"I am not a good lesbian at all'
By Katherine Monk, Film Critic
(The Vancouver Sun, 19. März 2003)

Ellen DeGeneres says she doesn't know how to respond to audience requests for her to 'do something gay'

If Ellen DeGeneres had managed to get her hands on a crystal ball back in 1997, chances are, she'd still be in the closet.

The TV show Ellen would have died the slow death that eventually awaits all sitcoms as people naturally lose interest. The ABC television network and its executives at Disney could have maintained their pearly white image, and the airwaves would have remained homogenous and completely non-representational of the general population for a long time to come.

Problem is, DeGeneres never did get her hands on that crystal ball, and 1997 unfolded the way it was supposed to: DeGeneres came out to America with then-partner Anne Heche, and her alter-ego, Ellen Morgan, came out to a record audience of 46 million viewers with the famous "Puppy Episode," setting in motion a revolution in mainstream culture that continues to echo today, in shows such as Will and Grace and in the likes of sapphic teeny-bopper popsters, Tatu.

Indeed, the world is a different place than it was just six years ago -- and DeGeneres can take some credit for the shift towards increased representation, and tolerance. But she never wanted to be a martyr, and when her show was cancelled shortly after the "coming-out" episode in the wake of declining ratings, DeGeneres was forced to bear a cross she had no interest in carrying.

"My whole life -- as far as just being a person goes -- has had this ripple effect that I could never have foreseen. If I had known what would happen, I don't know if I would have done it," says DeGeneres.

"You know, if someone had given me a crystal ball, and said here -- this is what's going to happen -- I would have said, 'Never mind ... I'll live with the shame. No one needs to know I'm gay.' "

Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles, where she just spent the better part of five months preparing new material for an all-new show which lands her at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre Friday night, DeGeneres sounds downright upbeat -- even as she talks about the darker times of her professional, and private, life.

"You know, it does make a difference that I'm living in an honest way and that I am not ashamed of myself and stood up for something. It was scary as hell. But I did it, and I think any time -- and now, I'm not just talking about a sexual preference issue -- you are scared to let go of something about you because you are scared, and you think people will disapprove, then it's really important that you do it. You have to let it go. You have to be proud of who you are."

Before DeGeneres could sit back and see the good in what she had done for herself -- and many others -- she did spiral inward and struggle with feelings of bitterness and betrayal.

"I think that happens to everybody. We all have a version of what that feels like, and mine was on such a wide scale, that it seemed overwhelming. But at a certain point, you have to make a choice and I chose not to live in that -- and not to focus on it. Instead, I felt like I needed to refocus on what got me here in the first place."

What got Ellen DeGeneres to the top of the entertainment game was standup comedy. A natural comedienne who discovered her gift as a kid growing up in New Orleans, DeGeneres was the first, and only, female comic Johnny Carson ushered into the guest's chair -- after her very first Tonight Show appearance.

This month, she stepped back into the standup spotlight after a two-year absence from the road to prepare for a coming HBO special, which she'll tape in New York at the beginning of May. Following that, she'll move into the final stages of launching her new talk daytime show produced by Warner Brothers and Telepictures, which kicks off in September.

"I do like to drive fast, but my adrenaline comes from stepping on stage. I don't need the thrill. I went eight years without doing standup, but because I have this talk show, I don't just want to sit around the house until the fall. I want to get back out there and talk to people."

Before DeGeneres kicked off the tour two weeks ago in Santa Rosa, Calif., she tested the material in front of a small crowd at a local L.A. club.

"It's been a while since I did a whole new show. The last show was 10 minutes of new material at the beginning and five minutes at the end, with 50 minutes of older stuff in the middle. This time, I'm replacing that middle part with new material. I performed it this week in a 190-seat club, without telling anyone, and I thought I had 50 minutes -- turned out to be two hours. So, I went home, and cut it back, and did it again, and it was two hours. So, I went back, cut it again, and it was still two hours. I feel like I'm defying time."

When the show pulls in to Vancouver, DeGeneres says it will still be a work in progress. "You'll see me up there with my notebook . . . you will definitely see the process at work. I see it as May 1st is the due date, and when I come to Vancouver, you'll see the pregnancy. I will be there, on stage, and perform a sort of sonogram. And you will look at it and say, that doesn't look anything like an HBO special -- it looks like a walnut."

For all of DeGeneres' natural ability, her innate gift for making people giddy, she says she's still close to panic every time she steps on stage.

"I have all those intellectual thoughts that say, 'Oh, you've done this -- you can do this -- be confident.' But you know, I still don't trust it. That show in the 190-seat club was truly frightening. I've hosted the Emmys going live to a billion people after 9/11, and I was scared then, too. I think everything matters. It's not like one is less important than the other, it's all important."

If there's been any shift at all in DeGeneres' mind -- and material -- it's a new level of maturity, on and off stage.

"Even though I'm a perfectionist, I allowed myself to fail -- even though it all went well and I couldn't have been happier, I decided that on this tour, I would let people see my mistakes and not beat myself up about it."

As far as the material itself goes, DeGeneres says the new elements reflect an increased social awareness.

"It's not political -- but social commentary, about manners and how people aren't as nice as they should be. We've been affected by modern technology, we talk to robots on the phone, and people are just less courteous and out for themselves, and lazy ... I'm definitely still speaking about human behaviour and the things that make us embarrassed, but you see these kids growing up around you and it makes you think we need to show more goodness," she says.

"I guess being 45, and getting older, you start to care more about how we treat each other and the planet ... but for the show, it has to be funny. And I think you can be socially responsible and funny at the same time ... People were wiping tears from their eyes at the last show -- from laughter."

DeGeneres says she can never really tell what people will respond to. "I had this one bit about pickle juice -- and I thought it was just too weird, but people responded to it. So, the pickle juice is staying. ... But I'm deconstructing my humour for you, and you are seeing what's behind it. What people see on stage is something funny. Underneath that, is a message that we should be nicer to each other, but I was concerned about being too earnest while I was writing it, and you can't tell until you try it out in front of people."

She says there are a few shortcuts, a few tricks, that pop up regularly in other people's acts such as getting closer to the microphone, or using expletives as punctuation marks.

"Those are the cheapest and easiest ways to get a reaction. I find it much more rewarding to see the heads nod in recognition -- they understand what you are saying -- and it's very comforting to know we all feel the same things, we all share a similar experience in life. That's the thrill for me, and that's why people come to the show -- they can identify with it."

After the famed "outing," DeGeneres worried if she had created a rift in that head-nodding flow of mutual experience when her straight fans seemed to back off, and her gay fans became just a tad too avid.

"I can't represent a whole segment of anything. I can't represent all blond women, or gay women, or women. I love animals, but I can't represent all animal-lovers. I was definitely afraid of losing my straight audience -- who maybe decided not to come to shows because they might think it was some lesbian meeting -- and that we were coming up with the agenda for the year or something. Well, I don't know what the parade route is this year. I don't ride a motorcycle. I don't have tools. I don't even have a rainbow flag on my house. I am not a good lesbian at all.

"My audience is a lot more like it used to be. Less and less straight people are scared of coming ... because they don't have the handbook, they aren't afraid of not getting the gay jokes. I don't have any. The last time I was touring -- no joke -- I was in two separate cities and at the end of the show, I take requests, and in two different cities, two different men got up and asked me to 'do something gay!' ... What am I supposed to do? Put a comb in my back pocket?"

At this point, that's about the extent of the post-outing backlash. DeGeneres is adamant about moving forward.

"Yes, there was a time that I was bitter. It was the culmination of a lot of things at once ... it's like having a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and they can't see your side. It's like what do you mean, you love me but you can't understand what I'm feeling? There were a lot of things that were combustible and I didn't know that. I was naive, but hindsight is 20/20, now I'm sitting in the audience with you guys and now I see it. ... wow! What's wrong with her?" she says.

"Well, I've made big mistakes and I've learned lessons from them. I've also done things that I'm very proud of, and I think often, we often learn more from our mistakes than anything else," she says.

"All I can say is that I feel incredibly lucky to not only have done what I've done, but to get a second chance at the age of 45 is just incredible. For a woman, it's unheard of, so I'm going to make the best of it, and I can honestly say, it feels so right ... I can feel it in my bones."