Queen of Acerbity Takes on the World

Sandra Bernhard. Photo by Richard Mitchell

 

After she graduated from high school, Sandra Bernhard spent a year cleaning guts out of kosher chickens at Kibbutz Kfar Menahem in Israel.

"My main job was vacuuming out lungs in the slaughterhouse, which I actually enjoyed, believe it or not," she told The Journal via a telephone interview.

That's not so hard to believe coming from Bernhard, 49, now renowned for eviscerations of a more verbal kind. With a menacing smile and a sneer on her Mick Jaggeresque lips, she dishes it out as comedy's reigning Queen of Acerbity. Since her 1989 hit show, "Without You I'm Nothing," made her a cult figure, she's continued to slaughter sacred cows in the realm of fashion, celebrity, sexuality and politics.

More recently, Playboy labeled the bisexual actress-comic-singer one of society's definitive outlaw humorists and a "self-anointed, fully realized diva." Even though she now has a 6-year-old daughter and assiduously practices kabbalah, her fans continue to watch the Jagger lips to see what scandalousness will emerge next.

When Ralph Lauren (né Lifshitz) won a fashion award, Bernhard announced to his face and in front of the audience: "There's nothing like the sight of a Jewish cowboy riding off into the sunset. I sure do love your sheets, Mr. Lifshitz."

On same-sex marriages, she said: "Every person deserves equal rights, no matter whom they love. Laura Bush enjoys certain privileges and look, she's made a hideous choice -- but it's none of my business."

Bernhard's infamous big mouth remains relatively mum, however, about specific bits in her new show, "Everything Bad and Beautiful," which kicks off a national tour at the Silent Movie Theatre this week. She says the title "describes how I feel about the state of the world" and that she'll riff on what personally shocks her: "Stupidity, arrogance and hubris."

George W. Bush will earn a reprieve in this particular show. Instead, Bernhard will skewer "people around him" such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"It's more about how much almost compassion I have for her, being trapped in that world, being a black woman, to be so self-loathing," she said.

Just don't accuse Bernhard of taking potshots at the powerful.

"It's not about targets, it's about going beneath the surface to see what underpins things," she said.

"Everything I do has got some sort of ironic base, but I don't consider what I do a comedy show," she added. "I'm an entertainer, a performer, a social commentator, a provocateur."

Bernhard was less provocateur than balabusta during an interview last Friday afternoon. As her 6-year-old, Cicely, prattled in the background, she described the Shabbat dinner she intended to cook (kosher steak, potatoes, vegetables, challah); her daily Zohar meditations that "connect to the upper sephirot;" her Saturday sojourns to synagogue; and her new comic bit about international shul hopping.

"I like the intensity of hearing the whole Torah reading," she said. "I never miss it wherever I go."

She was less meticulous about attending services during her Conservative childhood, when Bernhard herself became the victim of verbal attacks upon moving from Michigan to Scottsdale, Ariz., at age 10. She says the local children were not as sophisticated as those in the East and ragged on young Sandra, the daughter of a proctologist, because she "was different." Bernhard said she developed her humor as a survival mechanism and took it with her to Kibbutz Kfar Menahem, which toughened her up and gave her what she describes as "a fabulous work ethic."

Upon her return to the United States in the 1970s, she drove her Plymouth jalopy out to Los Angeles, worked as a manicurist during the day and practiced her caustic act at clubs at night.

By 1983, Bernhard had earned rave reviews playing a crazy fan opposite Jerry Lewis and Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy." She went on to star in films such as "Hudson Hawk" and to portray the first regular TV character to come out as gay on "Roseanne."

Along the way, she teased the public with her ambiguous sexuality (she's since come out as a bisexual); her equally ambiguous relationship with ex-gal pal Madonna (she eventually admitted they did not have an affair); and her outrageous stage shows. Her act combined wicked riffs with torchy renditions of rock 'n' roll songs and sometimes concluded with Bernhard ripping her blouse off to Prince's "Little Red Corvette."

Of late, she's re-invented herself as a prime-time TV guest star, playing the kinds of characters one might expect of the Queen of Acerbity: a scathing creative-writing professor on the lesbian chic show, "The L World," for example, and a gritty detective on "Crossing Jordan."

And what Jewish woman doesn't remember the "Will & Grace" episode in which she announced that The Forward had named her "Jewess of the Year?"

Bernhard is even more famous -- among Jews and non-Jews -- as one of the first celebrities to study kabbalah. She discovered the practice when her non-Jewish, Brazilian trainer took her to a lecture at the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles on her 40th birthday. Although she had always enjoyed celebrating the Jewish holidays, Bernhard had been so focused on her career that she was feeling a spiritual void. So she frequented the center's lectures, purchased a full set of the Zohar in Hebrew and English and visited the kabbalistic city of Safed, Israel.

Why was she drawn to kabbalah?

"It's the only thing that really explains why you're doing what you do [in Judaism]. Why you light candles, why you drink wine, why you make the brachas over your food. It puts all kinds of tradition and ritual into a spiritual context.... You just start putting it into your daily routine and it just brings a sense of order."

What does she think about all the other celebrities jumping on the kabbalah bandwagon?

"If you really want to change and you're really connected to it and you can integrate it into your life day to day ... fabulous," she said. "[But] there are so many different levels of hypocrisy and weirdness in people's desire to connect to something and a lot of it is fashion."

"When you're constantly proselytizing or running around letting people know you're studying kabbalah, it's really irritating and I don't like it," she said (Bernhard doesn't name names). "I mean, I'm not judging, I'm like, great, if they're into it I think that's fabulous but I think ... you either are it or you're not."

The performer is gentler when discussing The Kabbalah Centre.

"I've gotten a lot out of it ... but it's changed a lot since I started 10 years ago," said Bernhard, who now hopes to find additional teachers for herself. "I think they are a little bit lost on their own spiritual path right now. I think they've been overwhelmed by celebrity and that's always a corrupting experience."

The performer will no doubt eviscerate the corrupting experience of celebrity in her new show at the Silent Movie Theatre.

"It's not about offending people, it's about waking people up," she said.

"Everything Bad and Beautiful" is scheduled March 9-25 at Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. For tickets and information, call (323) 655-2520.