20 Questions: Bill Maher

Politically Incorrect" has been characterized by its host, Bill Maher, as '"The McLaughlin Group' on acid." Based in New York and airing five nights a week at 11:00 on "Comedy Central," the show is one of the few you actually wish went on longer than its allotted time. The format is simple. Maher and staff come up with a topic that induces heated discussion and then gather four panelists to debate the issue.

Topics have included "Men are pigs and we're tired of apologizing for it," "Does showbiz make you an asshole or do assholes go into showbiz?" and more serious discussions about the death penalty ("Why is life precious?") and the role of the media today. Among those who have shared their opinions with Maher are Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne, former Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner, Tim Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Grant Tinker, Tom Hayden, Roger Clinton, Ed Rollins, Dr. Dre, Congresswoman Susan Molinari, Vladimir Posner, Joe Walsh, Harvey Fierstein, Timothy Leary, Queen Latifah, Sandra Bernhard, Shelley Winters, Sam Donaldson and the doubtable Kato Kaelin. And that's just a week's worth. Maher started as a stand-up comedian and emcee at New York's Catch-a-Rising-Star comedy club in the early Eighties. He then tried sitcoms, movies such as "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death" and appearances on "The Tonight Show" and with David Letterman. He also wrote "True Story: A Comedy Novel." This year his current show earned a Cable Ace Award for best talk show series.

Contributing Editor David Rensin met with the New York-based Maher (pronounced Mar) during one of the host's rare visits to his Los Angeles home. Says Rensin: "One of the first things Bill said was how glad he was to be interviewed for Playboy. He led me to the guest bedroom and pointed to a wall nearly covered by shelves of Playboy binders. 'So,' I said, 'I guess you are familiar with "20 Questions," huh?"

1.

[Q] Playboy: In terms of this country's political education, how good is it that a satiric remark uttered on Politically Incorrect is more persuasive than a reasoned argument?

[A] Maher: People are always going to be swayed by or riveted to something that's funny, sexy, juicy. But getting a message across is not my agenda. I'm not preaching. I have a forum but no political cause--and it's helpful to make it entertaining. When I spoke in Washington earlier this year at a broadcasters' dinner, I remarked that Senator Phil Gramm was so tough on immigration that he was going to deport his wife. She's Asian American. It wasn't an ethnic slur but a satiric and concise way to get the message across about a policy that's wrong. People understood me in very few words. If I had gone into a dry dissertation on the downside of Proposition 187, eyes would have glazed over, mine included.

2.

[Q] Playboy: You took a lot of heat for the Gramm joke and others you told at that dinner--such as the one in which you said that Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry had promised to get drugs off the street, one gram at a time. Which jokes didn't you tell?

[A] Maher: That's hard to recall. But I do remember I was offended when the press questioned me about going over the line. My response was: Wait a second, please. I spent a lot of time on this. I was walking on the line, as I always do. It took me a long time to learn how to do it, but this is my business, and I think I did it right. I could, as others who have worked in front of Clinton have done, made jokes about Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers--stuff I'm sure really pissed him off and is embarrassing for everybody. I didn't get into anybody's personal life. I made jokes about politics or problems that are out in the open, such as Marion Barry's. I was doing special material for a special crowd, jokes that I couldn't do anywhere else. Yet that's the appreciation I got. By the way, I hear Gramm loved the other joke I made about him. I said his campaign slogan is "Gramm: For people who think Dole isn't mean enough." He likes that image.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Politicians rarely fulfill the promises that even they want to keep. Why does the country seem to have amnesia at election time? Why do we get taken in over and over by the same bullshit?

[A] Maher: It's always been the position of our show that the people aren't blamed enough, and it would help them if they were. People need to be called on their own bullshit. I used to do this joke about somebody who runs for office every year telling the truth, and he never gets anywhere. His slogan is: "I'm not Santa Claus." And he's not president, either. The people want to be lied to. They want the guy who can lie to them in the smoothest way.

4.

[Q] Playboy: After Kato Kaelin testified at the O.J. Simpson trial, he appeared on your show and you've since become friends. Besides just wanting to get next to a major celebrity, what's the appeal for you?

[A] Maher: I have to be perfectly honest: I like him because he made it clear that he was a fan of my show and wanted to do it. It was the first thing he did after he got off the stand. He could have done anything. It's a terrible thing to say about oneself, but performers are emotionally bribable. It doesn't matter what else a person has done if he likes your work. And I thought he was a good guest. After the show we were in-undated with media and we did interviews together. The questions he was asked were mean, snarling things such as, "OK, so when do you think your 15 minutes of fame are up?" I felt protective in the sense that he was still in my house, he was still at my party. I looked into his face and saw a nice guy who was caught in something horrendous.

5.

[Q] Playboy: How protective did you feel when Garry Shandling, also a guest that night, cut Kato down to size?

[A] Maher: Garry was brilliant, not mean. The host's job is to throw a party. I've always thought of Politically Incorrect as a cocktail party. When I throw a party everyone must have a good time. I have to be like Caesar's wife--not, as Gorbachev once said, like Caesars Palace--and be the most gracious, the most courteous host. When I'm not, I disappoint myself. I thought we did our job well because I didn't trap Kato into anything. (continued on page 174) Bill Maher (continured from page. 139) But I can't help it that one of my guests happened to. It was a tough room.

6.

[Q] Playboy: When you say the show is touchy and controversial, you mean only compared with the rest of TV, right?

[A] Maher: Absolutely, because most television is a bunch of shit. I was on The Tonight Show recently, and backstage the producers asked me, "You're not going to say anything about the Oklahoma City bombing, right?" It was a month later and they still didn't want to talk about it. We talked about it on Politically Incorrect the day it happened and have been talking about it ever since. It's tragic, but comedy is talking about tragic, things. It's just a matter of how much time you put between the event and talking about it. Carson had this running gag with Ed McMahon. Johnny used to do Lincoln jokes and they would always bomb. He'd say, "Too soon, can't do Lincoln."

7.

[Q] Playboy: Are Oprah, Donahue and others talk shows?

[A] Maher: No! People aren't talking. They're shriving, they're confessing, they're exposing. But these shows are indicative of what's happening out there. A lot of people in the country are jerking themselves off. I've also said that programs like The Tonight Show are no longer real talk, just cogs in the publicity mill. And they know that. But those shows started more like my show. My show is retro. In the Steve Allen-Jack Paar era, the qualification that got you on a talk show was your ability to talk. It really was about interesting talk. Now it's a ratings war at 11:30 P.M., and who can talk is not the premium. It's who has the biggest name and the prettiest face.

8.

[Q] Playboy: How far can you push the language envelope on cable TV?

[A] Maher: Once I said "blow me" to the audience. And it was left in. But we're under the same language strictures as any show. I definitely can't say "fuck." So I try to say words that have never been said before. If you say a word that's been said before, then the censors can go yea or nay. For a long time you couldn't say "ass" on TV. It was on the list--there actually is a list. So I make up words such as "cockarific." What can they do? It's like, "Wait, do you mean . . . ?" Yes, I do, exactly: Cockarific. Rific for your cock. But it's not an exact word so the FCC can't get on you.

9.

[Q] Playboy: If you did a show in which you were the topic, what question would get the debate going?

[A] Maher: "Is Bill Maher a good guy?" People could come down on both sides. The people who don't know me well hate me, and they always have. I used to worry about it, but I can't anymore. I make a rotten first-through-ninth impression. I'm not someone people like right away. And I don't warm up to people quickly. One of my writers is getting married. I'm the best man. For six months his fiancée was so upset: "Bill doesn't like me!" He was like, "Please, that's the way he is."

10.

[Q] Playboy: Which would you rather have: a great career without love or love with a career that's going nowhere?

[A] Maher: I have been in the situation where my career was stalled and I was in love. And now my career's going great but I don't have love. I was happier the first way. I was pretty happy when I was living in my old house and I was with her, even though it ate me up a lot that I had reached a sort of plateau in my career. I remember one night I was going onstage at the Improv. This comic was coming off the stage, a guy who had been in the business a long time, and the said, "Is this it for us, Bill?" It's funny. But it wasn't funny at the time because I realized that there comes a point in everybody's career when they think, Geez, is it going to pass me by?

11.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you're hot because of your show's success, has the quality of the women who hang out at the stage door changed?

[A] Maher: I have to find this stage door. That's probably been my big problem. They're waiting there and, like an idiot, I'm going out the wrong door. [Laughs] I guess the type and quality of woman I attract has changed. In my old bachelorhood I went out with a lot of Virgos and Libras. Now I notice a lot of Leos and Scorpios. What does that mean--people who think a lot of themselves and people who will fuck your brains out? I might as well date myself.

12.

[Q] Playboy: You once said in an interview that you had been with beautiful women to whom you weren't sexually attracted. Did you let them down easily? Did you feel used?

[A] Maher: I can't imagine what that comment was about, except if I was talking about when I was younger. Sometimes a woman is beautiful, but not to you. You can tell that she's not your type. And of course that one always loves you. She can smell on you that you don't want her, which makes her want you. When I was younger and stupider, if everybody was saying, "I can't believe you don't take her out. She likes you and she's gorgeous," I would just say, "Well, OK." I would be peer-pressured into fucking a beautiful girl. I mean, I've had a tough life, OK? But now I wouldn't do that. See how I have grown?

13.

[Q] Playboy: One of your more famous topics was, "Does showbiz make you an asshole or do assholes go into showbiz?" Can you shed any light on this dark question? On which side of the twilight zone do you fall?

[A] Maher: Assholes go into show business if you define "assholes" as people with inordinate needs to have their egos stroked. People recognize that the only place they're going to get their egos stroked enough is in show business. I don't know if they even care if the stroking is real. It feels like it's real. The converse is that show business does turn people into assholes. If you beat a dog every day, it'll lose its sweetness. That's how they train police dogs and guard dogs. And show business does that to people. Sometimes they retain that bitterness years after they have made it. They're doing well now, but they can't forget all those years when they were treated badly. And this business treats you terribly if you're not making it. I'm sure I've been on both sides of the equation, but we all remember when people are nice to us.

14.

[Q] Playboy: In what way has television ruined comedy?

[A] Maher: In the sense that television puts comics on the air way too early. In Alan King's day, those guys were working in the Catskills 15 years before they did TV. They were ready. Then it got to be that if you had five minutes' experience you could go on. And now they actually shoot the shows in the clubs, so why would people go there? Another problem is that all comics today want to be Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry is the only one who can make nothing meaningful. With everybody else it just sounds trivial, even if the act is clean and every joke works. I'm the anti-Seinfeld because I deal with things that are already controversial, that are hot topics to begin with. Hot potatoes, I'm used to getting booed.

15.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you support the death penalty?

[A] Maher: The bigger, more interesting question is "Why is life precious?" We always say life is precious, but I think you have to earn some of the preciousness. I guess I'm a little Eastern in my thinking about reincarnation. I think your soul comes back and you evolve to something better if you get it right in one life. And if you're 42 and have killed 20 people, it's just not going to happen in this life. Better to go back. That way, you let your soul get a fresh start.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Can you respect a man who has no interest in sports?

[A] Maher: Yes. I try to have no interest in sports. It's an active plan. I weaned myself from the sports page because I realized that if I'm reading it for even 20 minutes a day, how many years of my life am I spending on something that has no meaning? It's OK to do things that have no meaning, but I think I'd rather be in the park with a girl. I'd rather be reading a great book. Sports are too big in this country. People care too much about sports, and the players don't care about you. I think they've shown that.

17.

[Q] Playboy: What's the best way to tell people how to pronounce your last name?

[A] Maher: Now most people pronounce it right from the get-go. Of course, to the day I die some people will always get it wrong. They would never think that M-a-h-e-r is "Mar." They say "Mayer." Or "Mah-her." It used to be no one ever went right by the "h." Now, of course, when someone mispronounces my name, it really hurts because I'm thinking, Where you been, man?

18.

[Q] Playboy: Define the role of the tabloid in America.

[A] Maher: Kind of like the royal family. People have a desire for gossip. It's very human. I don't know why there's so much hand-wringing over the O.J. trial. Just give in to it. I'm sick of people saying they're sick of the trial. It's like saying you don't masturbate. OK, but you're really missing something good.

19.

[Q] Playboy: You're Planetary Dictator. What are your first three edicts?

[A] Maher: First is the Elvis tax. That's a tax on any preposterously unnecessary extravagance, like gold faucets in the bathroom. A 100 percent tax. If you want something that stupid, you have to have matching funds. Second is animal rights, my big cause. No more hunting, no more killing animals or mistreating them, period. Get a new sport. And the third one would be, well, let's just say it has something to do with my harem.

20.

[Q] Playboy: What do you say to a woman after sex when all you wanted was to sleep with her?

[A] Maher: Leno used to do a bit 15 years ago about Bo Derek. He said, "Yeah, she's beautiful. But after the orgasm it's like, 'So the Druids were basically a working people, then?'" The other line he had was: "What time is it, Bo?" "I don't know; John has the watch."

our sharpest satirist explains what's over the line and what's not, his ideas for the elvis tax and what he sees in kato

Comedy is talking about tragic things. It's just how much time you put between the event and talking about it.