In Defense of the Source Material
“The twist?” I asked the sparse crowd at the unpaid bar show. “It’s Kate Berlant cosplay, but with, uh, singing.” The handful of people who got the joke, got the joke; their three to four compatriots, blissfully unaware of comedy politics, looked on quizzically. I conceded that it, like most things I say onstage, was too inside baseball to resonate with the general populace. Yet it is all I enjoy talking about, the only reason I still leave the house to stand on stages, when they’ll have me, which is infrequently. I was not there to run my JFL audition, which put me in the minority of comics who live in Los Angeles.
“Are you showcasing this year?” asked someone who dropped in to do theirs. I looked at them aghast.
“Y’mean for the festival I was ejected from?” I replied. “No.”
“But isn’t it an entirely new regime?”
To which I had to inform them that, well, not entirely, that the person who once yelled at me for bringing up the moral failings of Louis CK, a “member of the JFL family,” has since been promoted to president of the organization, since the founder got ousted for being a sex pest.
(“You’re doing God’s work,” Kate told me at the time. “God isn’t here,” I replied.)
At the time of my ejection, I actually wanted to be a successful comedian; at the time of my ejection, I feared the fallout of my actions. In the years since, I have realized the pointlessness of playing the game, and the pleasure that can arise from ceasing to care. Whenever I say what I think, what I know, the act of doing comedy feels good — whenever I try and commit a sellable tight five to memory, my colon clenches.
I now play to the back of the room, and not to the front lines of the content wars; it is a position I have become comfortable with. For better or worse, ever since my give a damn busted, my comedy has become a commentary on the comedy industrial complex — the politics and gross inequities thereof. I will never get famous, I will never see my face on a billboard, so why not treat comedy as it is — a hobby? I take the bookings, when they’re (again, infrequently) offered, and use the stage time as an opportunity to, y’know, speak truth to power, as it’s the only power I have. I have cultivated an unmarketable persona, which no one could steal, homogenize, and use to create a critically accoladed television show. Right?
I concede that, in this embracement of moral indignity, I may too be full of shit, riddled with self-righteousness. If you count yourself amongst my myriad “haters,” you may be pleased to learn I ruined my “big break” by getting in a screaming match on a balcony in Topanga Canyon with the director of a film I was starring in over the treatment of his crew; he accused me of acting as if I were “some Union organizing folk hero,” to which I spat “Yeah, I’m Norma Fucking Ray, and I’m telling you if you don’t pay your crew by midnight I’m not coming to work at 5am tomorrow morning.” By the time I had e-braked my Valiant down the perilous curves of Tuna Canyon and crawled surface streets back to the Eastside, he had called to say the movie, which had four days of shooting remaining, was on indefinite hiatus. Months later, multiple people had to file complaints with their respective unions in order to be paid. If I had lacked a moral compass and operated solely within my own self interest, I suppose I could have said nothing, and the film would currently be making its way through the festival circuit. Oh, well.
“Who’s your favorite comic?” the fresh faced young clowner who took the stage after me, whom I later saw on a billboard, asked. “Andy Kindler,” I replied. “Never heard of him,” she said. “I’ll have to look him up.” She then, Gaia bless her soul (I told her she was quite funny in the bathroom afterward, and meant it), proceeded to do Berlant cosplay, and with, uh, singing. The material didn’t need Kate’s mannerisms — it was strong enough to stand on its own — but the material, it appears, is no longer the message.
They flip their hair and they go on tangents and they make direct eye contact and they parody the nonsensical double talk that characterizes the modern creative class and, as a result, they book gigs, but they will never hold a candle to what they are parroting, that being a living, breathing, open avail.
When did it start? When will it end? It’s as if some decree was passed down from on high declaring every young, female-identifying comedian of the alt persuasion must now steal her idiosyncratic schtick. I could name them all, but were I to do so we’d be here all fucking day. You don’t need to know who Kate is to have seen her persona; there’s at least one facsimile on every lineup.
I know I am not the only person who sees this; it is a topic of conversation amongst comedians which endlessly bears bitter fruit. So where’s the Vulture oral history of children of privilege ripping off Kate Berlant?
It reminds me of the days in which we all knew what Louie did, and that he had been doing it for years, but you couldn’t actually, publicly, talk about it because he was too big to fail. I am by no means implying that the theft of a woman’s persona is tantamount to enabling an abuser, I am just saying it falls under the categories of “known improprieties that are not discussed out of fear of career suicide.” That would be a false equivalency, and I am not a fan of false equivalencies.
And anyway, yes, I am friends with Kate, but not close enough that I have seen her in months, be it in person or on television. And yes, she is one of a handful of people who have ever given me a chance — stuck their necks out for me, cast me in a role that could have easily gone to someone with an infinitely higher IMDB StarMeter on a pilot that didn’t get picked up because the entertainment industry isn’t a meritocracy but did get me a SAG card, which I now use to book background work on shows I have never heard of but are always invariably in their fifth seasons.
The pilot, helmed by Kate and John Early, was, like the two of them, wholly, unapologetically, unique. Their dynamic is majestic, effortless and clearly honed from years of effort. Watching the two of them riff during takes was like watching birds in flight; it was like watching the damn Williams Sisters endlessly rally one another. The beauty thereof rendered any competition impossible.
John has done quite well for himself in the years since, and rightfully so, but what of Kate? Where the fuck is her billboard? Her Netflix special?
The copies of the copies make money, are shoved down our collective throats, while the original source material does not. I suppose, in this way, and to her detriment, Kate is the definition of punk. Perhaps the “tributes” would be an honor if she were dead, but she is very much alive. To which I ask: what the fuck are we doing sitting around listening to Seven Mary Three when Nirvana still exists?