An insult-slinging, hard-drinking comedian is the most feared woman in Hollywood. DAVID USBORNE reports
KEY POINTS:
You have worn the buttons on your television remote to the bone and still nothing on the five squillion channels appeals to you. So what the heck, numb your brain until bedtime with the ocean of vapid celebrity trivia that you know awaits you on the E! Entertainment channel. If you are lucky maybe that new reality show about Lindsay Lohan's mother and sister is still on.
Stay up late enough and a half-hour chat show will begin called Chelsea Lately. It will open with its host whose name, surprise, is Chelsea, talking into the camera for a few minutes about celebrities.
Thereafter she will introduce her panel of three "cultural experts" who have names and faces that are entirely unfamiliar to you and the conversation will turn to Hollywood. The closing 10 minutes will be taken up with Chelsea interviewing a celebrity.
But hold on ... What did that woman just say? How did we get to "penetration in the disabled stall in the bathrooms"? I have hardly got myself to vertical on the couch before she is calling Maddox, the 6-year-old son of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, a "big dick", the actor David Caruso a "tool" and Sharon Stone a "jackass".
Some of us have done our research. The woman on the screen with the adolescent blond hair - she is 33 - dimpled smile and flashing eyes, was recently featured on the front of LA Direct magazine. The sudden blossoming of her career may only just have started. Soon she may be the most feared bitch - hey, we can say that word here, because she says much much worse on the air - in all America.
Chelsea Handler, by her own admission, was a nobody, a stand-up comedian from New Jersey doing the rounds of clapped-out provincial theatres and clubs, when in 2005 she wrote a book titled My Horizontal Life.
This memoir of mostly disastrous one-stand stands, including a chapter titled "Skid Marks", and a tale about waking up to find a sexually satisfied midget beside her, soared into The New York Times Top 10.
The book touched a nerve with young and less-young women in particular because here was an awfully pretty person willing to skewer herself without mercy. Chelsea was that best friend willing to share the most embarrassing details of the date that went wrong and to offer advice on avoiding the same mistakes.
It won her the attention of Jen Bergstrom, publisher at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
"After devouring Horizontal in one sitting, reading it out loud to friends, quoting up and down and laughing," Bergstrom said "I called her agent, and the rest is history. She's a natural, a truly talented storyteller and writer."
That history includes the publishing of Are you there Vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Vodka is now part of the packaging of Handler, whose fondness for it is one of the many foibles she has decided not to keep secret. Literary scholars among you - and not a few teenage girls - will also know that the title is a reference to the classic young-adult novel Are You There God? It's me, Margaret, by Judy Blume. It has been a blow-out success, hitting the number one spot on the New York Times bestsellers list.
It was not long before the television industry began to take notice. It became apparent at E! that Handler possessed the ability not just to make fun of herself but of others also. So, five nights a week, Handler pokes fun at the very people whose lives and catastrophes the E! channel depends on for ratings. They were wise enough to set no limits on what she and guests felt they needed to say. The formula works because Handler unpicks the vanities of Hollywood while somehow managing still to seem nice doing it. She is vicious in her judgments, but in a tone that avoids snide or snarky - character assassination with a winning smile. What they found in Handler also was an antidote to the Oprah Winfrey school of chatter-boxery.
It helps that most American celebrities set themselves up as easy targets. As a Boston Globe critic said: "Chelsea Handler is the diuretic to Hollywood's chronic case of bloat."
Others might want to restrain their crueller instincts for fear of burning Hollywood bridges, but Handler seems unconcerned about who she upsets. It helps that her show is on cable, where the decency regulations that keep performers on the broadcast networks on the straight and narrow do not apply.
More or less anything goes. Then there is the small detail of her own personal life: her boyfriend is Ted Harbert, who happens to be chief executive of Comcast Entertainment Group, which owns E! Entertainment.
That Handler likes what she is doing is evident. "I found it was the only job you can do while drinking," she said. But working a little less would not be a bad thing.
For sure, her schedule is nuts. From Monday to Friday she must remain in Los Angeles where she does her 30-minute live stint in the studio nightly.
After delivering edition number 100 recently, she said on air that E! had just contracted her to do 150 more. At weekends, she gets on a plane to revisit her life as a stand-up comic around the country.
But back in the TV studio, Handler's show does feature a midget - a tiny, round-bellied fellow named Chuy, whom she also calls her Tootsie Roll.
Chuy is the mostly silent foil in the tradition of Madge Alsop, who sat stage-left of Edna Everage.
Occasionally it features a skit taped ahead of time in deepest Hollywood.
But always there is the parade of bold-faced names, who have done something to earn Handler's mockery.
LOWDOWN
Who: Chelsea Handler, outrageous talk show host
What: Chelsea Lately
When & Where: various late eventing times, E! Entertainment channel
- INDEPENDENT
