Everybody Curses, I Swear!

by Carrie Keagan

  After my name was cleared, I felt emboldened and went on a bit of a Lap-A-Palooza that was unprecedented in the junket world. I climbed aboard Usher, Paul Giamatti, and Sacha Baron Cohen and got some of my favorite sound bites because of it. I found sitting on someone’s lap to be especially helpful for the celebs who could be a little gun-shy about press in general. Star Wars prequel star Hayden Christensen was being his normal timid self, but when I told him, “I’m interested in coming over to the dark side” and sidled up on him, it changed the interview completely.

  Then, of course, there was cinematic legend Dustin Hoffman, who is actually quite charming and funny and may not be so far off from his randy Bernie Focker character in real life. He’s fun to tangle with and definitely enjoyed the occasional interview mambo. He’s been doing this a long time, and I think, if anything, he loves the change of pace—especially if it’s served with a side of cheek.

  To meet Dustin Hoffman is to love Dustin Hoffman. He is astonishingly unaffected, pleasant, and captivating in spite of a body of work that would make lesser actors scream vitriolic arrogance from the hilltops. He’s got funny stories to tell for days and endless opinions on a variety of subjects ranging from lactating to diarrhea. When I sat down with him for I Heart Huckabees, our conversation naturally turned to lactation and the plight of the modern man, about which he had this bit of wisdom to share that I’m sure will keep you up at night:

  Why do men have nipples? Because breasts, you know, in utero, are created before the gender is differentiated, and so we do have milk glands. It’s not as good as women, but men have been known to lactate, usually out of sympathy. I know that you guys that are out there watching this … you know … check it out! Hang out with a pregnant woman sometime, and you’ll be very surprised with a little leakage!

  When you sit down to interview him, you have to be careful what your first question is because it will probably be your last. He loves to tell stories, and you’ll love to listen. It could well be a tactic he uses to control the interview (which some celebrities use to stay on message), but my guess is he’s just an old-school raconteur. He’ll easily go off on some tangent and tell you some fascinating story that will swallow your four minutes whole like an elephant eating an apple! You really need a plan of attack when you interview him because if you don’t have one, he’ll kidnap you with his charm offensive and you’ll walk away with a four-minute sound bite on why Warren Beatty thinks mulching leaves is better than raking them. Yes, you can always tell your editor it’s an exclusive Warren Beatty story, and yes, your editor will let you know exactly where you can file it!

  I learned early in the game you’ve got to distract Mr. Hoffman and get what you need out onto the table right away. Because he will grab that ball and run it into the end zone for a touchdown. So getting physical was always the move and trust me, he seemed to get a kick out of it, even if sometimes his people didn’t. But hey, it’s hard out there for a pimp! I remember on one occasion I did my thing. I asked him about a holy shit moment that really impacted his career. He responded with a long captivating story about how famous boxer Sugar Ray Leonard won some of his greatest fights with a certain degree of, shall we say, haste due to a constant battle with his bowels. Essentially, every time he entered the ring, he would get major butterflies in his stomach and suffered from massive cramps and the onset of potentially severe diarrhea. The fear of humiliation at the hands of Montezuma’s revenge was the motivational force for Sugar Ray’s ferocious performance in the ring. He needed to get in the ring, knock his opponent out, and get the fuck out of the ring before the mudslide hit! Pretty wild! Apparently, Sugar Ray’s battle with his nerves had encouraged Dustin to use his own butterflies toward honing his craft! How much of this story was true and how much was fiction I’ll never know, but talk about a holy shit moment.

  Speaking of fiction, there was the time I interviewed Dustin at the Stranger than Fiction junket. He was feeling quite sassy that day, and I was happy to oblige. I walk in, we say hi, and I take my seat on the Hoffman throne. The guys in the room knew to start rolling the cameras once my ass was in place. We immediately launched into chitchatting, which, admittedly, is dangerous territory. He started commenting on my clothes, and I feared I was about to get an earful about the socio-political impact of denim on 1940s Americana, but that’s not where he was going. Operation Distract Dustin had deployed perfectly, his dirty sense of humor kicked in, and he just started riffing on what I was wearing and how guys reacted to me and dating. And then came a couple of dirty jokes that brought the room to tears. It was awesome. He was on fire. I was a giggling fool just enjoying being in the presence of what was undoubtedly a singular moment that I was never going to forget and my audience was going to LOVE! But it was not to be. Even though Dustin seemed to be having a blast behind the scenes his publicist looked like she was about to have an aneurism! She completely lost it on me. “STOP! STOP ROLLING!” she screamed. “Go over there and be a professional.”

  I’m not going to lie, it was a bit jarring, but it was also a bizarrely cute moment as both Dustin and I sheepishly looked at each other as if we’d been caught passing notes in class. Adorable! It was an odd move for the publicist, too, since it was her client who had initiated the conversation and was doing 90 percent of the talking, but she wasn’t going to confront him. What was most intriguing to me was that she didn’t bring the interview to a halt; she just wanted to change the flow, like an NBA coach calling a time-out to kill the opposing team’s momentum. So I took two steps and sat down in the chair, and we continued the interview as if nothing had happened. In my mind I was thinking, Holy shit, I just got the interview of a lifetime with Dustin Hoffman. Just keep it together, get out of the room, grab the tapes, and leave. Unfortunately, his publicist got the last laugh. When I got back to the office, ranting and raving about the interview, we all gathered around to watch the tape. It was wiped clean until the three-minute mark. Without telling me, they had erased the money shot. All evidence of this charming, funny, brilliant, and edgy stream-of-consciousness comedic routine from a legend was destroyed. Shit!

  I’m sure she had her reasons, but in my mind, she overreacted, and sadly, something special was lost forever. Nobody was getting hurt, and no one was offended. It was just a sublimely funny improvisation. The worst thing in life is when people apply their vague sense of morality to others under the guise of protecting them. So, fine, I hadn’t made getting out of the chair completely acceptable yet. I still had some work to do.

  I’ve always found immeasurable joy in interviewing the elder statesmen of showbiz; as living legends with impressive bodies of work, they bring a certain honesty and boldness to a conversation that their contemporaries simply cannot. But the main reason I’m always drawn to them is because they are amazing company to keep. Charming, charismatic, and confident in their own skin, they never try too hard; is they don’t have to. Instead, they exude an effortless grace that takes a lifetime to perfect and is unparalleled in its appeal and magnetism. Therefore, we always get along swimmingly. One of my favorite old dudes is Donald Sutherland, star of classics like M*A*S*H, The Dirty Dozen, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but you might know him best for playing evil President Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games movies and, of course, for being Kiefer’s dad. Those eyebrows aren’t the only thing mischievous about Donald; once, he actually sought me out in the hallway during a junket just to tell me this dirty joke he knew I’d love:

  One day two sperm were swimming vigorously, and one sperm asks the other: “How much farther do we have until we reach the egg?” The other sperm replies: “I dunno, but I think we just passed the tonsils!!”

  Before Robin Thicke twerked his way into the Horny Hall of Fame, his father, Alan, star of the classic eighties TV show Growing Pains and the newer boastfully named reality show Unusually Thicke, was known as quite the ladies’ man. He still had serious game when I interviewed him for the movie The Goods.

  Me: Okay, um, h
ow fucking good is this movie?

  Alan: You know, I think it’s effin’ good. See, they won’t let me swear on camera. I’m the straight authoritarian nurturing dad in this film, as I am in life, of course.

  Me: Wait, do I get to call you Daddy then?

  Alan: You could!

  (I take this as an invitation to jump out of my chair and sit right on his lap. So I do. He isn’t mad at me.)

  Alan: You could sit on my knee; I’d spank you right now … and um … oh, she smells SO much better than [costar] Ed Helms.

  Me: Do you like his outfit? Very tight pants.

  Alan: You know, I don’t notice those things. I don’t even go there. I noticed that you’re almost naked.

  Me: I knew I was coming to you, so I had to do something. I was bringing the goods!

  (I switch the conversation to boners, but that has nothing to do with me sitting on Alan’s keys [at least I think it was his keys]. It was a scene in the movie.)

  Me: Everyone seemed to have boner pants.

  Alan: Well, I think James Brolin is the only one seen with that in the movie.

  Me: He did bring them. Yes, he did.

  Alan: Well, you know, you see a boner and everyone wants one, I guess.

  Me: So it wasn’t CGI then, huh?

  Alan: Oh no, no, that was the real thing.

  Me: Impressive.

  Alan: I can’t say it’s the real thing. I just met the man.

  Me: I think you should find a very large pair of boner pants and sport them around Hollywood, and we’ll see what happens from there. We might change your image.

  Alan: We’ll market that!

  Me: I love you. I think this may be the first and only time they actually had a scene where it was raining dildos. I’ve never seen that before.

  Alan: It’s so hard to push the envelope nowadays. And the cloudburst of sex toys was a pretty original vision.

  Me: It’ll be remembered like “Singing in the Rain.”

  Alan: Like “Dildos in the Rain,” yes.

  I realize that, to the untrained eye, I make this look easy. Trust me when I tell you, it’s anything but. There’s a fine art to lap hunting that requires a certain je ne sais quoi and a hunter’s instinct. Because you most certainly cannot go from lap to lap to lap all willy nilly. Somebody could get hurt or worse. Plus, there is a fine line between being a lap hunter and a lap jockey. Professional lap hunters, like myself, we do it for the love of the game, our families, and world peace. Lap Jockeys, on the other hand, are in it for meth. They have no respect for the sport. In much the same way as professional birding does, lap hunting has certain seasonal opportunities, considered low-hanging fruit (unrelated to their testicle yaw), that the accomplished lunter can’t ignore. The most prestigious of these is known as the “Claus Pause.” That’s when Santa himself takes a break during his busy season, goes incognito in search of Christmas spirit. Now, it just so happens that jolly old St. Nick took a “Pause” to visit the junket for Elf, where I spotted Santa, I mean “Ed Asner,” and asked if he would do me the honor.

  Now, for those of you who’ve never heard of Ed Asner, either because you were born after the invention of Taylor Swift or never watch TV Land, the man is a legitimate icon. He’s won seven Emmys, the most for a male actor in the history of television, for The Mary Tyler Moore Show; Lou Grant; Roots; and Rich Man, Poor Man. So, for me to ask this serious, accomplished man to sit on his lap was slightly inappropriate, especially because Elf was a cute family movie, not even remotely dirty.

  But in that moment, I was feeling naughty, not nice.

  “Can I sit on your knee? Will you play Santa?”

  “Sure, come on over!”

  I sat on Santa’s, I mean Ed’s, lap for the entire interview. We had a really sweet exchange and just bonded on camera. I loved Christmas, he was Santa, I was naughty … he thought that was nice. It was just like a scene out of Miracle on 34th Street if Miracle on 34th Street was on Showtime After Hours! Anyway, toward the end of the interview, he slipped his arm around my waist and nuzzled his nose into my neck. Just like Santa Claus would do. Wait … What?

  “Mmmm, you smell good,” he said.

  I said, “Thank you, Santa,” with a smile from ear to ear.

  Then he leaned in even closer and whispered into my ear, “I bet you taste good, too.”

  My eyes went wide and my jaw dropped! WHOA!! I almost died of laughter. I loved that he was fucking around with me like that. I love a good dirty innuendo more than anyone. Ed was awesome!

  Here’s my closing argument: There are real, recent scientific studies that prove that sitting will kill you. That sounds overly dramatic here, but it’s a metaphor. Will I get diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease if I stay in my seat? No, but my interviews would be the equivalent of lying on my couch in a pizza-stained robe, scratching my nads. The greatest things in life happen when you get off your butt, reach out, and touch someone. But not in a way that would put you on a national registry.

  It’s not even about literally sitting on top of someone. Sometimes it’s as simple as a high five. Or, at the RocknRolla junket, I boogied with Idris Elba, and we had an Uma Thurman/John Travolta moment. For All About Steve, Sandra Bullock was sweet enough to get out of her chair and pretend to moon the camera for me. Top that, Barbara Walters!

  Hands down, one of the greatest examples of how getting off your ass can be a game changer was the junket for Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon’s movie Taxi. The setup for the interviews was made to look like Jimmy and Queen were sitting in the backseat of a taxi with the interviewer (me) across from them. Well, that just didn’t feel right for me. I knew I needed to be in the backseat with them. After all, who wouldn’t want to share a cab with those two? So I stepped out of what was expected and into an amazing moment.

  The interview hit the ground running. Out of the gate we hit the topic of the almighty va-jeen. I mean what else would we be talking about? And the three of us cruised into make-out city! It went like this:

  As soon as the cameras started rolling, Jimmy decided to bust out a fresh jam on the spot entitled “Her Box” for Queen Latifah, with full acoustic percussion courtesy of their hollow seat, in rhythmic unison:

  Jimmy: I put my feet on her box … I do my beat on her box … I put my sheet on her box.

  Queen: He walks the street on my box.

  Jimmy: I hang a wreath on your box.

  Me: That’s a very pretty box.

  Jimmy: Yeah.

  Queen: It’s true.

  Me: And very talented, too.

  Jimmy: It’s the first time she’s heard it.

  Queen: It’s a very lovely box!

  (At the first intermission of the song, I told them we were uncensored, and if they wanted to, they “could fuckin’ go off!”)

  Queen: You stole our cusses, man.

  Me: No! Do it, do it up!

  Queen: ’Cause I’m gonna say fuckin’ then you said fuckin’ go off and I’m like, awwwfuck!!

  Jimmy: Yeah, she stole my shit!

  Me: Fuck!

  Queen: Fuck!

  Jimmy: Shit!

  Me: Guys! You’re fuckin’ awesome!!

  Jimmy: AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!

  Me: Wait, are you guys technically in the backseat of this cab?

  Jimmy: Yeah … well, see, we wanted the illusion of that.

  (I get up and get into the backseat of the cab with them and make myself comfortable as I’m prone to do! I lean back on Jimmy and put both my legs up in Queen’s lap. That’s how I roll.)

  Queen: Sit, sit.

  Jimmy: Nice. (As he helps me get comfortable.)

  Queen: Ohhhh you got. (My legs lift and she grabs them and places them on her lap.)

  Me: Ohhh … I totally wanted to be in the backseat of the cab.

  Jimmy: (Puts his arm around me.) What’s up!!

  Queen: You had your feet on my box for a second!!

  (Then Jimmy takes that cue and starts in on the next verse of “Her Box
.”)

  Jimmy: You had your feet on her box.

  Me: Can I touch it? I just want to touch it [her box].

  Queen: (Starts clapping.) OHHHHH.

  Jimmy: I found the beat on her box.

  Me: I’m touching her box!!

  Jimmy: I found a sheet on her box.

  (I start dancing in the backseat.)

  Jimmy: She put her hand on your box.

  Queen: (Snapping her fingers.) Uhhhhhmmmmm.

  Jimmy: She want her man on her box.

  (Queen starts clapping and the three of us groove to the beat with Jimmy.)

  Jimmy: There’s a band on your box.

  Me: There’s a band on her box?

  Jimmy: Yeah.

  (Queen lifts my leg up high and starts to play a guitar solo on it.)

  Queen: Leleleleliiiing. BOX!

  Me: That’s so cool!

  (Jimmy beat boxes and Queen continues playing guitar with my leg while I dance between them.)

  Me: You guys didn’t have any fun making this movie, did you?

  Queen: Shit was the most boring thing I’ve ever done in my life! It was just horrible.…

  (At that moment, Jimmy turns into me, grabs me by the back of the neck, and goes into a really loud, full-on fake make-out session with heavy moans for what felt like forever. All while Queen Latifah looks on. Then Queen Latifah begins a countdown.…)

  Queen: Countdown … in … five … four … three … two … one … Interview.

  (Then Jimmy and I release each other and return to the interview all disheveled.)

  Me: Hey … Wow … Yeah … Uh-huh!

  Queen: I guess my box is out of this?

  Me: No … I’ll make out with you, too.

  (I reach over and embrace Queen and start kissing her neck while Jimmy looks on and laughs.)

  Queen: Oh God! Yeah, that’s my spot. All right. Get off me, woman! Now give me back that boot!

  We ended up pretend making out at the Fever Pitch junket as well. After that, anytime I would interview Jimmy, it was “our thing” to pretend to make out.