"Ellen´s Point"

Ellen DeGeneres Kicks Off First Tour In Seven Years
By Ron Todt, Associated Press Writer
(Queery.com, Mai 2000)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) Comedian Ellen DeGeneres, opening a two-month nationwide road trip to perform standup comedy for the first time in seven years, says expect weird, expect silly - just don't expect political.
``I've never done political humor,'' said DeGeneres, who opens the tour tonight in Easton, Pa., gearing up to an HBO special to be filmed in July. ``Even when I was supposedly political, it was just speaking out about being gay, and that became political.''
Her new show will be more typical - ``just long rambling stories that sometimes have a point,'' she said. ``I do comment on things in general, but it's got nothing to do with being gay, just how hard and stressful it is to go through this world.''
DeGeneres admits that she worries that people might stay away, thinking that they will be in for political or gay-themed humor, the same worries she had when she came out as a lesbian along with her lead character on ``Ellen,'' the ABC sitcom canceled two years ago.
``There was fear the whole time, one that I would lose my job, and two, that I would lose the audience, that people would feel they couldn't relate to me,'' DeGeneres said. And she admits that might have played a role in the demise of the show.
``I didn't understand it, but the reality was that the ratings just dropped,'' DeGeneres said. ``Part of it was the show was not being advertised and supported, and part of it was that it narrowed the audience down.''
DeGeneres thinks it would be different story now. In fact, she said, if the show had continued, it might have ended up looking a bit like ``Will & Grace,'' with her character and Joely Fisher, playing Paige Clark, moving in as platonic roommates. ``I thought Paige and I would be a good couple, this heterosexual woman and my character,'' DeGeneres said. ``That's where I wanted to take the show, doing an 'Odd Couple' as gay-straight. Now 'Will & Grace,' which I love, is doing that.''
She is still shocked by the sign-waving protesters who follow her appearances, such as those outside a recent benefit at which she was only one of many performers. But she is also nonplussed by some of her rabid fans. ``There's a woman who came to see me at a club, she had a tattoo of me on her back. She wanted me to sign it,'' DeGeneres said. ``I'm making a rule that I will not sign people's body parts.''
``It's made me this icon,'' DeGeneres said. ``I didn't ask for it. I didn't say, 'I'll be a leader.' I don't know how to be a leader. I just know I'm a comedian. I love performing, and I love making people laugh.''
She finds out during the tour whether CBS will pick up a pilot for a new TV show in which she plays the host of a sketch-variety show, a kind of cross between the ``Carol Burnett'' and the backstage satire of ``The Larry Sanders Show.''
And her tour will be filmed for a documentary by her partner, Anne Heche. DeGeneres said the two are interested not only in the preparations for the show but also in the reaction, good and bad, they get on the road while traveling as a couple. Filming started during the huge gay rights march over the weekend in Washington, D.C.
DeGeneres said she is happy that Vermont last month became the first in the nation to give gay and lesbian couples the benefits of marriage. But she said she has mixed feelings about the arrangement creating civil unions as a legal framework parallel to marriage.
``I don't know why it has to be called something different,'' she said. ``It means we're still not the same, we're still treated as second-best. It's like saying blacks can marry but we're calling it something else.''
She and Heche have talked about getting married in Vermont, as they said last year at a rally they would if the state approved gay marriage.
``I actually enjoy this life, that my daily experience is to constantly be aware of my journey ... and I recognize the fight for my rights every day,'' DeGeneres said. ``I think most people take them for granted.''

DeGeneres returns to first love -- stand-up comedy
By Mary Lamey
(Calgary Herald, 10. Mai 2000)

They had a queer comedy festival in Toronto last weekend and the world's most famous lesbian comic wasn't there.
"I don't do queer comedy," Ellen DeGeneres said in a phone chat from Easton, Penn., the first stop on a 43-date tour. "Good for them for having the festival. That's great, but that's not what I do." DeGeneres's list of what she doesn't do is fairly short. "I don't do raunchy, I don't do political humour and I don't wear a great big diaper and put a rubber glove on my head. I don't pander," she said.
And, until this week, she hadn't done a string of stand-up dates in seven years. DeGeneres performs Thursday in Montreal as part of a tour that will culminate with the taping of an HBO special in New York in late June. This is DeGeneres's equivalent of getting back on a horse after a very long time out of the saddle.
"I'm looking forward to telling jokes without anyone editing me – to being purely myself," said the comic, who is known for her bemused, slightly scattered observational humour.
DeGeneres earned headlines and a Time magazine cover three years ago when both she and her TV character Ellen Morgan came out as lesbians at the same time. That act brought her notoriety and a place in TV history as the first out lead character on a network program. Suddenly, DeGeneres and her companion, actress Anne Heche, were everywhere, poster girls for gay rights. On one hand, a personal weight fell from the comic's shoulders. On the other, ABC cancelled the series, claiming ratings for the new gay Ellen were a flop.
In setting up the interview, a DeGeneres publicist set the ground rules. "She doesn't want to talk about the personal stuff. That's been pretty well hashed over." Far from avoiding the "personal stuff," DeGeneres, 41, introduced it herself. "If there's one thing the last three years have taught me, it's that whatever happens, I can keep moving on. That's why I'm going back to stand-up. It's my roots, it's what I do. Let's see if I can still do it."
She's written an all-new set, one that touches on the controversy that engulfed her, but which isn't all gay by any means, she said. "It took some time and healing for me to be able to laugh about it, but now I can laugh about the experience," she said of coming out. "This will be my first time out of my house in a while. We'll see how people respond."
Response from gay fans has been nothing but supportive. DeGeneres attended last weekend's march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights, an event that attracted 800,000 people. She did a brief set during a concert at RFK Stadium that featured Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang, among others.
"The response from the crowd was overwhelming. I was crying up there onstage," she said. That's great, but will Fred and Doris, who might have come to see her before they knew she was gay, still come to her shows?
"I think Fred and Doris always knew I was gay. They didn't care, except after a while they wished I'd stop talking about it," DeGeneres said. She tried out her new material in a few low-key club dates in Los Angeles. The crowds, "a healthy mix of all kinds of people," laughed.
"My more gay-focused fans came, but I like to think they came because they think I'm funny. I mean, if anyone's coming to the show because they think I'm going to lead a meeting, they're going to be disappointed."
Heche, who is between movie roles, is on tour with her, filming a documentary about DeGeneres's return to the road. "We were trying to figure out a way that she could come along. This seemed the perfect thing. She didn't want to leave me for six weeks and I certainly didn't want to be without her."
After the tour, DeGeneres will head back to TV land. She'll star in a new CBS variety series that's one part Carol Burnett Show and one part Larry Sanders. There will be backstage bits, a la Sanders, and variety bits with DeGeneres and cast, including Tim Conway. Will it be a real variety show, with celebrity guests like Robert Goulet? "If you want Robert Goulet, we'll get him," she said peppily.

Ellen's road trip stops here
By Wayne Perry
(Boston, 16.05.00)

A lot has happened to Ellen DeGeneres since she last did stand-up comedy seven years ago.
She and her sitcom character came out on national TV. She won an Emmy, was on the cover of Time and became the best-known gay person in the world.
But, despite making TV history and becoming a rallying point for gay acceptance, she says her humor remains the same.
"It hasn't changed," she said in a phone interview during her current comedy tour, which stops here at the Taft Theatre Wednesday. "I know there was a concern that I had that people would expect me to be different - and I wondered if I should be different. But ultimately I just decided to write what I write. It's just comedy, and it's got nothing to do with the fact that I came out.
"If you liked my stand-up before, it's the same sense of humor. It's the same rambling on, seeming to go someplace, and for awhile you don't know where I'm going - and then you end up saying, 'Oh, I see where you're going.'"
Her offbeat style of humor has never been political, she said, even if others saw it that way.
"When you stand up for something, you're going to narrow an audience down, and that seems to become political, whether it's your political party or religion or whatever.
"And I think that definitely had an effect, and limited some of my audience, because they felt like I was political. But I never thought just by saying that I was gay that it would become political. So, no, it's not political humor at all."
Going back on the road was not easy, Ms. DeGeneres said. Her 43-city tour will culminate with an HBO special, to air July 23.
"It was a scary thing. I was really scared of getting back on stage again," she said.
"When you don't do something for a long time, whatever it is, even if it comes naturally, it's hard. But it's how I got started. The name of the tour and the HBO special is 'The Beginning.' And I do feel like this is a new be ginning for me. This is how I began my career. People forget that, and I wanted to refocus. I think people forgot for awhile that I'm a comedian."
Ms. DeGeneres said she worried, too, about the response she'd get on the road.
"But it's been amazing. We've seen so much acceptance and support, from every type of person, for both Anne and myself."
Anne, of course, is Ms. DeGeneres' partner, actress Anne Heche. She's traveling with the show and directing a documentary of Ms. DeGeneres' return to stand-up; she'll be filming at the Taft.
After the current tour, Ms. DeGeneres will start work on her new TV show in Los Angeles, if CBS gives it the green light for the fall season this week.
"It's called 'The Ellen Show.' Write it down so you'll remember the name of it. It's kind of a like a cross between Carol Burnett and 'The Larry Sanders Show.'
"Basically it's a good old-fashioned sketch variety show, the kind that we don't have on the air anymore. I don't like mean-spirited comedy, and I think most of TV is kind of mean-spirited now.
"Listen, if bell bottoms can come back into fashion, so can nice humor."
Another new project is taking Ms. DeGeneres into cyberspace. "We're doing something for Z.com. This will be the first time that a Web site has broadcast live programming every single day. It starts May 22, and so you'll see us from the road daily. And then once a week we'll do a six-minute short."

Ellen's in her element
Bill Brownstein
(Montreal Gazette, Mai/Juni 2000)

It helps when you have the audience in the hip pocket of your Dockers. It also helps when you have the comic goods to follow up on your appeal.
Ellen DeGeneres had both last night as she won the hearts and chuckles of a nearly full house at Place des Arts's Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. Before she even opened her mouth, DeGeneres - making her first appearance in Montreal - drew huge applause.
That's because many in attendance know DeGeneres from her defunct TV series, in which she made history by becoming the first gay leading character on the tube.
But well before TV, DeGeneres made her mark on the stand-up circuit. DeGeneres's current tour is her first in seven years, and she didn't miss many beats. It seemed almost effortless as she let loose with her stream - of mostly mellow - consciousness. DeGeneres's forte is riffing on everyday life, but she can make the banal seem so darned witty, even profound.
She conceded that the last few years since her sitcom was canceled and her life became an open book haven't been easy. "By the way, I'm gay," she said straight-faced. "But I don't want to talk about it. My feelings would best be expressed through interpretive dance." So she proceeded to do some nonsense interpretive dance to break the ice.
But her silence on the subject didn't last long. "I was scared about coming out for the longest time, and when I came out, it was apparent why I was so scared to come out. It was scary."
That now behind her, DeGeneres announced she's ready for new challenges. Like questioning the need for adding directions on the back of shampoo bottles. And for folks still unclear on the concept, the need for putting a 1-800 telephone for further queries.
On that note, DeGeneres was not so shocked to learn that humans use only 10 per cent of their brains. "It's amazing what we could do if we used the other 60 per cent," she deadpanned.
She followed on the self-deprecatory theme with this insight: "When you go to bed at night and are left to your thoughts ... that's when you find out just how boring you really are." That's when you debate over the merits of making your own tuna salad or ordering out. That sort of stuff.
A fashion statement DeGeneres isn't, and proud of it. "Ever been caught wearing the same thing as someone at a party. It's happened to me twice. Both times it was William Shatner. But I think I look better in a tube top."
She avoids raunch, but not rich imagery. "What's the deal with the mile-high club? I don't know how two can fit in an airplane bathroom to have sex. I barely have enough room to get into the bathroom to have sex with myself."
DeGeneres finds it curious that the people who oppose same-sex marriage are often the ones who think that it will lead to marriage with animals. "I can't imagine marrying a goat. I can't even imagine dating a goat. Really."
And speaking of matters sacred, why is it, DeGeneres wonders, that we never see the pope loosen up in a pair of shorts and a tank top?
So many questions, so few answers. And, perhaps, the pope and other DeGeneres targets are breathing a sigh of relief that humans use only 10 per cent of their brain-power.

DeGeneres entertains in detail
Routine's small talk gets big response at Majestic
By Tom Maurstad
(The Dallas Morning News, 18.6.2000)

Ellen DeGeneres went on television to come out, but she's gone on the road to come back.
That comeback brought her to the Majestic Theatre on Saturday night, where a sold-out crowd eagerly welcomed her back.
When last we saw her, Ms. DeGeneres was at the center of the media conflagration over her sexuality - she was and may still be the most famous lesbian on the planet. The thing is, now she wants to get back to the business of being funny.
And as she made clear again and again, Ms. DeGeneres is very funny. She opened her performance in a way intended to dispatch all the tabloid hysteria. "I think the best way to communicate the last three years [since she came out and her ABC sitcom was canceled] is through interpretive dance."
The routine that followed revealed several things. Most surprising may be that Ms. DeGeneres actually can dance - she got her happy-disco groove going. Also, as she went through her kinetic narrative (being pushed, pulled, chased before curling into the fetal position and then springing up again), she proved that interpretative dance was the best way to deal with the last three years.
But after that opening with her talk of facing the fear of coming out and learning "to live life honestly and beautifully," she set about doing what she used to do before she became a Hollywood crusader.
For all of the controversy she's caused, Ms. DeGeneres is the least controversial comic you'll ever hear. With her gentle, observational humor, she is a throwback to a world before swear words and cynicism. The art of her comedy is - like that of Bob Newhart, another incendiary figure - in conversation, at least the one side of it we get to hear. This is timeless stuff, set off by introductions such as "Did you ever notice ..." or "What if ..."
Thus, the audience got routines based on "Did you ever notice the way ants always walk in single file?" or "What if you were out of cheese and you went to the store and they were out of cheese?" As you can see, the possibilities are limitless. At least they seemed to be as Ms. DeGeneres unspooled hilarious stories full of her trademark motif - endlessly extrapolating details. So when she tells you about her meeting with God (over fondue and Chablis), you not only learn that God is a beautiful, black woman in her mid-40s, you learn that the Chablis God served had "a peppery oak aftertaste."
It's the little things that mark Ellen DeGeneres' comedy, and on Saturday night, they all got big laughs.

DeGeneres back in comedy saddle with her return to stand-up basics
By Mike McDaniel
(Houston Chronicle Friday, 23. Juni 2000)

This is the nature of the TV beast. One day you're on top of the world, making history, pulling in big numbers. Next day, you're meat. A star with no fire, no future. In danger of slipping into the black hole of anonymity.
Afraid to come out. Then coming out. Then hit in the face with a banana creme pie. Pink-slipped. Rejected. Dismissed. Fired. Unwanted.
Three years ago, this was Ellen DeGeneres. Declaring herself gay in national magazines as well as on her ABC sitcom, "Ellen," she encountered/embraced/endured a period of celebrity that was too white-hot to maintain. And when her show began to take on a preachy, gay-centric and often unfunny tone, even her biggest admirers came out against her. She was out in April 1997, off the air by May 1998.
She never quite left our consciousness -- there were a couple of movies she made before the sitcom died, and girlfriend Anne Heche cast her recently in HBO's "If These Walls Could Talk II." She and Heche would show up at celebrity events together.
But DeGeneres wasn't working, and that was not acceptable to someone with workaholic tendencies. It drove her back into a closet. Maybe not the one dealing with sexuality, but one that had some of its elements.
She felt confused, undesired, paralyzed.
"In some people's minds, it may seem like I didn't disappear, but those movies ('EdTV,' 'Goodbye Lover') were done before my show was canceled, except for 'The Love Letter,' which was immediately after," the 42-year-old comedian said. "But it's been three years since I've done anything except for the HBO piece, and the only reason that happened was because Anne wrote and directed it for me."
Now she's back, and she's taking the route that made her a star -- stand-up. Her eight-week, 35-city bus tour (yes, bus tour) reaches Seattle Thursday and eventually she'll wend her way to New York, where her show will be taped for a July 23 HBO special.
And this time, she's playing it straight, so to speak. The show is not about her being a lesbian. It's not a forum for civil rights. It's about funny.
"I didn't want this to be a big show about me being gay," she said. "Iwanted to blend everything.
"It would be a big gaping hole if I didn't address at all my life for the last three years. So I do talk about it in the beginning, just to get it out of the way, but I do it in a funny way. I don't really talk about it so much as show you -- and that's all I'll say."
She's proud she came out, she says, but the rejection she suffered when her show got axed tapped into feelings of worthlessness and rejection gay people fear.
"During that time, yeah, I was wounded, I was like an open sore.
"Anything affected me. Anything. There was a period of time I couldn't turn on TV without being a sketch on 'Saturday Night Live' or the butt of a joke in a monologue. Whatever. It just got to be too much. That was my first glimpse of, wow, this is such a negative world, and it's every arena: it's television, it's press, it's just people talking, it's sitcoms. You don't notice it until you are the recipient of it.
"I started seeing that everybody is making fun of somebody else. There's a joke at someone else's expense. Or it's a cynical sense of humor or critical and I thought, 'That's not what I've ever done. My comedy has been nice, and it's always been gentle and lots of silence and pauses, and I need to bring that out to the world. That's missing right now.'
"First of all, I'm a comedian. One of the reasons for the tour is I wanted to refocus everyone on what I do. Yes, I'm gay, and everybody knows that. Now let's get beyond that and remember how I got here in the first place. I was a comedian; people did like me; and if I left some audience members along the way, that's more about them than it is about me.
"I just wanted to remind people about who I am as an artist, that I'm funny and love giving people joy. I became a representation of someone who's gay and kind of became a symbol instead of an artist, and now I hope I'm a representation of survival."
The critical buzz of those who've seen her on this "comeback tour" has been good and strong, just the affirmation DeGeneres needed.

Too much hype can injure anyone
Mitch Albom
(Detroit Free Press, July 23, 2000)

I was sick of Ellen, and I had never even met her.
She was everywhere you looked. Television. Newspapers. Magazine covers - all because she was about to declare her homosexuality.
You remember that, don't you?
"Only two more weeks until Ellen comes out." "Only four more days until Ellen comes out."
Ellen -- comic Ellen DeGeneres -- was the star of her own TV sitcom, which, in 1997, had begun to dip in the ratings. This raised speculation that the "coming out thing" -- to be revealed in the last episode of the season -- was a desperate grab for viewers.
Well, the program got viewers. More than 35 million watched – making it the top-rated show for the week. Viewers saw Ellen the character declare on television what Ellen the person had long ago declared to herself: She was gay.
For a fleeting moment, it was big news.
And then a funny thing happened to the funny woman. She stopped being funny. The new season arrived, and every episode seemed laden with gay issues. Without the hype, this simply became weight.
The show sank beneath it.
By 1998, Ellen, the TV show, was canceled. And Ellen the person? She became a buzzword for every gay joke. She was parodied on "Saturday Night Live." Her show's demise was hailed as a victory for anti-gay forces in America.
I remember hearing a voice say: "Who cares? You want to hype yourself like that, be prepared for the consequences."
The voice was mine.
In her own words
And then last week, a funny thing happened between the funny woman and me. I talked to her.
She was planning an HBO special -- a comeback of sorts -- and I agreed to do an interview. After a few perfunctory questions, I got to the obvious one:
"With all that has happened, are you sorry you came out the way you did?"
Here is what she said: "It was supposed to be a surprise in the last episode. But it leaked. Someone called and said, 'Turn on the radio; they're talking about you coming out!' And suddenly it seemed like everyone in America was talking about it. I thought, 'How can I live up to this?'
"And when we did the show and it came out well, and I thought: 'That'll be it. It'll go away now.'
"I was so naive....
"The show got canceled, and I fell into a deep depression. There was such a backlash, and it seemed like I was the butt of every gay joke on television.
"It sent me spiraling down as far as a person can go. We're all filled with shame one way or another. And being gay you're filled with more of it because of how society treats you.
"I let the shame get to me. Every article that was written, every sketch on 'Saturday Night Live' -- every single mean-spirited thing -- tapped right into that wounded place in me."
I listened to the pain in her voice. I had used many adjectives over the years to describe Ellen. "Wounded" had never occurred to me.
Right from the heart
She talked more, about growing up in a conservative, Christian Science family in New Orleans, about being taught "not to be different."
She joked about renaming herself "the artist formerly known as a lesbian" because she had become more a symbol than a person.
She was forthright and modest. And somewhere in the conversation, I remembered something. That before people are gay or straight, black or white, famous or infamous, they are human beings.
In the culture of celebrities, we can forget that. I think I forgot it with Ellen. I let that huge spotlight blind me to the idea that she had feelings, too.
She is doing this HBO thing, which airs at 10 tonight, and in a world where comedy has become vicious, Ellen has vowed not to make fun of people. Mostly because she remembers how it felt.
"Hey," she said, "if bell-bottoms can come back, then nice humor can come back, too, right?"
I hope so. I hope people watch her. I hope they laugh. I think laughter breaks down barriers. And obviously, if I am any example, Ellen has become pretty good at that.