She’s Still The Best: Suzanne Westenhoefer Talks to Cherry Grrl

Before Suzanne Westenhoefer, an openly lesbian comedian had never appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman.” Before Suzanne Westenhoefer, no out lesbian had ever garnered an HBO Comedy Special. Let’s face it: before the hysterical Suzanne Westenhoefer hit the comedy scene in the early ’90s, the world was simply not nearly as funny. Now, it’s hard to find a female comedian who isn’t a lesbian. And leading the pack as one of the most successful and talented of them all, you will still find Suzanne Westenhoefer. Here, Cherry Grrl talks with the busy funny lady about her impressive career, her decision to enter into comedy as an out lesbian, performing with the Indigo Girls, and more.

Cherry Grrl (CG): We last saw you out at The Dinah back in April. Did you have a good time out there?
Suzanne Westenhoefer (SW): It was awesome. And if you live in LA, especially, all your friends go and like everybody that you know – all the people that you have worked with that you never get to see – everyone is there. All the other comics are there… it’s fun.

CG: A highlight for many was definitely when you got up on stage during the Indigo Girls show and performed “Closer to Fine” with them. How did that come together? Did they give you any notice beforehand about the performance or rehearse with you?
SW: (laughs) No, I did not rehearse with them. I was texting Emily to try to meet up – because she wanted my partner and I to come and be backstage with her – and then as we were getting closer and closer she said, “You should get up and sing. Come on, get up and sing.” And I was going, I don’t know… And then she was like, “Come on – sing, sing, sing!” – because I had done it once before, just the chorus. And my girlfriend was going, “You should sing!” And so pretty much sort of last minute while we were there and everybody – Amy, Emily, my girlfriend, me, and July Wolf – was like, “Just do it!” – I was like, “OK!” And then you’re like… okay, all right – I’m going to do it. And then they go out and they start singing but they’ve got like 10 songs and that’s their last song.  So for 10 songs you’re going: “No I can’t! Yes I can! No I can’t! Yes I can!” It would have been better had that been the first song… when I still had my nerves.

CG: Well we think you did great. And your other big performance, your own show, seemed to go really well too.
SW: Oh, yeah – it’s nice to do the comedy on Thursday night before everybody gets completely insane (laughs). I think by the time Saturday roles around Mariah is very smart in doing music because everybody has then been partying all day and drinking all day and hooking up all day and being crazy – and you don’t want to have to compete with that.

CG: So I’ve read that you don’t write out your routine before performing. If that’s true, how does your process in coming up with such hysterical material work?
SW: It’s what I would call extemporaneous; it’s like I kind of know what I want to say and then I try to say those things and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t and sometimes I don’t say them exactly the way I want to say them. And it’s not exactly totally off the cuff, but it’s a lot off the cuff. And it’s sort of very present and in the moment – like whatever is sort of going on and what I’m thinking about and whatever has happened and whatever I think is funny at the time. Because I can’t tell the same stories for years and years… I can tell the same story for maybe like a year and a half and then I’m like, I can’t tell that story anymore (laughs). And then maybe I’ll tell it for a little while and then it’s not funny and then it will be funny again in a year because something different happened and now it’s funny for different reasons. It’s very hard to explain but I don’t write jokes or have a set act – it’s all extremely fluid and very much about whatever is happening in my life. And the audiences’ life – if something happens in the audience and I’m on stage, we experience it together. Or if something is happening in the world, or in the gay community – it gets talked about.

CG: And speaking of the gay community, with Prop. 8 and gay marriage being such a hot topic everywhere these days, does that type of issue work its way into your act a lot?
SW: I would have to say yes. Some nights that’s a very big part of the show and some nights it’s not. Because like, I was in Wichita doing a show two weekends ago and the truth is… it just wasn’t even appropriate to talk about. Because that was the day that they had just buried Dr. George Tiller, who had been murdered. He was an abortion provider. And to get up and do some kind of rant about how California hasn’t made gay marriage legal yet… I mean even when I spoke about it to people who are from the state of Kansas, or had driven three hours from Oklahoma, it seemed very out of touch. Like, we don’t give a shit about the fact that you can’t get married – right now we’re still having our doctors being shot… we’re a little behind you. And so you have to kind of also pay attention to where you are. A lot of the women in the audience that night had gone to the funeral and helped protect the family from the media and were shook up from a very different space – from a violent space, from a civil rights space… from something just really different. And they’re not looking at all for any chance to have gay Civil Unions even an option. So it can sound very whiny and very spoiled – like we already have Domestic Partnership and it’s pretty likely that gay marriage is going to be legal in California in the next few years, so you don’t want to sound like you’re completely out of touch with the entire gay community. You know what I mean? And so I’m not stupid,

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