Alex Borstein named the DVD of her standup Drop Dead Gorgeous in a Down-to-Earth Bombshell Sort of Way with a nod and a wink, but I think shes very sexy, straight up. Borstein first got noticed with her array of characters on Madtv but she developed a strong cult following with her voice work and writing on one of the best televisions shows ever, Family Guy. Borsteins main role on the show is Lois, the matriarch of the Griffin family. At first Lois was just a foil for Peter Griffins insane antics but soon Lois developed some very interesting quirks of her own, shepherded along by Borstein who has written some of Lois best moments.
But Drop Dead Gorgeous is another side to Borstein, one that is totally and completely filthy when liberated from televisions rigid standards and practices. Borstein speaks freely about her cunt, the impossible ideals that Hollywood insists upon and performs of series of amazing impressions from Rene Zellweger to Charlize Theron in Monster.
Buy the DVD of Drop Dead Gorgeous
Daniel Robert Epstein: I just saw the new Rene Zellweger movie yesterday and thanks to you I couldnt stop picturing your impression of her.
Alex Borstein: What new movie is she in?
DRE: Miss Potter about Beatrix Potter.
Alex: Good Lord.
DRE: It was good, though [laughs].
Alex: She drives me a little nuts, I cant help it.
DRE: It seems like a few people at Family Guy have it in for her. You guys are always making fun of her.
Alex: Its fun to make fun of everyone, thats our motto.
DRE: Why so much on Rene Zellweger not that I have any special love for her?
Alex: I think that her voice and Im going to gain five pounds to play a fat lady, annoyed everybody. Then watching her chew the scenery in Cold Mountain. My husband said that the way she gained the weight for Bridget Jones was by chewing the scenery in Cold Mountain.
DRE: Have you always been able to imitate her?
Alex: Yeah. I always say some of the best impersonations come from people that somehow permeate your head. For some reason you get stuck on them whether you like them or hate them. Theres just something about them thats very listenable or watchable and then you start emulating it and all of a sudden youve got an impersonation.
DRE: Did you ever do her on Madtv?
Alex: I didnt. A lot of the time on Madtv we were relegated to doing people that they thought we visually most looked like. That was probably one of the weaknesses. They were very in love with the makeup and hair department. They would sometimes prefer to spend five hours with prosthetics and have someone look exactly like someone as opposed to, Is this the best possible sketch we could do for this?
DRE: Whats always funny about stuff like that is, do they really think people are going to believe you are those people?
Alex: Right were not trying to cash one of their checks at the bank. We just want to make some comedy. Sometimes I wouldnt get to do a lot of those people. Being short and pudgy, they would never think of me first to play someone like Rene Zellweger.
DRE: I thought that Drop Dead Gorgeous would be pretty dirty but it was certainly a lot dirtier than I ever imagined.
Alex: Yeah, its definitely a filthy little show. I cant help it, I have a bit of a potty mouth.
DRE: I know you were in comedy troupes but were you ever a standup comedian?
Alex: The first time I ever did standup I was 16 at a little club in southern California. My parents had to be there because I was under 21. I did standup there for the first time and then a couple more times. Then I abandoned it. In college at San Francisco State I revisited it a few times and I did this little comedy competition and Certs breath mints sponsored it. The people who were the celebrity sponsors were The Kids in the Hall so I was very excited.
DRE: Thats pretty cool.
Alex: That was really cool. I did not win but Margaret Cho did. But whats funny is that she didnt really go to our school. I think she signed up for an extension class just so she could be a ringer in the competition.
DRE: Thats so funny.
Alex: Yeah, then I abandoned it and got more into sketch with some people in college. Standup is just very lonely particularly if youre a woman. If you go to those clubs, none of those guys really want to talk to you or hang out with you or think youre funny.
DRE: My best friend is a woman and shes one of the funniest people I know. Weve had many conversations about whether women are funny in general. She agreed that women might not be as funny simply because the world doesnt allow women to be funny, for the most part
Alex: I think so. Thats part of it. Most women see it as, either youre going to be beautiful and attractive and have the male gaze upon you and attract lots of men or youre going to be funny and be one of the guys. The world doesnt like to allow for both. There are some people that cross over. Look at Lucille Ball. She was such a huge phenomenon because she was wildly attractive, really funny and accessible at all angles. Somehow she was able to make it work.
DRE: I hope youre not thinking Im a big misogynist now.
Alex: Oh no, its absolutely true. I often wonder that if I was a guy and had done the same amount of work that Ive done could I be at the level of a Will Ferrell or Jack Black or Dane Cook. It could be the fact that Im a woman has kept me back or maybe Im just not funny.
DRE: [laughs] No, thats definitely not true.
Alex: I think my career would be really different if I was a guy, but then again maybe I would blend into the crowd too much because there are so many men. Maybe I stand out more being a woman. Well never know because I dont have a cock.
DRE: [laughs] Do you find that people in Hollywood are still surprised when a woman is funny?
Alex: Yes. I was in Montreal hosting the comedy festival there and you definitely get guys going, Hey, youre really funny. I think it really still surprises people and all of a sudden they look at you with new eyes like, Wait a minute, shes not just a woman, shes a funny woman.
DRE: I read that you and your husband basically put together Drop Dead Gorgeous by yourselves.
Alex: Yeah, we did. It was really a fun thing to do together. Weve always tried to work together. We both were members of Acme Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.
DRE: Wasnt [Family Guy writer/producer] Steve Callaghan was part of that too?
Alex: Thats right. Also Adam Carolla and Will Ferrell did some stuff occasionally with Scott Wainio who was a writer on SNL. Then my husband and I tried writing together and we almost stabbed each other in the fucking face with pencils. It was not a good thing for us to write together. So this seemed like a really cool opportunity where we could work together and do something creative and have fun. Hes a director so he knows a lot about cinematography so it was a neat opportunity for him to shoot it. We just wanted to see if its possible to move outside of the system because most of your options are to sell your special to HBO or Comedy Central. Then they own it and thats the end of it. They have the right to edit it how they want and even to air it or not. I just didnt want to do that. I was at the point in my career where I had visibility from Madtv, movies and Family Guy so I didnt need to get my name out there, which most comics do when they do a special like that. I dont really need to have my name bandied about Comedy Central every five minutes. I dont need the money up front. Its been a really fun experiment and so far, knock on wood, very successful.
DRE: So its been selling pretty good?
Alex: Its been slow, but its been steady. There has been zero publicity. FOX figured, and theyre probably right, that all we really need to do is put something Family Guy related on this and have it on the shelves next to Family Guy and put a flier in the Family Guy DVD and that should take care of all the sales. So far the DVD has been very successful. It hasnt had the normal decay of sales after the first week. The first week of a DVDs release is usually pretty much all its going to sell but this DVD is different. Its one of those titles where its been slow, steady and growing.
But also were doing this tour to Apple stores all over the country doing something called Made on a Mac Presentation since the special was edited on Final Cut Pro. We basically tell the story of how we made it. I started touring this in 2002 and then we shot it in 2004 and it has taken this long for it to hit the streets. So its a fun and interesting story and its also really informative for people who are trying to take back some control from Hollywood and make their own projects and be very self-sufficient. A lot of people are doing that now like that sitcom on FX called It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
DRE: Everyone says thats really good but I havent watched it yet.
Alex: To be honest Ive only seen a couple. But those people got together and made their own pilot presentation. They just were like, Fuck it. Were sick of waiting for a break and waiting for this giant machine to notice us. So they just went ahead and did it. Another friend of ours did it with a show called Sons and Daughters that was on ABC.
Made on a Mac Presentation is like a take back the night thing to show how you can take control of your own career.
DRE: Did you have to give up any rights when FOX agreed to put it out?
Alex: No, I was going to distribute it on my own last year. I was going to release it in February as a birthday present to myself [laughs]. I was spending some time with the people from FOX in Montreal. One of the people at home entertainment was like, Oh my God, you should bring that in. You should talk to us about it. Maybe we can release it. Maybe we can do it as something that goes along with Family Guy. I thought, Thats not a bad idea. So I pitched them in January and they said yes pretty quickly. I do have all the ownership of the whole piece. They get a percentage for distributing it but this way I managed to really hold onto a lot of it, which is rare. The downside is that maybe if they had a bigger chunk of it they would work harder at publicizing it. But I prefer a slow and steady tortoise to a hare that may not finish the race.
DRE: Was anyone offended by your act when you took it on the road?
Alex: Not really. Ive never really had any negative response from anyone about my standup because most people coming to see me know what theyre in for. Also Im pretty careful about where I perform. For instance, we have a house right near downtown Seattle. They had the Seattle International Comedy Competition recently and they asked me to be a judge at one of the finals and my husband to be a judge at one of the other finals. They had five nights of finals and they asked me to perform. I knew it wasnt going to work in this small community where there are only 10,000 people and I have to see all of them at the market the next day. I think it is important to know your venue and know your audience.
DRE: I loved the bits in Drop Dead Gorgeous where you read the breakdowns of character descriptions. Are you still sent stuff like that?
Alex: For the most part I get 98 percent less auditions than someone that could fit any of those descriptions. A lot of the times I hear nothing about it because they dont call if its something that Im not right for. But sometimes youll lose faith and youll be like Let me see. Let me take a look at the breakdowns and it is so dismal. But Im developing some TV stuff for myself and writing a feature and you find yourself falling into the same traps. You find yourself saying, Oh maybe theyll have this girlfriend, and then youll find yourself not really developing the girlfriend character so much. You just know shes going to be cute and thats all that matters. Its like, Wait a minute, now Im just as bad as the enemy. Its easy to see why it happens because its shorthand, laziness and its easier than spending the time developing a real human person.
DRE: You seem about as pop culture savvy as anyone but is it still difficult to keep up with Seth MacFarlane?
Alex: Yeah, it is. But Seths pop culture knowledge is very retro. Seth doesnt own a computer and he doesnt really watch television. Everything that Seth knows has already happened.
DRE: I knew he didnt have email. But I didnt know he didnt have a computer.
Alex: He has one at work but he doesnt have one at home and he doesnt want one. He doesnt understand MySpace and he despises most new music.
DRE: It is so strange because he is certainly at the right age to be into newer stuff.
Alex: Hes in his early 30s but hes just got an old soul. Hes got that Rat Pack soul but the great thing about that writers room is that we have 15 writers and everyone brings something different. Weve got ages ranging from like 27 to 55 so youve got all these different references. There is such a cool mixed bag of people bringing in bizarro references. I certainly dont have my hands on the pulse in terms of the pop culture. My husband and I just went to the Billboard Music Awards in Vegas a couple days ago and half of the people nominated we were like, Who? What? Someone named Chris Brown won everything. Never heard of him.
DRE: I dont know who he is either.
Alex: But you certainly cant help but know about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or Gwen Stefani or Fergie.
DRE: How is a decision made to include something like the Tim Curry character from Legend in a Family Guy bit?
Alex: We all sit around a big table together and people bark pitches. It is as though youre at a party with cocktails and frankly sometimes cocktails are involved. I remember one of the episodes that I wrote was called Deep Throat. Peter and Lois created a folk group and Brian is going after Mayor West in a Watergate parody. In the script we had Mayor West sitting in a hotel room watching TV. I wrote that he was just watching cartoons. Then the only other female writer, Cherry [Chevapravatdumrong], had him commenting that he was watching a cartoon called Jem. I didnt know what Jem was but everyone else cracked up and I was like, Ok, put that in. Its weird and interesting. Thats pretty much how it goes. If a lot of the people in the room respond or even if its just one person responding in a huge way, theyll go for it.
DRE: How did you end up joining the Family Guy writing staff?
Alex: When I first started I started just doing voices. I was doing Lois and everything grew. I would start doing more voices and then I would ad-lib a lot. When Seth created the show he was 25 years old. I dont think he ever had a girlfriend and the only women he knew were his mom and his sister. So he had absolutely no idea what he was doing and he will admit that in a heartbeat, like, Ok what do girls wear? They wear hats. Ok, Meg will have a hat. Thats pretty much how he decided things so it was freeing for them when Id come in to do voices and I would change things to make it a little more like something a female character might say. One of the executive producers, Chris Sheridan, said, Would you ever write for us? At that time I was writing for myself on Madtv and before that I had written for cartoons like Casper and Pinky and the Brain. I told them that I would love to do it but that it is just a matter of schedule because I was working for Madtv at the same time. So what we did is that I started working at Family Guy on the summer hiatus from Madtv. Then when Madtv went back to shooting, I would just come into Family Guy as a writer on the days we didnt shoot. I was getting to split my time all over the place and I learned so much. Madtv and Family Guy together really was comedy boot camp.
DRE: Seth has obviously changed his look since he first started Family Guy. He lost the glasses, got some cool looking hair and my wife said hes hot now.
Alex: He thinks he is. I dont want to crush any dreams, he usually does wear glasses but when he goes out for events he takes them off to be cool. But hes still wildly insecure and has absolutely no idea who he is and he doesnt understand even an iota of the opposite sex like most of the writers on television. But he started at 25 and now hes edging on 35 so hes a very different person.
DRE: Especially when you have money to buy nice clothes.
Alex: Exactly and he has people to tell him what to wear now. People that can say, You know what? What if you could wear this vintage t-shirt and your button down shirt open?
DRE: I asked [Family Guy writer/producer/voice actor] Mike Henry what offends him and he said that he doesnt like stuff about kids like the Cancer boy character from Family Guy. What offends you?
Alex: Oh nothing, really. See, thats what happens. All of a sudden when people have kids they change their tune about what offends them. Its very interesting.
DRE: I get worried about that too. I dont get offended very easily and I dont want that to ever change.
Alex: Its very interesting how it will change a person but I dont think its definitive. They have a kid and for the first two years of the kids life theyre not cool with any of those jokes anymore then maybe after a few years they start to mellow.
But not much offends me. Ive always been heavy and Ive always thought that a lot of fat jokes were hilarious. Im a Jew and I think Jew jokes are hilarious. I laugh the hardest at a lot of our Holocaust stuff on the show. I was just raised with laughing in the face of everything.
DRE: What about Mel Gibson?
Alex: I find him to be an idiot. He clearly is anti-Semitic to some degree but I think a lot of people forget that one of the things about living in this country is that youre allowed to be anti-Semitic, youre allowed to hate Jews, youre allowed to hate white people and youre allowed to hate black people. It may not be politically correct and cool but if the Nazis can march in Skokie then Mel Gibson has every right to say Jews are whatever. We dont have to like it, I certainly wont go to his movies and I dont want to support him as an artist. Not that I was that interested in his work anyway. But I think people forget that theres a difference between being like-minded and having the freedom to say what you want.
DRE: Youre right. I hadnt really thought about the fact that he is allowed to say whatever the hell he wants.
Alex: Yeah, everyone forgets that just because you shouldnt say something doesnt mean you cant. I think hes a moron especially if youre a public figure and you want to sell tickets so because of that I think hes an idiot. But for me it only solidifies the fact that anyone would have to be stupid to be anti-Semitic or racist.
DRE: Whats your favorite Lois storyline thats been on Family Guy?
Alex: We have an episode that is coming up that I wrote called; It Takes a Village Idiot and I Married One. Lois runs for mayor of Quahog and wins. It stemmed from another one woman show I was working on called Women and Jews: Why We'll Never Be President. I was in this headspace where I felt that a woman will never be president. So this storyline came out of that. I had these fantasies about a woman president that would be fair and thered be no corruption. Thats a bunch of bullshit fantasy. In the episode Lois gets just as bitten by the corruption bug as anyone. We liked what happened so much in the episode that we wrote a book thats going to come out in April to coincide with the episode.
DRE: Cool! Did you work with any of the other writers on it?
Alex: Yeah, Cherry and I wrote it together. We always laugh at these memoirs people release. It always makes us laugh when anybody assumes the rest of the world cares to read about their lives. We took a look at It Takes a Village, My Living History, Ann Coulters Godless and blah, blah, blah. We had this idea to write a book that looks at Loiss time in office and the book has Lois pontificating her views and telling her story. Whats fun about it is that it has chapters by all the characters in the show where they chime in on her time in office and how they think she did. Of course it has a lot of rambling tangents with a lot of poop jokes.
DRE: Are you guys planning on responding within the show to what South Park did about Family Guy?
Alex: I dont know. Im not sure where everyone is on that. I just know that none of us really cared; we were just excited to be mentioned [laughs]. It is that excitement of, I murdered a person, now Im famous. I think Seth was annoyed but I think Seth just gets that way. Its almost like someone took a swipe at his child. I think we have made some slams back but I dont know if they made it into the final draft of any of the scripts. We are able to do that because in the nine month process that it takes to make an episode, when we get right toward the end where its going to air we do last minute rewrites so we have the opportunity to change things. For instance if we have a Britney and K-Fed marriage joke, when that comes up now it will no longer going to be appropriate so well have a last minute opportunity to alter it or to replace it completely but we would have to use the existing animation. Sometimes thats how we can slip things in that are very timely because we have that last minute pull cord where we can slip something in.
DRE: Are you still working on the cartoon Angry Little Girls?
Alex: I worked on Angry Little Girls for a little while but not anymore. There was just too much going on. Im doing some other live action TV development so I helped develop Angry Little Girls and even did an outline. Then at that stage, unfortunately I was like, Uh-oh, Im not going to be able to do all of this.
DRE: Is it still going to air?
Alex: I think so. I think someone else is picking up where I left off and going to be developing it through completion.
DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?
Alex: My husband told me that he knows what SuicideGirls is but I know very little.
DRE: The fact that your husband knows is good enough.
Alex: But that reminds me I would really like to have Lois do a totally nude layout for Playboy.
DRE: [laughs] Thatd be great. Do you remember when Jessica Rabbit did one for Penthouse?
Alex: She did? Well I think Seth enjoys Playboy more than Penthouse.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
But Drop Dead Gorgeous is another side to Borstein, one that is totally and completely filthy when liberated from televisions rigid standards and practices. Borstein speaks freely about her cunt, the impossible ideals that Hollywood insists upon and performs of series of amazing impressions from Rene Zellweger to Charlize Theron in Monster.
Buy the DVD of Drop Dead Gorgeous
Daniel Robert Epstein: I just saw the new Rene Zellweger movie yesterday and thanks to you I couldnt stop picturing your impression of her.
Alex Borstein: What new movie is she in?
DRE: Miss Potter about Beatrix Potter.
Alex: Good Lord.
DRE: It was good, though [laughs].
Alex: She drives me a little nuts, I cant help it.
DRE: It seems like a few people at Family Guy have it in for her. You guys are always making fun of her.
Alex: Its fun to make fun of everyone, thats our motto.
DRE: Why so much on Rene Zellweger not that I have any special love for her?
Alex: I think that her voice and Im going to gain five pounds to play a fat lady, annoyed everybody. Then watching her chew the scenery in Cold Mountain. My husband said that the way she gained the weight for Bridget Jones was by chewing the scenery in Cold Mountain.
DRE: Have you always been able to imitate her?
Alex: Yeah. I always say some of the best impersonations come from people that somehow permeate your head. For some reason you get stuck on them whether you like them or hate them. Theres just something about them thats very listenable or watchable and then you start emulating it and all of a sudden youve got an impersonation.
DRE: Did you ever do her on Madtv?
Alex: I didnt. A lot of the time on Madtv we were relegated to doing people that they thought we visually most looked like. That was probably one of the weaknesses. They were very in love with the makeup and hair department. They would sometimes prefer to spend five hours with prosthetics and have someone look exactly like someone as opposed to, Is this the best possible sketch we could do for this?
DRE: Whats always funny about stuff like that is, do they really think people are going to believe you are those people?
Alex: Right were not trying to cash one of their checks at the bank. We just want to make some comedy. Sometimes I wouldnt get to do a lot of those people. Being short and pudgy, they would never think of me first to play someone like Rene Zellweger.
DRE: I thought that Drop Dead Gorgeous would be pretty dirty but it was certainly a lot dirtier than I ever imagined.
Alex: Yeah, its definitely a filthy little show. I cant help it, I have a bit of a potty mouth.
DRE: I know you were in comedy troupes but were you ever a standup comedian?
Alex: The first time I ever did standup I was 16 at a little club in southern California. My parents had to be there because I was under 21. I did standup there for the first time and then a couple more times. Then I abandoned it. In college at San Francisco State I revisited it a few times and I did this little comedy competition and Certs breath mints sponsored it. The people who were the celebrity sponsors were The Kids in the Hall so I was very excited.
DRE: Thats pretty cool.
Alex: That was really cool. I did not win but Margaret Cho did. But whats funny is that she didnt really go to our school. I think she signed up for an extension class just so she could be a ringer in the competition.
DRE: Thats so funny.
Alex: Yeah, then I abandoned it and got more into sketch with some people in college. Standup is just very lonely particularly if youre a woman. If you go to those clubs, none of those guys really want to talk to you or hang out with you or think youre funny.
DRE: My best friend is a woman and shes one of the funniest people I know. Weve had many conversations about whether women are funny in general. She agreed that women might not be as funny simply because the world doesnt allow women to be funny, for the most part
Alex: I think so. Thats part of it. Most women see it as, either youre going to be beautiful and attractive and have the male gaze upon you and attract lots of men or youre going to be funny and be one of the guys. The world doesnt like to allow for both. There are some people that cross over. Look at Lucille Ball. She was such a huge phenomenon because she was wildly attractive, really funny and accessible at all angles. Somehow she was able to make it work.
DRE: I hope youre not thinking Im a big misogynist now.
Alex: Oh no, its absolutely true. I often wonder that if I was a guy and had done the same amount of work that Ive done could I be at the level of a Will Ferrell or Jack Black or Dane Cook. It could be the fact that Im a woman has kept me back or maybe Im just not funny.
DRE: [laughs] No, thats definitely not true.
Alex: I think my career would be really different if I was a guy, but then again maybe I would blend into the crowd too much because there are so many men. Maybe I stand out more being a woman. Well never know because I dont have a cock.
DRE: [laughs] Do you find that people in Hollywood are still surprised when a woman is funny?
Alex: Yes. I was in Montreal hosting the comedy festival there and you definitely get guys going, Hey, youre really funny. I think it really still surprises people and all of a sudden they look at you with new eyes like, Wait a minute, shes not just a woman, shes a funny woman.
DRE: I read that you and your husband basically put together Drop Dead Gorgeous by yourselves.
Alex: Yeah, we did. It was really a fun thing to do together. Weve always tried to work together. We both were members of Acme Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.
DRE: Wasnt [Family Guy writer/producer] Steve Callaghan was part of that too?
Alex: Thats right. Also Adam Carolla and Will Ferrell did some stuff occasionally with Scott Wainio who was a writer on SNL. Then my husband and I tried writing together and we almost stabbed each other in the fucking face with pencils. It was not a good thing for us to write together. So this seemed like a really cool opportunity where we could work together and do something creative and have fun. Hes a director so he knows a lot about cinematography so it was a neat opportunity for him to shoot it. We just wanted to see if its possible to move outside of the system because most of your options are to sell your special to HBO or Comedy Central. Then they own it and thats the end of it. They have the right to edit it how they want and even to air it or not. I just didnt want to do that. I was at the point in my career where I had visibility from Madtv, movies and Family Guy so I didnt need to get my name out there, which most comics do when they do a special like that. I dont really need to have my name bandied about Comedy Central every five minutes. I dont need the money up front. Its been a really fun experiment and so far, knock on wood, very successful.
DRE: So its been selling pretty good?
Alex: Its been slow, but its been steady. There has been zero publicity. FOX figured, and theyre probably right, that all we really need to do is put something Family Guy related on this and have it on the shelves next to Family Guy and put a flier in the Family Guy DVD and that should take care of all the sales. So far the DVD has been very successful. It hasnt had the normal decay of sales after the first week. The first week of a DVDs release is usually pretty much all its going to sell but this DVD is different. Its one of those titles where its been slow, steady and growing.
But also were doing this tour to Apple stores all over the country doing something called Made on a Mac Presentation since the special was edited on Final Cut Pro. We basically tell the story of how we made it. I started touring this in 2002 and then we shot it in 2004 and it has taken this long for it to hit the streets. So its a fun and interesting story and its also really informative for people who are trying to take back some control from Hollywood and make their own projects and be very self-sufficient. A lot of people are doing that now like that sitcom on FX called It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.
DRE: Everyone says thats really good but I havent watched it yet.
Alex: To be honest Ive only seen a couple. But those people got together and made their own pilot presentation. They just were like, Fuck it. Were sick of waiting for a break and waiting for this giant machine to notice us. So they just went ahead and did it. Another friend of ours did it with a show called Sons and Daughters that was on ABC.
Made on a Mac Presentation is like a take back the night thing to show how you can take control of your own career.
DRE: Did you have to give up any rights when FOX agreed to put it out?
Alex: No, I was going to distribute it on my own last year. I was going to release it in February as a birthday present to myself [laughs]. I was spending some time with the people from FOX in Montreal. One of the people at home entertainment was like, Oh my God, you should bring that in. You should talk to us about it. Maybe we can release it. Maybe we can do it as something that goes along with Family Guy. I thought, Thats not a bad idea. So I pitched them in January and they said yes pretty quickly. I do have all the ownership of the whole piece. They get a percentage for distributing it but this way I managed to really hold onto a lot of it, which is rare. The downside is that maybe if they had a bigger chunk of it they would work harder at publicizing it. But I prefer a slow and steady tortoise to a hare that may not finish the race.
DRE: Was anyone offended by your act when you took it on the road?
Alex: Not really. Ive never really had any negative response from anyone about my standup because most people coming to see me know what theyre in for. Also Im pretty careful about where I perform. For instance, we have a house right near downtown Seattle. They had the Seattle International Comedy Competition recently and they asked me to be a judge at one of the finals and my husband to be a judge at one of the other finals. They had five nights of finals and they asked me to perform. I knew it wasnt going to work in this small community where there are only 10,000 people and I have to see all of them at the market the next day. I think it is important to know your venue and know your audience.
DRE: I loved the bits in Drop Dead Gorgeous where you read the breakdowns of character descriptions. Are you still sent stuff like that?
Alex: For the most part I get 98 percent less auditions than someone that could fit any of those descriptions. A lot of the times I hear nothing about it because they dont call if its something that Im not right for. But sometimes youll lose faith and youll be like Let me see. Let me take a look at the breakdowns and it is so dismal. But Im developing some TV stuff for myself and writing a feature and you find yourself falling into the same traps. You find yourself saying, Oh maybe theyll have this girlfriend, and then youll find yourself not really developing the girlfriend character so much. You just know shes going to be cute and thats all that matters. Its like, Wait a minute, now Im just as bad as the enemy. Its easy to see why it happens because its shorthand, laziness and its easier than spending the time developing a real human person.
DRE: You seem about as pop culture savvy as anyone but is it still difficult to keep up with Seth MacFarlane?
Alex: Yeah, it is. But Seths pop culture knowledge is very retro. Seth doesnt own a computer and he doesnt really watch television. Everything that Seth knows has already happened.
DRE: I knew he didnt have email. But I didnt know he didnt have a computer.
Alex: He has one at work but he doesnt have one at home and he doesnt want one. He doesnt understand MySpace and he despises most new music.
DRE: It is so strange because he is certainly at the right age to be into newer stuff.
Alex: Hes in his early 30s but hes just got an old soul. Hes got that Rat Pack soul but the great thing about that writers room is that we have 15 writers and everyone brings something different. Weve got ages ranging from like 27 to 55 so youve got all these different references. There is such a cool mixed bag of people bringing in bizarro references. I certainly dont have my hands on the pulse in terms of the pop culture. My husband and I just went to the Billboard Music Awards in Vegas a couple days ago and half of the people nominated we were like, Who? What? Someone named Chris Brown won everything. Never heard of him.
DRE: I dont know who he is either.
Alex: But you certainly cant help but know about Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or Gwen Stefani or Fergie.
DRE: How is a decision made to include something like the Tim Curry character from Legend in a Family Guy bit?
Alex: We all sit around a big table together and people bark pitches. It is as though youre at a party with cocktails and frankly sometimes cocktails are involved. I remember one of the episodes that I wrote was called Deep Throat. Peter and Lois created a folk group and Brian is going after Mayor West in a Watergate parody. In the script we had Mayor West sitting in a hotel room watching TV. I wrote that he was just watching cartoons. Then the only other female writer, Cherry [Chevapravatdumrong], had him commenting that he was watching a cartoon called Jem. I didnt know what Jem was but everyone else cracked up and I was like, Ok, put that in. Its weird and interesting. Thats pretty much how it goes. If a lot of the people in the room respond or even if its just one person responding in a huge way, theyll go for it.
DRE: How did you end up joining the Family Guy writing staff?
Alex: When I first started I started just doing voices. I was doing Lois and everything grew. I would start doing more voices and then I would ad-lib a lot. When Seth created the show he was 25 years old. I dont think he ever had a girlfriend and the only women he knew were his mom and his sister. So he had absolutely no idea what he was doing and he will admit that in a heartbeat, like, Ok what do girls wear? They wear hats. Ok, Meg will have a hat. Thats pretty much how he decided things so it was freeing for them when Id come in to do voices and I would change things to make it a little more like something a female character might say. One of the executive producers, Chris Sheridan, said, Would you ever write for us? At that time I was writing for myself on Madtv and before that I had written for cartoons like Casper and Pinky and the Brain. I told them that I would love to do it but that it is just a matter of schedule because I was working for Madtv at the same time. So what we did is that I started working at Family Guy on the summer hiatus from Madtv. Then when Madtv went back to shooting, I would just come into Family Guy as a writer on the days we didnt shoot. I was getting to split my time all over the place and I learned so much. Madtv and Family Guy together really was comedy boot camp.
DRE: Seth has obviously changed his look since he first started Family Guy. He lost the glasses, got some cool looking hair and my wife said hes hot now.
Alex: He thinks he is. I dont want to crush any dreams, he usually does wear glasses but when he goes out for events he takes them off to be cool. But hes still wildly insecure and has absolutely no idea who he is and he doesnt understand even an iota of the opposite sex like most of the writers on television. But he started at 25 and now hes edging on 35 so hes a very different person.
DRE: Especially when you have money to buy nice clothes.
Alex: Exactly and he has people to tell him what to wear now. People that can say, You know what? What if you could wear this vintage t-shirt and your button down shirt open?
DRE: I asked [Family Guy writer/producer/voice actor] Mike Henry what offends him and he said that he doesnt like stuff about kids like the Cancer boy character from Family Guy. What offends you?
Alex: Oh nothing, really. See, thats what happens. All of a sudden when people have kids they change their tune about what offends them. Its very interesting.
DRE: I get worried about that too. I dont get offended very easily and I dont want that to ever change.
Alex: Its very interesting how it will change a person but I dont think its definitive. They have a kid and for the first two years of the kids life theyre not cool with any of those jokes anymore then maybe after a few years they start to mellow.
But not much offends me. Ive always been heavy and Ive always thought that a lot of fat jokes were hilarious. Im a Jew and I think Jew jokes are hilarious. I laugh the hardest at a lot of our Holocaust stuff on the show. I was just raised with laughing in the face of everything.
DRE: What about Mel Gibson?
Alex: I find him to be an idiot. He clearly is anti-Semitic to some degree but I think a lot of people forget that one of the things about living in this country is that youre allowed to be anti-Semitic, youre allowed to hate Jews, youre allowed to hate white people and youre allowed to hate black people. It may not be politically correct and cool but if the Nazis can march in Skokie then Mel Gibson has every right to say Jews are whatever. We dont have to like it, I certainly wont go to his movies and I dont want to support him as an artist. Not that I was that interested in his work anyway. But I think people forget that theres a difference between being like-minded and having the freedom to say what you want.
DRE: Youre right. I hadnt really thought about the fact that he is allowed to say whatever the hell he wants.
Alex: Yeah, everyone forgets that just because you shouldnt say something doesnt mean you cant. I think hes a moron especially if youre a public figure and you want to sell tickets so because of that I think hes an idiot. But for me it only solidifies the fact that anyone would have to be stupid to be anti-Semitic or racist.
DRE: Whats your favorite Lois storyline thats been on Family Guy?
Alex: We have an episode that is coming up that I wrote called; It Takes a Village Idiot and I Married One. Lois runs for mayor of Quahog and wins. It stemmed from another one woman show I was working on called Women and Jews: Why We'll Never Be President. I was in this headspace where I felt that a woman will never be president. So this storyline came out of that. I had these fantasies about a woman president that would be fair and thered be no corruption. Thats a bunch of bullshit fantasy. In the episode Lois gets just as bitten by the corruption bug as anyone. We liked what happened so much in the episode that we wrote a book thats going to come out in April to coincide with the episode.
DRE: Cool! Did you work with any of the other writers on it?
Alex: Yeah, Cherry and I wrote it together. We always laugh at these memoirs people release. It always makes us laugh when anybody assumes the rest of the world cares to read about their lives. We took a look at It Takes a Village, My Living History, Ann Coulters Godless and blah, blah, blah. We had this idea to write a book that looks at Loiss time in office and the book has Lois pontificating her views and telling her story. Whats fun about it is that it has chapters by all the characters in the show where they chime in on her time in office and how they think she did. Of course it has a lot of rambling tangents with a lot of poop jokes.
DRE: Are you guys planning on responding within the show to what South Park did about Family Guy?
Alex: I dont know. Im not sure where everyone is on that. I just know that none of us really cared; we were just excited to be mentioned [laughs]. It is that excitement of, I murdered a person, now Im famous. I think Seth was annoyed but I think Seth just gets that way. Its almost like someone took a swipe at his child. I think we have made some slams back but I dont know if they made it into the final draft of any of the scripts. We are able to do that because in the nine month process that it takes to make an episode, when we get right toward the end where its going to air we do last minute rewrites so we have the opportunity to change things. For instance if we have a Britney and K-Fed marriage joke, when that comes up now it will no longer going to be appropriate so well have a last minute opportunity to alter it or to replace it completely but we would have to use the existing animation. Sometimes thats how we can slip things in that are very timely because we have that last minute pull cord where we can slip something in.
DRE: Are you still working on the cartoon Angry Little Girls?
Alex: I worked on Angry Little Girls for a little while but not anymore. There was just too much going on. Im doing some other live action TV development so I helped develop Angry Little Girls and even did an outline. Then at that stage, unfortunately I was like, Uh-oh, Im not going to be able to do all of this.
DRE: Is it still going to air?
Alex: I think so. I think someone else is picking up where I left off and going to be developing it through completion.
DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?
Alex: My husband told me that he knows what SuicideGirls is but I know very little.
DRE: The fact that your husband knows is good enough.
Alex: But that reminds me I would really like to have Lois do a totally nude layout for Playboy.
DRE: [laughs] Thatd be great. Do you remember when Jessica Rabbit did one for Penthouse?
Alex: She did? Well I think Seth enjoys Playboy more than Penthouse.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
crashrc:
Cool and Cute. I love her comedy, she's such a quirky character.
strega:
Great interview. She is awesome.