Janeane Garofalo’s New Stand-up Special is Full of Tangents
Stand-up comedy may revolve around telling jokes, but not every comic need stick to the letter of that script. Sometimes the spirit counts for just as much. Janeane Garofalo has long explained that she doesn’t exactly write jokes so much as talk to audiences about life in a way that happens to be funny. Even she’s not entirely sure what to call it. In her newest stand-up special on Seeso, If I May, she warns the audience, “Am I a stand-up? I don’t know. I am reticent to call myself that.” Garofalo recounts a young man who approached her after one set and told her, “I enjoyed your talk.” If anything, that seems to be closer to the experience.
However Garofalo delivers her content—whether it’s carefully crafted writing that she’s honed over many shows, or whether she’s riffing on ideas that she keeps on a page nearby onstage—the most important thing is whether or not it works. Her appearance on HBO Comedy Half-Hour in 1995 did. The thoughts connected or at least progressed in her off-the-cuff way. With If I May that’s less certain.
The way Garofalo starts off her special is refreshing, breaking down the pacing that most comedians jump to establish by calling attention to what she’s wearing and how she’s not thrilled with it. Pointing out her bell bottom jeans (and the many inches she had to cut off the bottom so they didn’t drag across the floor) as well as the eyeliner she had to use to cover up her widening hair part, Garofalo spends an extended beat breaking herself down. It’s done with the kind of empowering self-deprecation that made her a beloved comic and actress in the first place, and it’s off-script enough to set the special’s tone.