Girl Walks Into a Bar (3 page)

SHOW!!!!!!

A moment of early showmanship with my aunt Susan. Not pictured in this photo: my jazz hands.

The setting:
A suburban living room, Lexington, Massachusetts

The year: 1975

The Event: A Choreographed Dance to Rosemary Clooney’s “The Kitty Kat’s Party” That Will Rock Your Freaking World

As we look back in history, this is the first known official Rachel Dratch Production that we find in our extensive research. Not only did I serve as choreographer, I was also performer, casting director, publicist, and costume designer.
(Those ears and tails weren’t going to make themselves.) I suppose as I listened to the strains of Rosemary Clooney over and over again on my 78 rpm record (I just lost everyone under the age of forty with that reference), a creative vision began forming in my nine-year-old head, a vision that could not be denied. Yes, the Kitty Kat’s Party must be enacted through the art of The Dahnce. My younger brother and a few neighborhood kids were enlisted to enact said Kitty Kats, to fulfill my Artistic Vision. I believe the lyrics went “At the kitty kat’s party, all the kittens will be there, they’ll be dressed up in their Sunday best with flowers in their hair.” If memory serves, the dance consisted of some minor hand gestures and cat motions, nothing too strenuous … no lifts. And lip-synching. To wrassle up an audience, check out how cute/pathetic this is: I went to the little farm-stand store across the street from my house and put up a homemade sign that simply said “
SHOW!!!!!!
” with my home address and the date and time. The cost of admission, I believe, was twenty-five cents, really a lot of entertainment on the dollar when you think about it. And at the bottom, the sign said “
All proceeds go to Muscular Dystrophy
” because at the time, everyone was having those McDonald’s “carnivals” in their backyards for muscular dystrophy. (Of course, to a kid, finding out that the carnival consisted of a huge vat of orangeade and a beanbag toss was heartbreaking when you were picturing a Ferris wheel magically set up in your neighbor’s backyard.) Needless to say, no proceeds were raised for muscular dystrophy through my production. The audience consisted solely of our parents, but I didn’t mind. Any sucka who wasn’t in the audience that day missed out on quite a SHOW!!!!!!

Soon after this, I met with my first big success in a wider arena. No, I was not cast as one of the orphans in the national tour of
Annie
, though that was surely my fantasy. My fifth-grade teacher, Miss Nancy Tokarz, was a big proponent of creative writing. She had us do a ton of it that year. This is notable because pretty much all my English classes after that were just about reading a great work of literature and commenting on it. She was one of the only teachers I recall in my entire education who focused on creating a story rather than commenting on one. We were assigned to write a story, and one of the stories would be picked to be produced as a play—live on stage! My story was picked and thus, my first work, “Autobiography of a Leaf,” was brought to the masses (and by masses I mean some parents in a gymnasium in Lexington, MA). It was about a leaf who lives through the winter, told, as the title suggests, from the point of view of the talking leaf. Pretty heady stuff. There I was, the narrator, with a green leaf/sandwich board as my costume. When I said, “And then autumn came,” I turned the leaf so the back was now the front, and I went from green to orange. The audience responded. My first big laugh.

By this time
, I had already started watching
Saturday Night Live
, during its very first season. Though my parents were young and hip, I didn’t find
SNL
through them. I discovered
SNL
the way I discovered all things adult and semi-forbidden: through my friend Jill. It was Jill who told me how babies were made that same year, for though my parents were, as I said, young and hip, Jill’s parents were young, hip, and far more open. Jill was seeing R-rated movies like
Jaws
, whereas my first R-rated movie was still years away. Although I was jealous of her adult status, when she got home from seeing the movie with her parents, she did throw up. I guess being on the fast track has its drawbacks.

Along with introducing me to the world of sex and shark attacks, Jill was also my liaison to
Saturday Night Live
. The first time I saw the show, I was sleeping over at her house, and her older brother, Mark, was watching it. Older siblings were scary to me. I was the oldest kid in my family and when faced with a friend’s older sibling, I would skulk around and be very deferential. There was Mark in their living room watching
SNL
, and we plopped down on the floor and started watching it too. I remember being immediately fascinated. What was this secret world I had just stumbled upon? It had a feeling like nothing I’d ever seen on TV. I remember thinking it was really funny, but I also knew full well that half of the jokes were going over my nine-year-old head.

I started watching the show of my own accord every week. If I had a friend sleep over, we would watch
The
Love Boat
, then
Fantasy Island
, and then
SNL
. My friends were never all that interested in
SNL
. I’d feel responsible if one of the sketches was incomprehensible to us. I’d try hard to telepathically send out the vibes to my hapless friends: “Just stick with it!” They would invariably fall asleep partway through, but I would watch the whole thing—I was always a night owl, even back then. My favorites were Lisa Loopner, the Coneheads, Roseanne Roseanna Danna, the Wild and Crazy Guys, Mr. Bill—all the stuff even a kid could understand. I thought “Samurai Delicatessen” was really funny, but I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. The Bees—well, I didn’t get that at all, but I still don’t now, so I’m going to give myself a pass on that one. I remember one week, a musician named David Bowie performed wearing a dress. I didn’t have an explanation for my sleepover friends for this one, either. I had no idea that years later I would be in that very studio, getting my head shot taken for my opening credit, and that David Bowie would be the musical guest for my very first show. While my picture was being taken for my dream job, David Bowie was right there rehearsing with his band, singing “Rebel Rebel.” This time he wasn’t in a dress, though.

I didn’t grow up thinking, “I want to be an ACTRESS!” I thought it seemed like it would be really fun, but it seemed too crazy a dream to have. I did have comedy all around me as a child. My parents loved Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks,
SNL
, Woody Allen, and the Three Stooges* (*Dad only). My father was and still is an exceptionally funny guy. He was particularly good at doing imitations. The baby of the family, he was a typical youngest kid—attention-seeking and the life of the party.
My mom has a creative wit of her own, often put to use in writing funny poems for people’s birthdays, and she served as a good straight man to my dad—“Oh, Paaauuul!” she’d say when he’d start to get what she deemed too unruly. My younger brother, Dan, was in on the action as well, making up goofy songs in the backseat of the car on road trips. He ended up going into comedy too, as a TV writer. The funny thing is, my brother and I weren’t marching around the house saying, “We’re gonna be in COMEDY!” It just kind of happened because of the sense of humor that was floating around, I suppose. I was at a girl’s house during high school, and her father
happened to be a high school classmate of my father. He told me, “Your dad was always imitating the teachers as soon as they left the room!” I had no idea he did that as a kid, but I was busy doing the same thing.

Halloween, 1976—My Brother and I show an early affinity for the comedy world: Dan is the Unknown Comic from
The Gong Show,
and I am a Conehead. (Can you tell I made my own costume?)

Throw into this mix my group of funny girlfriends, many of whom I’d known since elementary school, who only added to my burgeoning class clown status. I would pipe up with one-liners from my seat in junior high. As I grew older, I still didn’t seriously think of trying to become a professional actor, yet I kept doing plays. I went to summer theater camp four years in a row, which I think officially qualifies me as a drama geek. Though I hung out on weekends with jocks and the group who would go drink in the woods (not so unlike Sully and Denise, the sketch I would do on
SNL
), during the school week, I’d be puttin’ on the ol’ “character shoes” to rehearse for the high school musical. (Fellow drama geeks will back me up—those Capezio character shoes signified you meant business and probably knew the lyrics to “Out Here on My Own” from
Fame
by heart.) Even so, acting was just a hobby to me, and besides, I was off to a prestigious college where I’d probably end up becoming a professional of some sort, perhaps a psychologist, I was thinking. I had no idea my choice of college would send me running into the world of comedy.

WASP World