Jon Stewart: The Playboy Interview (50 Years of the Playboy Interview)

by Playboy

  Playboy: What can’t you wait to write about in the next book?

  Stewart: As far as I can tell, in this country we can’t keep a secret about anything. We even found out that Dick Morris was sucking the toes of a prostitute. So how come the guys protecting the truth about whether or not we’ve been visited by extraterrestrials have their shit together? I would love to figure out a way to write about the sciences. Cloning: We just hit 6 billion people and we’re still working on a new way to make new people? It’s fascinating that, with all the world’s problems, scientists decided to make hard-on pills. I might write about how to make Viagra palatable. It could come in a gelatinous form, like Jell-O cubes, because we need to make it fun for kids, too! And I guess if you’re 80, Jell-O is just easier to swallow. Pretty soon it’ll be a Viagra patch. Or it’ll be a pull cord somehow. It’s this crazy idea that if we somehow keep old people fucking, everything’s going to work itself out. It boggles my mind that that’s where the money goes.

  Violence is another interesting area, especially with kids who don’t realize that everything they’re so bummed out about now will turn around. My idea on solving that issue is to take high school kids on field trips. But not to planetariums and museums; take them to 20-year high school reunions. “See the fat guy over there? Bald? Crying in his beer? Captain of the football team.” “That nerdy guy with the pocket protector? A billionaire.” Giving them a sense of perspective would be good, and maybe we’d even come up with a cool T-shirt to give the kids.

  Playboy: Let’s investigate your style. Thin ties or wide ties?

  Stewart: You mean to wear? I wasn’t sure. It’s Playboy, so I figured at some point I’m going to have to throw in my sexual proclivities.

  Playboy: Better topic. Go ahead.

  Stewart: I fuck cheese!

  Playboy: Anything else?

  Stewart: In bed I always apologize. I take responsibility for a job poorly done. I like to end sex with, “I beg your pardon.” Sometimes, if I’ve been doing a film, I’ll say, “Check the gate.” Or: “Sign this form and you can go. You can take something off craft services on your way out. We’ll call you for the premiere.”

  Playboy: When was the first time you had sex?

  Stewart: What time is it? I guess I was 18. I was a freshman in college.

  Playboy: When was the first time you had good sex?

  Stewart: Boy, I’m not good with dates. You mean sex with love, where there’s actually emotion involved, other than fear?

  Playboy: Yes. When did fear leave your sexual routine?

  Stewart: [Whispers] It was Christmas 1984. We hadn’t had much snow that year and the potato crop had been good. We huddled around the hearth. [pauses] I think for men the fear is never gone. While he may not be on your shoulder, he’s certainly around: “All right, buddy. Don’t get any ideas. I’m right here in the hall.”

  Playboy: What are your turn-ons?

  Stewart: People who ask me what my turn-ons are. Also, honesty and long hair.

  Playboy: And turn-offs?

  Stewart: Short hair and lying. Makes sense, right? You never see: “Turn-on: Honest people. Turn-off: People who tell the truth.” There’s never that.

  Playboy: Tell us the truth: What was it like to kiss Gillian Anderson in Playing by Heart?

  Stewart: I was upset. I blacked out and woke up with makeup on my face. That’s all I remember about it, but I know the truth is out there. It’s weird to kiss somebody you don’t know in that way. It’s not natural. I don’t think anybody would tell you it’s the most comfortable thing in the world.

  Playboy: So it was your first time?

  Stewart: No, I kissed Jennifer Beals onscreen a few years ago. And I kissed Fran Drescher on The Nanny. Luckily, everyone was professional and nice about it. I’ve never had a situation where I did it and the woman turned to the director and said, “Uh, can we just get the stunt guy in here?”

  Playboy: Do you bring the kiss from home or do you act the kiss?

  Stewart: I guess it’s my personal kiss, but it’s not like it’s from home because it lacks the huge emotional thing. Also, a lot of what we’re doing is impressions of what we think we’re supposed to be doing. Remember those old Forties movie kisses? Those are kisses. The-war-is-over, we’re-in-Times-Square, I’m-wearing-a-uniform, you-look-pretty, I’m-gonna-smack-you-one-right-here, bang! kisses. They dip and do the thing.

  Playboy: But they don’t even open their mouths.

  Stewart: Right, but look at how they go for it. Bang! The new thing in kissing is the lean-in, the I-have-to-show-you-that-we’re-just-coming-to-this. I don’t recall that ever happening to me. It’s usually far more awkward than that, and afterward you have to talk about it for six hours. In some ways we’re doing an impression of what a Hollywood make-out scene is now. Have you ever watched soft-core movies on Cinemax? They’re not having sex, they’re doing an impression of what sex is. The girl sits on top and you raise your arms to cover her breasts, depending on if she signed a release about her nipples. It’s fake sex. It’s the impression of sex as we have come to know it through movies. It’s sort of like comedians who do an impression of Jack Nicholson. It’s actually an impression of a comic you saw doing a Jack Nicholson impression.

  Playboy: Which films moved you as a child?

  Stewart: I can tell you the first two films I ever saw: Ring of Bright Water and Yellow Submarine. It was a back-to-back drive-in thing.

  Playboy: Did they influence your career?

  Stewart: Well, it was a long time before I realized that the world wasn’t animated. Ring of Bright Water is the most amazing movie. It was back in the old days when animal movies were supposed to end horribly. Now they have the kid weeping as he looks up to see the dog limping on three legs after traveling 2000 miles by train, with a smelly hobo, to come home. This movie is about a kid who had an otter. The otter helped the kid out of a tough jam and he and the otter were tight. So you think everything is OK; the kid’s life is going to be good. Instead, he’s walking along with his otter, moseying down this country road, when a farmer comes up and, in a split second, decapitates the otter with a shovel. Then the movie ends. It is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. And the kid just looks at him like, What the fuck? It’s sick. It’s sadistic. I loved otters. [pauses] Imagine a Disney movie today that got away with an ending like that. Mighty Joe Young shot through the head. At least they didn’t roll the end credits on Bambi’s dead mother: Bambi’s an orphan, the fire is burning, see ya.

  Playboy: Let’s break your life and career into The Daily Show segments. What are the headlines?

  Stewart: “Stewart’s Acne Clears up Just as Back Hair Appears: Will He Ever Win?” “Stewart Scores Seat at New Jersey Bar, Given Tenure: Will He Accept It?” “Stewart Hits the Bitter End, Robin Williams Not Shaking in Boots.”

  Playboy: Your first gig was there.

  Stewart: I chose the Bitter End because of its vaunted history of comedic performances; also it was within walking distance. I thought of Woody Allen in front of the brick wall, spinning yarns, and Cosby and Richard Pryor. Then I remembered that that was 20 years earlier. It had become Doors cover bands. I went onstage and after only two minutes received my first “You’re an asshole!”

  Playboy: Your reply?

  Stewart: Well, I’m known for my rakish comebacks. I believe I said, “Nuh-uh” and let him take it from there. It was raining as I was leaving, and I remember thinking, What a lovely literate metaphor for my career right now.

  Playboy: What kept you going?

  Stewart: The combination of rejection and laughter. They didn’t laugh ten times, but they laughed once and I gambled that I could get them to do it again. I also realized that stand-up was about getting your face beat in, and I might as well get used to it. Comedy became like a new girlfriend. I’d wake up at f
our in the morning, and instead of a hard-on, I had an idea, and I wrote it down. Ninety-eight percent of them were garbage, but I was in love.

  But there was no epiphany after a 28-hour cocaine binge, as I sat there, staring at my sweaty self in the mirror, thinking, No one gets out of here alive! It happened over two years. I was living a comfortable life: I made fine money working for the state of New Jersey. I had a car. I had a house. I played on the liquor store’s softball team. That could have lasted 40 years.

  Playboy: Sounds like you were Jon Bon Jovi in that Ed Burns movie No Looking Back.

  Stewart: You know what? I think I might be telling you that plot. I’m sorry. No: I didn’t grow up around there at all. Wait! Hold on a second. No: I was an Army kid. No, that’s Three Kings.

  Playboy: What did you do for the state of New Jersey?

  Stewart: I was a contingency planner for emergencies. I happened to be a bit of a whiz at the then-new Lotus 1-2-3, so I had to make charts of centers for psychiatric treatment and how many extra beds they might have, just in case we were attacked by Pennsylvania and took some casualties. At what point could we set up a triage center and where would we find an extra minivan? I was responsible for our level of readiness in 1985. Let me tell you: We had a lot of canned goods. We were ready. It took me six months.

  They were about to re-up me for another 40 years in Jersey, and before I signed the papers, I thought, You know what? I’m 23. If I leave, no one’s going to miss me. I don’t have kids, I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t have anything that I’ve always romanticized having, so now’s the time. I didn’t want to be 30 years old and doing the same thing. I thought, I can always be one of the bitter guys in my town, so why not go to New York and fail and come back? It’s not like they won’t save a seat for me. I checked out in a week and a half. I’d never told my friends or my family what I wanted to do, so to them it was like a bombshell. I walked in and said, “I’m selling my car and moving up to New York to become a stand-up comedian.” They looked at me like I had the three nipples I have.

  Playboy: Do you still love New Jersey?

  Stewart: New Jersey is tremendous. Everyone’s got New Jersey wrong. What we’ve done in New Jersey is create the world’s largest, smelliest scarecrow, and we’ve kept people away from it for years just by saying, “Where’s the point that the most people who aren’t really dedicated to this state will see?” It’s the Turnpike, because the majority of people are going to be hitting the airport or heading from New York down south or up north. If we create an area of what appears to be pure, toxic genetic-mutation soup right along that road, everyone who drives by is going to go, “Holy shit!” But it’s a scarecrow. It exists solely for the purpose of driving others away.

  Playboy: Next segment: What’s the correspondent’s piece?

  Stewart: We would visit the mosquitocatching program I was part of when I was 18. I used to go down to a Jersey Pine Barrens in a state car. We’d bring the little critters back to Trenton for encephalitis testing. We didn’t pull their genitals off. My job was solely to catch them, knock them out with chloroform, sort them male-female, and bring all the females back.

  Playboy: How about “In Other News?”

  Stewart: Stewart discovers alcohol and Tom Waits; Waits decides he doesn’t want to be found.

  Playboy: The celebrity interview?

  Stewart: My father. We’d bring him on. After the interview he still doesn’t believe I have my own show.

  Playboy: Describe that interview.

  Stewart: It’d probably be one question and then three and a half minutes of him explaining the answer to me by writing and graphing it on a napkin. He was a physicist.

  Playboy: What one question have you always wanted to ask your dad?

  Stewart: Ain’t I doin’ good, Pa? Ain’t I? Then he would explain through graphs and charts why I’m not. It’s a very precise equation calculation. It’s calculus, something I don’t really understand. But I would get to keep the napkins, to back it up.

  Playboy: Does your father really think you’re not doing well?

  Stewart: Hey, hey. Don’t think you’re on to something here! No, I think he thinks it’s fine—probably.

  Playboy: How old were you when your parents divorced?

  Stewart: Ten or 11.

  Playboy: You saw him afterward?

  Stewart: Oh yeah. Hey, pizza every Sunday, my friend. Or every other Sunday.

  Playboy: Do you have a good relationship with him?

  Stewart: Uh...what do you mean? He hasn’t broken up with me.

  Playboy: Did he try to explain the mysteries of the universe to you?

  Stewart: Not that I remember. I was just happy, when I turned seventeen, to realize maybe the divorce wasn’t my fault. I saw that one after-school special where the kid thinks it’s their fault, and I watched it with tears: “Yes, that’s true.” Then you realize, Oh, it’s not my fault. In my hazy memory, I was thinking I had done something or gotten into some minor trouble before it happened. You sort of have the sense of, Oh, Christ, what have I done? But that’s because kids are completely egocentric: I fucked up, therefore...

  Playboy: Didn’t your parents say, “Dear, it’s not your fault”?

  Stewart: I’m sure they did. But you’re living in the world of hyperbole at that age. The drama itself was somehow comforting. It was the Seventies; I’m OK—You’re OK had just come out but I don’t think anybody had read it all the way through yet.

  Playboy: OK. Now let’s go to “This Just In.”

  Stewart: Stewart lands a regular job, may never have to buy clothes again. Then we do a moment of Zen.

  Playboy: What’s yours?

  Stewart: Probably footage of me watching one of my cats a few years ago take a shit right next to the litter box because I had been too lazy to actually clean it out. It was a brief message of her displeasure. She was the Felix Unger of cats: If it wasn’t just right in the litter box, “I’m sorry, my friend, I’m going right on the floor next to it, just to show you.”

  Playboy: Much of your humor is based on your being Jewish. You even called your HBO special Unleavened. Are Jews funnier?

  Stewart: Than?

  Playboy: Gentiles.

  Stewart: Any time you’re a group that wants desperately for others to like you so they’ll let you stick around, you have a tendency to be more amusing. When you’re in charge there’s really no need to be funny. The captain of the football team doesn’t have to be funny. Water boy? He has to be a little amusing.

  My comedy is all about anything that, when I was growing up, made me feel different or disenfranchised in any way. What is comedy other than: Love me! We’re not so bad. We don’t really love the money. Love me! Height, looks and religion became the cornerstones of what I talk about. They had to, because as a kid you learn preemptive-strike comedy. If I hit someone with a tremendous joke about how small and Jewish I am, they had nowhere to go. All they could do is punch me once and leave.

  Playboy: Were you the only Jew in your school?

  Stewart: No. There were probably four or five, but Lawrenceville was not a predominantly Jewish area.

  Playboy: Did you feel ostracized?

  Stewart: It’s not like I walked into school and everyone turned their backs and shunned me. [laughs] It was just in my head. I felt different even if no one else noticed or cared. Most people were very nice to me. I got my share of ass-kickings and being made fun of, but it wasn’t anything unusual. My parents divorced, but other people have gone through that as well. I’m not going to write Jonathan’s Ashes. I didn’t have a tragic childhood. It was OK, normal. But if you’re looking for what informs my thought process, it was those feelings of inadequacy that were placed there by me, for me. They were grounded in reality, but one with far less importance than I gave it. In other word
s, it wasn’t like The Breakfast Club, with Judd Nelson just fucking poking me in the chest every day. But in my head I was a weirdo.

  Playboy: Are you now at ease with your height, religion and looks?

  Stewart: When I stopped thinking about them, all the problems they caused went away. There comes a point in your life where you go, “I guess I’m not going to be six feet tall—and I can’t believe how important that used to be to me.” I’m fine. If I can’t reach a glass, I can just stand on a chair.

  Playboy: Jewish mysticism has been in the news lately. Have you given any thought yet to studying the Kabbalah?

  Stewart: I’m letting Madonna get her feet wet, and if it seems OK, I’m jumping in. You know, nothing shakes my world more than giant celebrities who tell us about their spiritual awakenings.