A Day in Sandyland
by Matt Siegel
Peer-reviewed journal articles with fancy titles have been devoted to her work: “Trans/positioning the (Drag?) King of Comedy: Bisexuality and Queer Jewish Space in the Works of Sandra Bernhard”; “The Mouth that Launched a Thousand Rifts: Sandra Bernhard’s Politics of Irony”; “‘Without You I’m Nothing’: Sandra Bernhard’s Self-referential Postmodernism.” At twenty-seven, she beat out a slew of established actresses — including Debra Winger and Ellen Barkin — for a role co-starring with Robert De Niro in Martin Scorcese’s King of Comedy. Her one-woman shows have received accolades from highly regarded theater critics. Her Grammy-nominated stage show-turned-film, Without You I’m Nothing “directly inspired” Hedwig and the Angry Inch. She’s published three books, essays for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone, and three music albums. And then there are her thirty-plus infamous appearances on David Letterman’s late night shows and a five-season stint on Roseanne. This is what I might’ve said to the educated, worldly, in-the-know thirty-year-old (straight) man who recently told me he had never heard of Sandra Bernhard. And still, he might have responded, “Wait, who’s Debra Winger?”
The other week, Bernhard ambled into the glass box studio devoted to her new SiriusXM show, Sandyland, fifteen minutes before start time. She was low-key and pleasant when greeting her producer, Lisa, who mentioned possibilities for upcoming guests: New York City cable-access queen, Robin Byrd, and Prince protégé, Apollonia — to whom Bernhard partially dedicates a cover of Little Red Corvette in the closing of the stage version of Without You I’m Nothing. There was more talk of former Interview editor Ingrid Sischy’s upcoming memorial service (“a smart, fucking direct lady”), a Marc Jacobs “thing” Bernhard did two nights prior (“He was very happy with it”), and recent interactions at the launch party for face-of-Bravo Andy Cohen’s new SiriusXM channel, Radio Andy, the “home” of Sandyland (“I was reading Gayle King to filth! She didn’t even know I had a show!”). Finally, Bernhard thumbed through some possible talking points for today’s show, handed to her by Lisa — those images of particularly unsettling Halloween costumes from a century ago that you probably saw in your Facebook feed a few weeks ago. “If you’re over twenty-five and you’re still dressing up for Halloween, you need to get some sort of help immediately,” she said, unmoved that her show was starting in 3–2–1. An excited woman’s voice came over the loudspeakers: “Buckle up and take a seat on the Sandyland Express!” Then Bernhard’s breathy, almost mocking pre-record: “Are you ready to take a trip with me? I’m going to take you all over the globe, and intergalactically, too, occasionally.”
Talk radio calls for a host that can effectively weigh in on any subject, and go on engaging tangents, which has been Bernhard’s bread and butter since she came into the public eye in the late seventies on The Richard Pryor Show, whose head writer, Paul Mooney, was Bernhard’s comedy mentor. Mooney toughened Bernhard up early in her career, preparing her for the emotional rigors of being a woman in comedy, especially in at the time. “Never let them see you crying, Bernhard. That’s what they want,” Bernhard recounted Mooney having instructed her when I interviewed her in 2013. “His advice to me was always, ‘Shed your skin like a snake. Every time you get up on stage, shed your skin.’ The deeper you go into your psyche and emotions, the better you’re going to become as an artist, and I’ve really tried to keep that as my moniker all these years.”
Mooney was the day’s call-in guest, and Bernhard’s affection for him was clear. “Mooney, what I’ve always loved about you — you haven’t stood on ceremony and you never cared about what was politically correct at the time. You always busted through the shit, honey, because honesty is the best policy.” One gets the impression that this is also what Bernhard loves about herself. “But it is the policy, honey,” Mooney retorted. The word “honey” is a staple of Bernhard’s and Mooney’s vernacular, a refrain inserted in every available spot throughout their conversation. The term of endearment is flexible and can be used affectionately, condescendingly, or just as a place-holder depending on the tone and context. One of Bernhard’s best (condescending) “honey” moments took place on a 2006 episode of The View when co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck jumped on Bernhard for describing then-first lady Laura Bush as “medicated.” “Honey, look. First of all…” Bernhard began. “Don’t ‘honey’ me!” Hasselbeck cried. “‘Honey’ yourself!” Joy Behar ended up walking off the set.
“Everybody knows and pretends they don’t know,” Mooney continued. “They just wanna know if you know. Everybody knows, honey.” What, exactly, everybody knows, I don’t know, but Bernhard and Mooney have almost certainly had this conversation before. “Yeah, exactly,” she said. “They want you to be the first one to dip your toe in the water to make sure it’s not acid. Once they see it’s safe to jump in, they may jump in with you, but until then, they’ll stand on the shore and look all befuddled and frightened.” When the show ended, Bernhard got on the phone privately with Mooney. Before hanging up, she said, “We got into the real shit like we always do, honey.”
Bernhard’s name has often been attached to phrases like “no stranger to controversy,” or “never one to shy away from controversy,” though actual public controversies incited by her are few and far between. A 1988 appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman with then-best friend Madonna teasing about the nature of their relationship was less controversy than it was fodder for the gossip mill. More interesting were Bernhard’s solo guest-spots on the show where she would blast in, cocksure as ever, making Letterman visibly uncomfortable, once referring to him as “Miss Letterman” and telling him not to “throw shade” at her (and this was in 1991). “Paris is burning!” she announces, referencing the documentary to Letterman who, in response, asks the audience if anyone had any idea what she was talking about. As the Interrobang put so well: “Their improv was a Late Night Rom Com. Sandra was outrageous and hip. Dave was the Midwestern corporate manager who lit up when she was near. It was Barefoot in the Park for the eighties. The more they sparred, the more viewers thought ‘don’t they know they are in love?!’”
In 1992, Bernhard posed for the cover of Playboy, which the author of a Mother Jones article that same year who named her “the most controversial comic in America,” took her to task for. “I thought it would be ironic to do if we had complete creative control and crossed all kinds of sexual barriers,” Bernhard replied. “I think it’s really important that a woman that is not a cliché beauty, who hasn’t been manipulated by men, or altered herself surgically, be presented in a really beautiful, sensual, forthright way.” A year later, Bernhard’s character on Roseanne comes out as gay, making her one of the first openly gay television characters; while there wasn’t a whole lot of hoopla surrounding the coming-out, just by virtue of playing that role, Bernhard’s reputation as controversial was sustained.
Bernhard’s brand of controversy is better thought of as artistic provocation. Her aforementioned 1990 stage-show-turned-film Without You I’m Nothing explored the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality at a time when such work, especially in the mainstream, was scarce. To attempt to sum up Without You I’m Nothing in a few sentences will ultimately prove fruitless. Everyone from film critics to academics in women’s studies, performance studies, and even musicology have their own interpretations, which is a testament to the work. Bernhard did not pose as a politically correct hero, but, rather, placed herself, as part of American culture, under the microscope. (Indeed, were the film released today, she would likely be crucified in the current political and cultural climate.) The film takes place in a supper club with a disinterested, predominantly black audience, Bernhard inhabiting different characters, some black, some white, some gay, some straight. At the end of the film, a black woman, the only remaining member of the audience, who Bernhard has since explained to be her alter-ego, scrolls “Fuck Sandra Bernhard” in lipstick across a table cloth. A 1992 Vibe interview titled “Sandra’s Blackness,” opens by saying that “Sandra Bernhard is different from other white performers who admit to a black influence. She wears hers on her sleeve like a badge of honour — and then often uses it to make fun of white people.” One will find this complexity throughout Bernhard’s portfolio because her outlook — well, to quote her in Without You I’m Nothing: “My father is a proctologist and my mother is an abstract artist. That’s how I view the world.”
It’s Bernhard’s world-view, her ability to be the “Cassandra — warning of the ridiculous, the hubris, the troubles” as John Cameron Mitchell once said of her, that makes her forever relevant and intriguing. Andy Cohen, who had been a longtime admirer of Bernhard’s work, utilizing her talents at the now-defunct Trio network and, more recently, in semi-regular guest spots on his Bravo talk show, is delighted to have found a permanent spot for her in his latest venture at SiriusXM. “Bernhard was first at the top of my list to build Radio Andy around because she has a unique and singular voice that’s perfect for radio,” Cohen says in a written statement. “She’s one of the few people in the world that I could listen to every day for an hour talk about ANYTHING. She’s creatively firing on all cylinders with her take on life in NYC, politics, culture, history, and Americana. The show has become appointment listening for me and people all over the country.” Bernhard, for her part, says she is “doing what Andy hired me to do.” Besides that, she has nobody to answer to when it comes to Sandyland. “Darling, if I get hired on network television to host a TV show or anything like that where there’s a bottom line you have to toe, I’ll be open to notes, but this is not that situation and they’re not paying me that kind of money, so nobody gets to weigh in.”
Those permitted to enter Sandyland, which Bernhard describes as a “funny, off-beat salon,” are the people who have joined Bernhard and Mooney in the figurative deep end. And they’re definitely not right-wingers. “I don’t want anyone on the show who I don’t see eye-to-eye with,” she said. “This is my agenda and I get to do what I want to do and I want smart and funny people and musical people and great people…There are plenty of other places for people to go where it’s the typical, it’s the predictable.” (Earlier that day, she remarked, of the notoriously Republican Everybody Loves Raymond actress, Patricia Heaton: “She’s not coming on this show, honey…and she was all over me like a cheap suit!”)
As she navigates the waters of host and interviewer on Sandyland, which can be challenging for someone who is used to being the guest and interviewee, Bernhard has, on a number of occasions, called herself out for over-talking her guests. She says that she’s trying to temper that, but “sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes you want to keep it going and sometimes you need to do that, and sometimes you’re excited.” But because Bernhard only invites guests who she finds stimulating — and, if she knows them, likes — the audience is privy to an often-ebullient, sometimes-hyperactive Bernhard. In a recent episode with friend and New Yorker writer Hilton Als, Bernhard moves from Oscar Pistorius to astrology with no beat in between. “This man has bamboozled everybody; I don’t know what’s up with Pistorius. I feel so bad for that woman. They had some hot thing going on and the shit just got crazy and you know he got violent. He got sexual and violent and killed her. What sign are you?”
A Washington Post critic once noted that it is Bernhard’s speaking voice, “the way it comes out…that aggressive-erotic-ironic intensity, that larger-than-life hauteur,” that has always been key to the Bernhard experience, which is why she translates so well to radio. “You must hear Bernhard,” the critic notes, “to really get it.” On the radio, among friends and respected guests, the hauteur is well placed, and she is driven by a wholeheartedness that is especially evident when she introduces or signs off with that day’s guest. In the case of recent guest, former Supreme Mary Wilson, Bernhard easily accesses the emotions of her childhood self listening to the Supremes for the first time with her older brother. In our 2013 interview, Bernhard told me that she “grew up in Flint, Michigan, and would listen to Motown on the AM radio. I was there and it took me there, and it has always taken me there.” In her sign-off with Ms. Wilson, she pays earnest tribute to the singer: “You’ve given me, the listeners, so many years and hours of beautiful music and I see from being with you that this is going to go on and on and on, and we adore you and love you. Thank you for everything you’ve given to me personally and to the world.”
This upbeat, warm, peppy version of Bernhard, which was, before, presumably, mostly reserved for friends, is a refreshing take on the once-referred-to-as “Doyenne of Disdain.” Bernhard, who for many years seemed unable to restrain her penchant for intimidation and bitchiness to her performances, radiates warmth and fun. You want to be in her presence — a sharp contrast to the person depicted in a 1998 profile in New York, “The Bitch Is Back,” where the author informs Bernhard that “some people really dislike her.” (She did not disagree: “Being nice is bullshit. Being real, being concerned, being passionate, loving, all comes from very strong emotions. Being nice is a weak emotion. It’s not even an emotion. It’s just a weakness, period.”) But Bernhard is nice. Even the use of her nickname Sandy, instead of Sandra, nods to the good-time, accessible Bernhard. “I am having so much more fun. I don’t feel like I have to say anything to prove myself. And when I feel like going off on something, it’s genuine and it’s because I’m in the moment, and it’s just fun to go off on it. I don’t want to argue. It’s empirical — I know what I know and I believe what I believe and it’s been pretty consistent throughout my life and I guess these are the rewards of being a person who’s had a long career.” But it remains that, as once was said about Bette Davis, nobody’s as good as Sandra Bernhard when she’s bad.
Bernhard is famous for her “biting” critiques of hypocritical culture and its current players, which are often masked as fictional accounts with or about those people. In one especially Bernhardian opening of Sandyland, sixty-year-old Bernhard gets downright giddy and chummy with her imaginary squad — a term she has said she hates — of twenty-something “it girls.” For nine minutes, a frenetic Bernhard kikis with her squad, greeting “Tay-Tay” Swift and Bernhard’s new bestie, Gigi Hadid, receiving a shoulder rub from Demi Lovato, giving kudos to Kelly Osborne for being “politically on the freaking edge,” telling Selena Gomez how hilarious she is, hushing the gals while Lorde meditates in the corner, and then checking with everybody to make sure it’s okay to refer to them as “apolitical”: “They’re not committing to anything…except Lena Dunham who’s committing to everythingggggg! Rock on, brilliant Lena Dunham! My god, you’re brilliant and intellectual and you care about all the things we care about and you love everybody! You are a real feminist! No woman can do any wrong! Yayyyyy, Lena Dunhammmmm, who sees things before God! I love you for that!”
If you can’t tell, Bernhard is skeptical about her “squad,” and members of the newer generation of performers in general. “Younger performers are not secure or solid in the way they present what they’re saying. They don’t understand how to go there; they don’t understand the art of communication and the nuance of it. I think that’s part of being somebody who has been in the trenches as long as I have and understanding how to balance the truth-telling and the sense of — for lack of a better word — class, in a certain way. You’ve got to be able to walk that fine line.” Consider Dunham, who certainly considers herself a truth-teller, and in that, has become queen of the public apology whether in a carefully-worded-by-a-P.R.-person statement or a photographed drawing on her Instagram account. A Daily Beast article from last November noted that “at this point, we would need a detailed timeline to keep track of all of the controversies around issues of race and class that Dunham has weathered over the last two years,” and the controversy has remained steady since then, see: Dog or Jewish; Gawker/Jezebel=Abusive Husband; Cosby-Holocaust analogy. Perhaps Dunham’s admitted predilection for oversharing is indicative of her inability to walk the fine line Bernhard speaks of, which does her no favors, and, seems to cause her distress, putting her “to bed for weeks” after reading negative things about herself online.
Both Dunham and Bernhard have made decisions to mostly disengage from Twitter, but while Dunham mewled of lack of “safe space” and “verbal violence,” Bernhard, as she told me in in 2013, comes from a less tortured place: “I don’t wanna explain to the freakin’ stupid masses of people out there that are on that fuckin’ social media twenty-four hours a day, diggin’ around, lookin’ for shit, bored, lost, resentful, angry, tapped out, empty, haven’t picked up a book or listened to a good song maybe in their entire lives, and now they have a platform to go, ‘Blah blah blah.’ I don’t wanna fuckin’ know about it. I don’t wanna engage with these people. I don’t wanna defend myself to these people, so fuck these people; I’m not fucking putting myself in that position. No.”
Dunham recently visited the Sandyland studio for a pre-taped interview, which Bernhard normally objects to because “there’s no urgency and people can say, ‘Will you cut that or will you switch that?’ and it’s like, ‘No. No, this is life. This is how it is. This is live and we want to be real in the fucking moment.’” And that is exactly what Dunham did — Bernhard speculated to Hilton Als on her show recently that Dunham “nixed” the interview “because it was too real or raw” for her. “But you guys love each other,” Als replies. “I don’t — I didn’t feel any love,” Bernhard laughs. As Bernhard told me, Dunham was there to promote her new project Lenny Letter, but Bernhard was not made aware of the promotion until mid-interview when somebody “pushed this piece of paper under my nose that said ‘Lenny Letter,’ and [Dunham] just went into autopilot about Lenny Letter. She had it down: boom-boom-boom. But she didn’t seem all that interested. I’ve met her a few times and she’s always been very respectful, but she is fully into her own agenda. She is like the mouthpiece and spokesperson for her generation and she goes around curating people from other generations and highlighting and spotlighting them. I have not been one of those people so, apparently, I don’t think she relates to me.”
If Bernhard had Dunham’s endorsement, that “highlight and spotlighting,” would it broaden her youth appeal? Probably. But would it mean anything to the young, straight, male audience who probably aren’t among Dunham’s core audience? Prefacing that I had thought about the potential that it might needlessly hurt her feelings but decided that it wouldn’t, I told Bernhard the story of the educated, worldly, in-the-know, thirty-year-old straight man I met who had never heard of her. She cut me off. “Oh, he’s straight?” And in a comforting tone: “That’s why he doesn’t know who I am, honey. He might’ve known who I was had it been twenty years ago and he’d been thirty. Young straight men could love what I do — it’s not narrowcast; it’s not specific to one audience. I understand the landscape of humanity and I have compassion for it. I get people from one end of the spectrum to the next, and that’s what my work has always been about. I’ve lived in every part of the country, I understand this country, I understand how people relate, and it’s not sex, it’s not color, it’s not race, it’s not religion, it’s not sexual orientation. I transcend a lot of those limitations, and I rise above it, and I shine a light on it, and that’s what my work has always been about. Tell that thirty-year-old straight guy to listen to my show. Who knows? Maybe he’ll have a new experience.”
Bernhard’s holiday show, Feel the Bernhard, will be at Joe’s Pub from December 26 through the 31st. Her SiriusXM radio show, Sandyland, airs Monday through Friday on Radio Andy.