BACK
STAGE WEST
January
08, 1998
ACTORS'
DIALOGUE: Geri Jewell & Kathy Buckley
Reporting
by Rob Kendt
"Disabled
comics" is a misnomer when applied to Kathy Buckley and Geri Jewell,
because as seasoned standups they're both quite able, thank you, to reduce
audiences to fits of laughter. Jewell is best known for her ground-breaking
role on Facts of Life as Cousin Geri, in which she was the first person with a
disability--cerebral palsy, in her case--to be cast in a major role on
primetime TV. Since then, she has appeared as a standup comic on the nationwide
circuit and in films and television, and wrote and starred in an episode of 21
Jump Street. She's also a very busy as a motivational speaker and diversity
trainer for corporate and government clients.
Buckley
is best known for her Ovation award-winning one-woman show Don't Buck With
Me!,
which ran to great acclaim at the Tamarind Theatre last year. She's also won
the American Comedy Award for Best Standup Female Comedienne three years
running and has appeared on the nationwide circuit, in the HBO comedy special Women
of the Night, and in the 1991 documentary I Can Hear the Laughter--a reference to her
disability, hearing loss. She, too, works as a motivational speaker for Anthony
Robbins' Life Mastery classes.
Buckley
and Jewell met a decade ago at a dinner for the Media Access Awards--an annual
event honoring the entertainment industry's leaders in employing and
representing the disabled, at which they'll both appear this year, on Jan. 28
at the Beverly Hilton Hotel--and have been close friends ever since. In fact,
Jewell was among those who encouraged Buckley to become a standup in 1988. The
two got together recently to talk about their comedy and, when they weren't
cutting up or kibitzing, about educating the next generation--and the
entertainment industry--about the true abilities of the disabled.
Kathy
Buckley:
It's funny, because I lip-read and you have involuntary movements, so I get
seasick lip-reading you half the time. When we get together I have to take
Dramamine, so I'm stoned when we're having a conversation.
Geri
Jewell:
And we have deaf lunches, which means we call each other up on the phone and
tell each other what time we're going to meet and what restaurant we're going
to meet at--but you have a different time and I hear a different restaurant, so
we're at two separate restaurants at two different times waiting for each other
to show up, both thinking we stood each other up, and then we call each other
later and we say, "What did you have for lunch?" That is a deaf
lunch: We have separate lunches together but apart.
Kathy: We manage to utilize
our differences, learn from them for each other, accommodate each other, and
yet still laugh at it. I found out more than anything in all my traveling that
everybody has something in common. Some people pick on their cellulite, and
that becomes a disability; people pick on the way they look 'cause they'd
rather look like this, their height or their weight or whatever. Everybody has
an issue that they go and put limitations on themselves. I have no business
telling some obese woman that it's terrible she should be that way. Who am I to
pass judgement? I'd rather go to the obese person and say, "So what didn't
you have for breakfast this morning?" and just make fun with it.
But
neither one of us makes fun of anybody. All of our jokes are pointed toward
ourselves and how we observe and how we see things, you know?
Geri: Yeah. I always say that
if you think you're being laughed at, you're really being laughed with--it's
just you forgot to laugh. Life is not that serious. It really is not that
serious.
Kathy: We need to take life
seriously, but not ourselves. You know, we respect life, but what's more
important is to get the people out there to laugh. It's about being totally in
the moment, just enjoying what is there in the moment. When you do comedy, you
have to do it with love. I don't like it when people come up to me and say,
"Why are you being self-deprecating?" No, I'm loving the fact that
this is who I am: God made me six foot tall, he gave me no tits, no ass, no
fat, but cellulite--hello? Are we taking a nap or something, God? You have to
enjoy what you have, you really do.
Nobody's Perfect
Geri: My inspiration as a
child was Carol Burnett. She had such a wonderful ability to laugh at herself;
I always thought that was such a tremendous gift and wanted to emulate that. I
started to writing to her when I was 10 and told her, "When I grow up,
this is what I want to do. I have cerebral palsy. What do you think?"
Carol wrote me back and told me that there was no guarantee that I would become
a professional, but the important thing was to make the effort and to try
it--you never know how far you're going to go unless you try. She said the most
important part is to enjoy doing it, however and wherever you do it; to be a
professional is icing on the cake.
That
was just so motivating to me, because when you're a kid with cerebral palsy,
you always hear, "Well, that's unrealistic, you shouldn't even go there, stop
dreaming about that, you need to find a cerebral palsy job," whatever that
is.
Kathy: What is a cerebral
palsy job? I've been looking for one for you.
Geri: Well, they say: CP,
CPA. But I was horrible in math, so that didn't work. I tried to get a job at
Taco Bell when I was 16, only I'd crunch the tacos every time I tried to make
one. Then I tried getting a job at Thrifty Drugs, but they put me in the ice
cream department--real smart. I put ice cream on the cones, the cone crunched,
the ice cream went and hit the guy in the head. When I bottomed out, I realized
I could do standup comedy, and a lot of that confidence came from Carol
encouraging me. She was like a little angel putting a touch of confidence in my
heart.
Kathy: I'm just in awe that
people actually come and listen to me talk, that people love my work and they
accept it, and that the public needs this different stuff. But the industry
still only sees the disability. We're still knocking on the door where
Hollywood says, "No, you have to be perfect."
Geri: Well, it's fear. It's
like, we tend to shelter children from things that might be painful. But the
kid is not in pain; it's the adult projecting their discomfort and pain onto
the child, which creates the fear.
Kathy: And that's how you put
limitations on children.
Geri: Yeah, and this is the
thing about Hollywood and disability. It's the preconceived idea that this is a
painful situation, hard for people to accept--"Let's not expose this too
much to the public." If they just let it go, they'd be astounded how
magical it could be. I always believe that you and I could be the disabled
version of Laverne and Shirley or Ethel and Lucy. It would be absolutely
hysterical.
Kathy: Yeah, that would be all
new comedy--a different kind of humor that has not been brought to sitcoms, and
all new storylines.
Geri: And that was the whole
reason for the Media Access Awards in the first place, to acknowledge when the
industry does embrace disability, doing something positive with it, and
encouraging them to do more.
Pity My Ass
Geri: Early on, I remember a
fellow comedian saying to me that CP was a gimmick: "Gee, if I had
cerebral palsy, I could do comedy, too." I got a lot of that resentment.
I'd be the first to admit it was a gimmick, but cerebral palsy is not going to
be the thing that's going to carry me through life. A gimmick can only go so
far. If I can't expand beyond that, then, yeah, it's a gimmick and I'm going to
be crappy comedian.
Kathy: Yeah, when I started in
comedy, there were a couple of professional comedians going, "Oh, it's
about pity--the little deaf girl kind of thing. It must be nice to have a
hook," and I'm going, "But you're whining about being Jewish up there
half the time!" It's not a hook, it's a part of who I am. If that's a
hook, then me being flat-chested and six feet tall is a hook, too.