Jon Stewart: The Playboy Interview (50 Years of the Playboy Interview) (4 page)

BOOK: Jon Stewart: The Playboy Interview (50 Years of the Playboy Interview)
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Playboy:
Do you still love New Jersey?

Stewart:
New Jersey is tremendous. Everyone’s got New Jersey wrong. What we’ve done in New Jersey is create the world’s largest, smelliest scarecrow, and we’ve kept people away from it for years just by saying, “Where’s the point that the most people who aren’t really dedicated to this state will see?” It’s the Turnpike, because the majority of people are going to be hitting the airport or heading from New York down south or up north. If we create an area of what appears to be pure, toxic genetic-mutation soup right along that road, everyone who drives by is going to go, “Holy shit!” But it’s a scarecrow. It exists solely for the purpose of driving others away.

Playboy:
Next segment: What’s the correspondent’s piece?

Stewart:
We would visit the mosquitocatching program I was part of when I was 18. I used to go down to a Jersey Pine Barrens in a state car. We’d bring the little critters back to Trenton for encephalitis testing. We didn’t pull their genitals off. My job was solely to catch them, knock them out with chloroform, sort them male-female, and bring all the females back.

Playboy:
How about “In Other News?”

Stewart:
Stewart discovers alcohol and Tom Waits; Waits decides he doesn’t want to be found.

Playboy:
The celebrity interview?

Stewart:
My father. We’d bring him on. After the interview he still doesn’t believe I have my own show.

Playboy:
Describe that interview.

Stewart:
It’d probably be one question and then three and a half minutes of him explaining the answer to me by writing and graphing it on a napkin. He was a physicist.

Playboy:
What one question have you always wanted to ask your dad?

Stewart:
Ain’t I doin’ good, Pa? Ain’t I? Then he would explain through graphs and charts why I’m not. It’s a very precise equation calculation. It’s calculus, something I don’t really understand. But I would get to keep the napkins, to back it up.

Playboy:
Does your father really think you’re not doing well?

Stewart:
Hey, hey. Don’t think you’re on to something here! No, I think he thinks it’s fine—probably.

Playboy:
How old were you when your parents divorced?

Stewart:
Ten or 11.

Playboy:
You saw him afterward?

Stewart:
Oh yeah. Hey, pizza every Sunday, my friend. Or every other Sunday.

Playboy:
Do you have a good relationship with him?

Stewart:
Uh...what do you mean? He hasn’t broken up with me.

Playboy:
Did he try to explain the mysteries of the universe to you?

Stewart:
Not that I remember. I was just happy, when I turned seventeen, to realize maybe the divorce wasn’t my fault. I saw that one after-school special where the kid thinks it’s their fault, and I watched it with tears: “Yes, that’s true.” Then you realize, Oh, it’s
not
my fault. In my hazy memory, I was thinking I had done something or gotten into some minor trouble before it happened. You sort of have the sense of, Oh, Christ, what have I done? But that’s because kids are completely egocentric: I fucked up, therefore...

Playboy:
Didn’t your parents say, “Dear, it’s not your fault”?

Stewart:
I’m sure they did. But you’re living in the world of hyperbole at that age. The drama itself was somehow comforting. It was the Seventies;
I’m OK—You’re OK
had just come out but I don’t think anybody had read it all the way through yet.

Playboy:
OK. Now let’s go to “This Just In.”

Stewart:
Stewart lands a regular job, may never have to buy clothes again. Then we do a moment of Zen.

Playboy:
What’s yours?

Stewart:
Probably footage of me watching one of my cats a few years ago take a shit right next to the litter box because I had been too lazy to actually clean it out. It was a brief message of her displeasure. She was the Felix Unger of cats: If it wasn’t just right in the litter box, “I’m sorry, my friend, I’m going right on the floor next to it, just to show you.”

Playboy:
Much of your humor is based on your being Jewish. You even called your HBO special
Unleavened
. Are Jews funnier?

Stewart:
Than?

Playboy:
Gentiles.

Stewart:
Any time you’re a group that wants desperately for others to like you so they’ll let you stick around, you have a tendency to be more amusing. When you’re in charge there’s really no need to be funny. The captain of the football team doesn’t have to be funny. Water boy? He has to be a little amusing.

My comedy is all about anything that, when I was growing up, made me feel different or disenfranchised in any way. What is comedy other than:
Love me! We’re not so bad. We don’t really love the money. Love me!
Height, looks and religion became the cornerstones of what I talk about. They had to, because as a kid you learn preemptive-strike comedy. If I hit someone with a tremendous joke about how small and Jewish I am, they had nowhere to go. All they could do is punch me once and leave.

Playboy:
Were you the only Jew in your school?

Stewart:
No. There were probably four or five, but Lawrenceville was not a predominantly Jewish area.

Playboy:
Did you feel ostracized?

Stewart:
It’s not like I walked into school and everyone turned their backs and shunned me. [
laughs
] It was just in my head. I felt different even if no one else noticed or cared. Most people were very nice to me. I got my share of ass-kickings and being made fun of, but it wasn’t anything unusual. My parents divorced, but other people have gone through that as well. I’m not going to write
Jonathan’s Ashes.
I didn’t have a tragic childhood. It was OK, normal. But if you’re looking for what informs my thought process, it was those feelings of inadequacy that were placed there
by me, for me
. They were grounded in reality, but one with far less importance than I gave it. In other words, it wasn’t like
The Breakfast Club,
with Judd Nelson just fucking poking me in the chest every day. But in
my
head I was a weirdo.

Playboy:
Are you now at ease with your height, religion and looks?

Stewart:
When I stopped thinking about them, all the problems they caused went away. There comes a point in your life where you go, “I guess I’m not going to be six feet tall—and I can’t believe how important that used to be to me.” I’m fine. If I can’t reach a glass, I can just stand on a chair.

Playboy:
Jewish mysticism has been in the news lately. Have you given any thought yet to studying the Kabbalah?

Stewart:
I’m letting Madonna get her feet wet, and if it seems OK, I’m jumping in. You know, nothing shakes my world more than giant celebrities who tell us about their spiritual awakenings.

Playboy:
Oh? Why?

Stewart:
Because it’s amazing to me that the journey to superstardom always culminates in, “Hey, we really all have to be nice to each other.” Well, thank you! Of course you should be celebrated for coming to that conclusion!  

All kidding aside, I can’t believe that it’s newsworthy when somebody of grand fame and wealth has an epiphany that maybe there’s a larger world out there beyond their narcissism—and I’m not speaking of anyone in particular. It’s as if a celebrity epiphany is somehow more valid than anyone else’s and therefore that star is to be congratulated on their arduous spiritual journey. And guess what else? There is no grandeur in that epiphany. A celebrity’s spiritual awakening is no different from or more important than one that happens to whomever is mopping up come in video booths on 42nd Street.

Playboy:
Sounds like business as usual.

Stewart:
Of course, because in this business your status is elevated just for not shitting on people. You’re celebrated as more than decent for acting
normally
. It makes me wonder: My God, what’s going on behind that?

Playboy:
What do you think?

Stewart:
The problem, I think, is people caring about all the things they shouldn’t and not caring about all the things they should. It’s that disparity that creates a fucking star temper tantrum when the tandoori chicken isn’t orange enough. Any human being who has any sense of perspective would understand not to shit on the five-dollar-an-hour production assistant because he didn’t understand that you said “spring rolls” and not “dumplings.” To miss that point is just insanity.

Brett Butler is a great example of this. I’ve known Brett for a lot of years and she’s an incredibly intelligent, funny woman. She flipped out—which I think she would admit to now—but they didn’t call her on it until the show was no longer making them the kind of money that justified tolerating her behavior. There is no medal of honor for the people who pulled the plug on that show. They waited until it was economically feasible for them to do so before saying, “Hey, you can’t treat people like this.”

Playboy:
And that sort of stuff is common in Hollywood?

Stewart:
It’s common in the world. We are a global capitalistic conglomerate. Corporation Earth. Whatever drives that bottom line drives our behavior. The more you bring in, the more you are allowed to fuck up. It’s as simple as that. When you stop bringing it in, people stop hanging around.

The random glorification can also lead to random vilification. That’s the double-edged sword. People in that spotlight are more loved than they should be and more despised than they should be. That’s why they’re always complaining about being praised and then suddenly attacked.

Playboy:
If we were to help you package your philosophy and get a celebrity interested in it, should he or she be celebrated for “getting it”?

Stewart:
No. And I shouldn’t be either. It’s like the notion that tacking up the Ten Commandments on a wall in a high school is going to help. Who doesn’t already know “Thou shall not kill?” Who is going to walk into a principal’s office, look at the Commandments and go, “Thou shalt not kill? Are you fucking kidding me? When did that happen?” It’s the same thing with the red ribbon for AIDS. It’s a wonderful thought, but who’s not aware of AIDS? It’s people putting their hope in symbolism and bullshit and not in the actual work it takes to attain the kind of world you want. The problem is that people have to stop looking to others to tell them how to act and feel. People’s internal barometers have to be dialed up a notch. [
pauses
] I’m on the pulpit now, brotha! Tes-ti-fy! By the way, this is all one man’s bullshit. I want to make that clear. I’m not out there beating the fucking sidewalk with my donation cup and a bell, trying to get money for this. It’s my worldview and it has nothing to do with anybody else. Sure, I wish everyone thought this way, but they don’t. And I’m not saying it’s any more valid or interesting than anybody else’s point of view. Everything comes with disclaimers. For instance, this philosophy is not valid in Tennessee. Or Alaska.

Playboy:
We should wrap this up. Describe the Jon Stewart the public never gets to see.

Stewart:
Here’s the weird thing:
This is my secret life
. You have no idea what’s going on in my real life. I actually manage a Bennigan’s. No one knows I’m here. That’s the beauty of it. They don’t get cable.

Playboy:
With which celebrity are you most often confused?

Stewart:
By people who are drinking or not?

Playboy:
Drinking.

Stewart:
Seinfeld.

Playboy:
Not drinking?

Stewart:
The kid from
Married With Children
.

Playboy:
Why did you drop your last name, Liebowitz?

Stewart:
It’s hard to see your name in lights when you feel like there won’t be enough lights to spell it.

Playboy:
This interview will appear in early 2000. Would you care to predict what will happen during the millennial celebrations?

Stewart:
Hmm. I won’t come out of my bunker until January 8, so many of those days will be something of a blur. However, when I do come out, through the smoldering ruins, I’ll see the hand of a child holding a daisy and think,
We’re going to be OK!
Then an animated bluebird will land on my shoulder and whisper something dirty and vaguely anti-Semitic in my ear.

Playboy:
What do you already miss about the last thousand years?

Stewart:
I guess the pace of it. The kindness we showed each other. The gentle tableau of a pie cooling on a sill while Ma stands out in the back and tries to figure out why the radar dish won’t get the porno channel.

BOOK: Jon Stewart: The Playboy Interview (50 Years of the Playboy Interview)
13.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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