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Rita Rudner: In The Pink
 It’s
not just the color of her new gown by her favorite designer,
“On Sale.” Comedienne Rita Rudner has more than
one reason lately to be “Tickled Pink,” thanks
to a rosy future and an engagement at Harrah’s that
currently extends through 2008.
Rudner, the author of a hilarious 2001 book by that name as
well as two others – “Naked Beneath My Clothes”
and “Rita Rudner’s Guide To Men” –
is probably one of the most prolific people on this green
earth. Besides writing books, material for Hollywood and shows
like the Oscars, and occasionally writing screenplays with
her husband Martin Bergman, Rudner writes material daily for
her Las Vegas show.
“I jot things down in notebooks and then get to the
theater half an hour early and study them before the show,”
she explains. “I usually try about three new things
a night, ultimately adding about two new jokes to the show
every week and subtracting older material.”
Rudner says that each audience gives the show a different
rhythm, like dancing with a different partner every night.
And unlike back in the early 80’s when she was playing
the Catch a Rising Star comedy club and people came to see
generic comedy, she gets a really warm feeling when she walks
out on stage and she knows that the crowd has bought tickets
just to see her.
“I always say it’s like a group of friends that
come to see me and I don’t have to clean up,”
Rudner quips.
The comedienne calls her comedy an integration of punch lines,
absurdist humor and observational comedy. She says that she
never wants to say everything one way because comedy is keeping
people off balance. While people can bring their teenager
or parents to her show because she uses no curse words, Rudner
also attracts a lot of couples because one of her focuses
is relationship humor. The other is commonality of experience.
“I’m always on the lookout,” she notes.
“When someone pulls on a door that says ‘Push,’
I know there’s something there. I’ve done it a
million times. As far as relationships go, I’ve read
a lot of psychology books about women’s brains and men’s
brains and their brains
really are different. I like commenting on the differences
because people in the world are usually men or women. I just
look for that little nugget of truth where people can nudge
each other and say, ‘You do that’ – ‘No,
you do that.’ I also like absurdist humor like ‘My
husband and I long for the pitter patter of little feet. So
we bought a dog. It’s cheaper and you get more feet.”
Actually, in reality, Rudner and Bergman adopted a beautiful
little girl named Molly a few years ago. But from their first
day together – they married in 1988 – the couple
has been producing in other ways. They have co-authored such
acclaimed movies as “Peter’s Friends” and
“A Weekend In The Country” and collaborated on
a couple of Rudner’s books.
As for her stand-up, Rudner didn’t try
her hand at comedy until she was 25 years old. She had been
a dancer on Broadway for 10 years, appearing in a half a dozen
shows. But after a decade of hoofing it, while performing
in “Annie,” she felt the need to get a leg up
on something new.
“I
realized that George Burns was still telling jokes and that
Gwen Verdon hadn’t danced in quite some time,”
/Rudner recalls. “And this kicking business was not
going to get any easier.”
 Her
first jokes were written on the bus while going to her job
on Broadway. She began writing her ideas in a notebook. She
then started going to open mic nights in piano bars because
she wasn’t experienced enough to get into any of the
professional amateur comedy clubs. If the audience laughed,
she kept the jokes in her act; if they didn’t, she threw
them out.
“The first time I got up to perform,
my hands shook, my teeth shook, my feet went numb and I had
stomach cramps,” she remembers. “But I told myself
that I couldn’t get any more scared than this, so I
might as well do it again. Sure enough, I was a little less
nervous. I found out later that I had jumped over a hurdle
without even knowing it. I was lucky enough to have some sort
of persona or whatever whereby people didn’t want to
hate me -- they really liked me.”
Coming
up during a period where there weren’t many female comediennes,
Rudner loved and admired Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers but
felt that their style of comedy wasn't right
for her. She was very quiet and shy and believed that her
niche lay in going with who she was and developing that.
Rudner never went for a comedic style. Rather,
she went for what happened when she began to talk. She listened
to a lot of Woody Allen albums, feeling that his jokes were
humorous observations from a funny person and that men and
women alike could relate to them. She decided to start from
there, to see things from a unique point of view and express
these observations in her own way.
“It’s never been easy from Day
One,” Rudner admits. “It’s always been a
struggle. It has to be because if it’s easy, then anyone
could do it. But I just torture myself. I’ll go, ‘Why
can’t I think of anything today? Why can’t I think
of a punch line to this setup I’ve had for 15 years?’
Sometimes I have to force a joke. It’s always like walking
a tightrope and I’m always saying, ‘I’d
better get another foot on this tightrope or I’m going
down.’”
Still, the bottom line for Rudner where comedy
is concerned is that she totally enjoys the independence of
what she does.
“What I love about stand-up,”
she says, “is that it’s like being the Avon lady.
I don’t have to go through any corporate sensibility.
It’s not like making a movie where someone is risking
six million dollars. It’s just me and a dress and a
microphone and a mind. It’s so wonderfully low-tech.”
It’s not easy being tickled “green.!”
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ADDITIONAL
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BOBBIE KATZ
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