she always has. "There's just so much more stuff now, and if you saw me a lot a few years ago, that was Comedy Central playing my Showtime specials like once or twice a week.
"It used to be that you could saturate the market. Can't do that anymore," she said.
Boosler has played for Bill Clinton and the Queen of England. "The Queen is a tough audience, she's not allowed to show any emotions in public, in case there's a war, so she's not supposed to laugh," Boosler said. "At least Bill laughed."
Will she be performing for the current president?
"I know I won't," she said firmly. "His father asked me to do a "Thousand Points of Light' thing, and I said no. Too much of what he was choosing to do drove me nuts."
Lots of her time is taken up with benefit performances. "I do 100 a year, I could do 350 benefits a year, maybe more," she said. "So many organizations I support are getting money cut off," from pet shelters to battered women to Planned Parenthood, "that I end up turning down benefits all the time despite all the ones I do."
Boosler (who wrote a well-received article for Esquire about her friend Andy Kaufman) refused to see Man on the Moon, the Jim Carrey movie about Kaufman's life. "It could have never been about him, just what these other people wanted him to be," she said.
"I heard a studio executive was going on and on about how Carrey was funnier than Andy, that Carrey came in on time in the "Mighty Mouse' bit, where Andy was always a bit late, like that wasn't the joke." She laughs incredulously.
"That's who is deciding what's funny nowadays," which, she says, is why she does no movies or sitcoms. "When I go out, I'm in charge."
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Preview: Elayne Boosler, 8 p.m. Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall. Tickets are $23.75-$27.75. Call (727) 791-7400.
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Comedian George Carlin plays Ruth Eckerd Hall at 9 p.m. Wednesday. The show is sold out.
Also
Here are some Tampa Bay area comedy clubs:
Coconuts Comedy Clubs: Howard Johnson's, 6100 Gulf Blvd., St. Pete Beach. (727) 360-5653 and Cinema Cafe, 24095 U.S. 19 N (Sunset Point Road and U.S. 19), Clearwater. (727) 797-5653.
Side Splitters Comedy Club: Cascades Plaza, 12938 N Dale Mabry Highway, Tampa. (813) 960-1197.
Wacky Weaver's Brandon Comedy Club: 779 W Lumsden Road, Brandon. (813) 661-5527.
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