Sandra Bernhard: Rainy Day Women

I wander over to the window to see if the photographer has arrived. It's still pouring. Sandra's latest film is Hudson Hawk, the Bruce Willis action-comedy that's supposed to be a blockbuster this summer. I ask her what it was like to be a part of such a huge production. "The shoot wasn't a great, emotional, revelatory experience, but it's a fun film," she tells me. "Every scene I do, Bruce Willis is in, and my co-star, Richard E. Grant. I play the villainess, really over the top, intense, kind of crazy." I know that the film was partly shot in Rome, so I ask if she did as the Romans did. "Everything in Rome is closed in August and September," she says, with some irritation. "Literally the whole town shuts down. I watched CNN until I thought I would have a nervous break-down. There wasn't anybody to have an affair with. The city was dry."

I comment on the rudeness of Italian men, and she snaps, "The men go without saying. There aren't any great chicks either. They're awful. Mean and bitchy." I tell her about a guy who pinched me in Rome, and how it's very different from getting pinched in any other city. He actually reached into my private area and squeezed. I hit him hard with a pillowcase full of new shoes. Did she at least buy a few pairs of shoes? "Yeah, I bought some shoes," she says dryly. "I spent three months in Rome and a month in Budapest, which was even more horrible," Sandra tells me. "The worst. Total fucking nightmare." She goes on, sounding upset, "It's not romantic like it is in the movies. The women just discovered nudity and stripping and prostitution, so that's become the real big thing. You know a culture is on the way down the tubes when prostitution is the big deal."

But what about her work in the film itself? "I haven't seen the movie," she says, "but I have a feeling they pulled it off. I don't watch dailies. I have a specific look and my face does really intense things and I don't want to start being self-conscious and censoring."

The photographer has yet to arrive. I try to make light of it. "Let's check out the house, doll. He's probably late because of the rain." She takes me on a tour of her stylish, almost austere house. "I've been here four and a half years. This was the first house I looked at. Isn't it weird when you think about a house, how many lives went on within the walls? It was built in the '30s, so a lot of people have lived here. Obviously nothing really bad has happened because it's a house that says, 'calm down, everything's going to be alright.' " I agree that it's very serene and relaxing. I feel like taking a nap.

"I'm starting to collect art," Sandra says, stopping at a set of photographs in the dining room. "These are William Wegmans. He shoots pictures of his dog, a weimaraner. Is that the cutest?" Indeed, the little brown puppy is adorable, though the photos are shot at extremely odd angles. I wonder how Wegman captured that thrilled expression on the dog's face. Sandra interrupts my reverie. "That's my Mapplethorpe. He took a picture of me. That copper lamp is by an artist named Laurel Lasworth. The piece over the couch is John Boskovich, and I have some of my mother's totem poles in the back-yard." Wow. Sandra's mother carves totem poles. Unbelievable.

We enter the guest bedroom. "Here's a little piece by this girl named Collier Shore. Nobody really knows whether she's a man or a woman, but she's a woman. She does lesbian art, it's kind of cool." The small piece is very strange, sort of gentle and horny at the same time. "That's a piece by Rick Maslow," continues Sandra. "It's a wild sketch of me as a Roman. This is a photograph from 1929 that Madonna gave me. Isn't that a beautiful piece? The summer of my show in New York, when we first started hanging out, she gave me that for my birthday." It's an exquisite shot of a sultry, vampy, but somehow vulnerable young woman, shielding one eye.

We then stand in front of her Jerry Lewis photo, paying homage. "There's my Jerry, my mentor, my higher experience," she says. Has she stayed in touch with him since they made The King of Comedy together in 1983? "No," she says. "He didn't like me. I love Jerry, but he doesn't love me. It was a weird experience, doing King of Comedy. He was in a compromised situation, working with a young woman who is very aggressive in real life and in the role. It's not something he had been exposed to before." I tell her a dumb story about how I had to wade through Jerry's backyard in 1964 to get to the Beatles' backyard in Bel Air, and how I had met his son Ronnie, who told me Jerry never wore a pair of socks or a shirt twice! "That's true," Sandra muses, "he had to have a new pair of socks every day. I didn't know about the shirts, but I knew about the socks." I wonder aloud about his underpants, and there's a moment of silence.

Back in the living room I mention how incredibly tidy everything is. "I have a maid once a week," explains Sandra. "She is kick-ass." I get excited, because I've been looking for a new housekeeper myself. "I swore I would never have a maid," Sandra says, "but you have to."

The doorbell rings and Jay the photographer is standing there drenched. It seems I put one too many "threes" in Sandra's address. Oops. Sorry, Jay. He and his assistant drag in all kinds of equipment and Sandra seems unthrilled. She's actually a little grumpy during the first few photos, but warms up pretty quickly. While she reclines on the couch, I throw some quick questions at her. Is Sandra Bernhard radical? "I guess I am. Radical in the sense that I say what's on my mind, which is more than most people do." Opinionated? "Of course, totally. I have a strong point of view about things going on in the world, and the way people treat each other. Mainly phoniness." Vulnerable? "Yeah, probably too vulnerable. I think it comes across in my work, but you can't stand on stage for an hour and a half being vulnerable. Who's going to pay 25 bucks to see vulnerability?" Negative? "I get more depressed than negative. If I'm supposed to go out with somebody and they cancel, I take it very personally, and I start thinking about all the people who probably don't really like me." Daring? "I'm not going to jump off a plane in a high-dive, but emotionally I'm daring. I will try to make something work until it destroys me, so I guess that's daring." Or dumb, I suggest. "Or just desperate," she cracks up. 'That's me, daring, desperate and dumb."

I look at my glow-in-the-dark Jesus watch and jump-the time with Ms. Bernhard has just flown by. I picture my son waiting for me at school, sopping in the rain, cursing his tardy mom. As I'm leaving, Sandra calls to me from her graceful pose on the blue velvet couch, "Isn't this interview for that free magazine you get at movie theaters?" Appalled, I say, "Oh my God, no, doll! Movieline is an elegant two-dollar magazine!" She laughs. "That's good, honey, because I'm an elegant two-dollar girl."

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Pamela Des Banes is a freelance writer in LA. Her book I'm With The Band, which details her early life as a groupie, has been optioned for a movie.

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