CONAN
All right, everybody, uhhh, we are back! My first guest is a comedienne and an actress, who can currently be seen in the movie, Permanent Midnight. She also stars in Clay Pigeons, which just opened today. Please welcome our pal, Janeane Garofalo.

[BAND plays a dramatic sixties tune which I can't place. JANEANE comes out in platform, aquamarine and black, sneakers, brown shirt, pony tail, and dark rimmed glasses. AUDIENCE is applauding and there are a couple enthused "woo!"s. She also wore several bracelets and you could see she has a tattoo on her right arm. She was very cute today.]

JANEANE
[seated] Hello.

CONAN
I know we talk about them, but I really -- those are my favorite shoes in the whole world.

JANEANE
Oh, thank you. Thank you.

CONAN
I just wish -- they're..

ANDY
They're filled with contraband.

CONAN
[laughs] I just wish I could wear something like that, you know?

JANEANE
{Well, sh -- you'd} be like, seven foot seven.

CONAN
I know. I would be Herman Munster, if I wore those. [J: Yeah.] An' I would frighten everybody--

JANEANE
Well what's weird is everybody thinks they're so weird, but like they're, so very common. These kind of shoes, now. I mean, sparked by the, Spice Girls, an', their, popularity, but then--

CONAN
[mock serious] --Yes--

JANEANE
--you go into any, any store, there arrrre, shoes like this an' then like, {if} I've done shows an' stuff, the people are like, "Whoa! What is that," as if they've never ever seen these shoes before.

CONAN
Right. Right. Well, you know what -- eh -- I would love these to get so common that, uh, Lawyers in a Trial are wearing -- did --

[People are laughing]

CONAN
[self-important] --"Your honor, I disagree."

JANEANE
[amused] Little goldfish swimming around..
[deep voice] "Stop staring at my shoes!"

CONAN
[chuckling] Are you ah -- you know we just talked to the President earlier in the show -- is this, are you obsessed at all with this thing like uh, or -- or did you -- could you care less?

JANEANE
Well, it's not that I'd care less, 'cause I don't want to be Cavalier about it, it's a very Profound episode, but I do -- and I, did prior to this, scandal, ah, watch a lot of MSNBC, CNN, C -- you know, all that kind of stuff--

CONAN
--Those twenty-four hour shows--

JANEANE
--The {capitol gang}--yeah. I like Equal Timme, an' The Capitol Gang. An', uh Hardball with Chris Matthews, an' all that, but what I'm now tired of is just Pure Conjecturing twenty-four hours a day. These political hacks, just giving their opinions all the time, all spun so not -- nothing is, nothing is, i -- is of any value to you. All the time. You're just watching this an', last night I was watching -- an' we didn't mean to get off on this tangent -- but I will say this now that I'm here. Um. That if I hear one person say, "Where are the feminists?" I am going to kick somebody in the face, because--

[AUDIENCE chuckles]

CONAN
--And, with those shoes, this is a serious tthreat--

JANEANE
[missed it, her attempting to talk over him] --an', you know, the Republicans say that, when has the -- has the Republican party ever advanced the ball, so to speak, about Women's agendas. Never, never, never. Now they're pretending that they, are interested in the civil rights of Monica, Paula, an', an' Kathleen Willey? They are so absolutely not, an' then -- an' then--

CONAN
Can I just -- can I ju -- can I just offer one, though, possibility which is that--

JANEANE
What.

CONAN
This is what Andy pointed out, earlier in the show: everybody just has to fill T.V. time.

JANEANE
So let's talk about something else, please.

CONAN
Let's talk about your movie.

JANEANE
Clay Pigeons! Uh. Yes. There's a movie, opens today with Vince Vaughn, an' Walking Phoenix, and Georgie Nicates. An' Scott Wilson an' myself, an' it's a, a noir type, black comedy.. Thriller, I guess, kinda funny, supposed to be a little scary. Vince Vaughn is amazing in it, very, very creepy, very funny--

CONAN
I, I watched the, uh, film. I thought -- I really liked you in the film. I liked Vince Vaughn was hilarious, too.

JANEANE
He's very funny. Really, it was--

CONAN
He's a likable serial killer, which is the strangest thing you can--

[AUDIENCE chuckles.]

JANEANE
--Right. Very likable, yeah--

CONAN
[acting charmed] "I like that serial killer!"

JANEANE
Well, it doesn't hurt that he's, he's so incredibly handsome. That doesn't, hurt the, the mix at all, but um. But he's also very -- very intelligent, very funny in this movie, so it's good.

CONAN
We have a clip here? Do you set this up?

JANEANE
It's me an' Vince Vaughn.

[CONAN and ANDY start laughing.]

CONAN
What kind of -- you just met the Legal Requirement for a set up for a clip! I like that, that's so much more honest. A lot of people say, [dramatic] "All right, here I am an'" [unintelligible grunting] "Catch the magic, baby."

JANEANE
I know, it's just pretty self explanatory, so.. here it is--

CONAN
All right, let's take a look at uhhh, at, at this clip. From: The Movie.

GUY
Damn! Good lookin' girl. Drinks Johnny Walker Black.
[nodding at bartender] Even pays with her own money..
I can't wait to start dreamin' 'night..

WOMAN
[little patience] You're very colorful.

GUY
Oh, you don't know the half of it.
[sitting by her] I make a big fireworks show. {They're} very bright. Like Lite Bright.

WOMAN
You know what? Um. No offense, but this seat is saved.

GUY
Who for?

WOMAN
First guy not wearin' denim..

JANEANE
[wry] Wooooo! Woo-oo-oo-oo! Ow! Cartwheels all the way to the box office!

CONAN
That's a good line!

JANEANE
[pause] Yeah. It's okay.

CONAN
[amused] So weird. You're puttin' down your own movie.

JANEANE
I'm not putting it down, I'm just, puttin' down my own performance, as I am wont to do.

CONAN
Oh! Okay.

JANEANE
That's all -- that's--

CONAN
Self loathing. That's what people like. Uhhh--

JANEANE
I guess.

CONAN
Is it fun, I would think you're shooting in a bar there? I would think--

JANEANE
--Yes--

CONAN
--it actually would be nice any time you're shooting on a movie set where you're sitting down an' there's alcohol around--

JANEANE
{Oh,} it was fantastic. If you're, sitting, or you're in bed or something -- just like supposed to be sleeping, and the scene's you're just waking up -- oh, hours -- just {what you meant}. But in this, in this scene it was great because the prop guys, every once in a while would slip real shots? Like for different takes but they wouldn't tell you, so by the end of the night, I was like, "wooo!" I was com, pletely bombed at the end of that scene.

CONAN
There's one take -- there's an outtake -- where you sing, "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," over and over an' over again--

JANEANE
Well, there's actually -- in The Truth about Cats and Dogs, I actually passed out, in the scene, with -- uh -- which I probably shouldn't be telling anyone, but. [people are amused] We shot in this bar, me, Ben Chaplin, an' Uma. And uh, the bartender I think kind o', kind o' liked me a little bit? Uh, I don't know why, but he did. [awkward] And uh--

CONAN
[laughing, touched] Why do you {have to add,} "I don't know why." He just--

JANEANE
--{that} kind of felt arrogant saying, "He kkind of liked me," but he was givin' me, free drinks, an' then at one point I was, literally staring at Uma an' then I just went, over, cracked my head on the ground, an' we wrapped for the evening. Everybody's like, "Thanks!" Like that: no body cared that I'd just passed out -- they're like psyched. "Before midnight we're goin' home!"

CONAN
[laughing] "That's a wrap." Yeah. "But she's bleeding from her ear." "Come on everybody, get out of here." [JANEANE's laughing]
Uuhh. You're, you're making the rounds on the Festival Circuit for this film, right?

JANEANE
--Right--

CONAN
--Is this--

JANEANE
Right. We just came back from the Toronto Film Festival with this, with this movie and uh. At, at film festivals, traditionally they show very kind of artsy movies, very prestigious feather-in-the-cap-of-the-studio films which means essentially you'll never see these films and they won't put anything behind them because the, studios don't trust you at all to go see a movie about Elizabeth the First or somethin' like that. But there was a bunch of movies that--

ANDY
Ooops.

JANEANE
[amused] She -- she --

CONAN
She's not in Porkie's, Andy. Yeah.

JANEANE
Nah, nah, but they have -- at the festivals, they have all these very, very good films and there was -- actually -- a -- a lot of, kind of um, films of that era, kind of Medieval times or Renaissance, an' things like that, an' I noticed in all o' these, films from that era, they, the directors would always choose to show Medieval Fun in the same exact way, which is: just kind of random, giggling. Ladies in waiting kind of going, "Ha-ha ho-ho hee-hee!" Like they just giggle and maybe they'd be holding a pole with colored ribbons, that come off it? And um, and then in the court, for the king and queen, the entertainment is, maybe a midget doing a shuffle step? And, and more the kind of laughing, but like the guy'll do a bawdier laugh while ripping bread with their teeth.

CONAN
[amused] Uh-huh.

JANEANE
And um, the people kind of dance, but then it's always ruined by, uhm, the crowd will part, for a swarthy looking gentleman with a: Letter from Spain! And then, and then everything is dead silent an' ruined, for the rest of the night.

CONAN
[amused] It's always a letter from Spain?

JANEANE
It's always a letter from Spain after he bows deeply, and delivers a missive from Spain. And then, an' then, [reading, mumbling] "huzzah, farump, farump," and there's no more giggling.

CONAN
That's how people talked back then. Yeah.

JANEANE
They -- yeah, they say, "carrots an' peas, peas an' carrots, carrots an' peas." That's all they say.

CONAN
So -- uh -- but you do like --

JANEANE
-- Oh -- oh an' then -- oh also -- another tthing -- sorry -- uh -- okay --

CONAN
--That's all right--

JANEANE
An' then, an' then there's always Traitors within the castle walls, right, there's always about eight turncoats. And they will get found out eventually, but there will be a montage before they all "meet their maker," of what they're doing right before they're killed. And there's always inevitably -- well, in any movie -- if they take the time to show you a guy going to the bathroom? He's gonna die. Like if they take the time to actually film a guy kind o' just, settlin' in? [amused] He's, gonna go. But the thing I thought was funny in the Medieval things? I -- because they have like Medieval bathroom, Troughs, that people sit on -- an' I thought would be so funny if some director just put in like, a basket with, scrolls for reading or, ah like a, a crossword, a crossword with, with a Quill Pen. [CONAN and AUDIENCE are laughing] They guy's just sayin', -- {A Ye Olde thing} -- "What's a five letter word for guillotine?"

CONAN
[amused] I like this movie.

JANEANE
Clay Pigeons?

CONAN
Yeah -- No, this one, this one you're describing.

JANEANE
Oh! [laughs]

CONAN
[geek] I just like toilet humor. Uh..

JANEANE
[quiet] Who doesn't?

CONAN
[reading from card] Clay Pigeons, though, which I saw and I really did like is -- uh -- is out now. Permanent Midnight is in theaters now. You got movies all over the place.

JANEANE
Yeah.

CONAN
Yeah.

JANEANE
Well, not really, no. I'm only in Permanent Midnight for ten minutes, but we just wrapped on the Abbie Hoffman movie yesterday, here.

CONAN
Cool.

JANEANE
[somewhat subdued or humbled] An' uh, Dog Park is comin' out, an'. An' I wrote a book with Ben Stiller that's gonna be comin' out, an', an', an' that's it.

CONAN
[with AUDIENCE, is amused] I think that's enough. All right. Janeane Garofalo: thank you very much for stoppin' by. [AUDIENCE enthusiastically cheers] John Waters is comin' up.

[BAND plays to commercial.]

Last Updated: 1 Dec 1999