LIANE HANSEN, Host: Janeane Garofalo, I'm afraid I'm going to have to get this question out of the way first thing. What does your hair look like today?

JANEANE GAROFALO: It's black today. I dyed it black two days ago, and it's really stringy and damaged and disgusting, and I have a hair band in it and a lot of vasoline in it.

Hansen: Well, a lot of us have seen you as in your recurring role as Paula the talent-booker on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show, and we've seen you blonde, we've seen you red, we've seen - [laughs] and I always wondered if you were changing your hair out of choice, or if it was the demands of the job.

Garofalo: No, it is because it is something about myself I can change, so I do. It's just, it's a way of avoiding actually going to a gym or something and changing something that way. It's a lot easier to just change my hair color.

Hansen: Janeane Garofalo has had the opportunity to try out many hair styles in her career. This season the versatile comedienne joined the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live. A few years ago she was a regular on The Ben Stiller Show. She also played a Generation X Gap manager in the movie Reality Bites. But her steadiest gig has been as Paula, who chases down guests for Larry Sanders.

Garofalo: The best thing that ever happened to me on that show (SNL) was meeting Elvis Costello. What I did was like when I was introduced to him by the director of the show, of course I played it like, `Oh, hello, really, hi, whatever.' You know, Elvis Costello, no big deal. But really, inside, I was like going to explode, 'cause I couldn't believe I was standing next to Elvis Costello.

Hansen: I also read about you in some of the articles that were sent to me that you got to meet another person you really admired, Albert Brooks.

Garofalo: Yes. That was an unbelievably fortuitous thing. He...He was...I got home at like four in the morning one night, I'd been out with some friends, and I was, I had like eight messages on the machine and I was just, you know, playing them while doing my night time ritual, brushing my teeth, whatever, and all of a sudden, the fourth message in was like, 'Janeane, it's Albert Brooks.' [laughter] I thought it was somebody kidding me, and he was like, 'I got your number from Gary Shandling. Call me.' And he left his number. So I immediately called it at four in the morning, and it was him and he was awake, and he said, 'Oh, I just saw you do stand-up on 'E,' stand up sit down comedy and I thought it was great, and I think you're very funny.' And I...I...literally needed to breathe into a paper bag, you know, I started hyperventilating because that is the pinnacle of of good comedy, is Albert Brooks.

Hansen: When did you decide that that's what you wanted to do, that you wanted to do stand-up comedy?

Garofalo: I was watching David Letterman when I was a senior in high school. I decided then I wanted to be a comedy writer. I didn't know how anyone would ever go about that, then I just kind of went to college and put it on the back burner, and decided maybe I'll be a page at NBC and work my way up, and then I heard, you know, sort of nepotism is the way to be a page at NBC, so people say, and...

Hansen: You weren't ready to marry into...

Garofalo: ...I wasn't related to anybody. So then by my senior year of college, it was really gnawing at me, though, you know, to do it, so I just decided to do stand-up instead, as the quickest route to do what I had written.

Hansen: Every comic has the story of the first time out, you know, usually it goes, 'I was terrible, but I was so addicted to it I couldn't stop.' What's your story?

Garofalo: Well, I actually, my first time I did stand-up, was I had a great set, and it just worked, I don't know how, I was incredibly drunk, and therefore very brave and somewhat charming. I think I was so full of joy at doing it, that it rubbed off. You know what I'm saying? I was having such a good time and I was so happy to finally have satiated this desire to do comedy that the audience responded to that. Plus I looked like I was about 12 at that time.

Hansen: What kind of material were you doing? What worked?

Garofalo: I think I did...honest to god, I did a joke about Rousseau - isn't that crazy? And then I also...I said, something like I have crushes on famous philosophers, and I send away for their their eight-by-ten glossies and I just got mine from Franz Kafka, and it said, 'Janeane, don't ever change.' Isn't that the queerest? It was so stupid.

Hansen: You said you aspired to be a writer on David Letterman - did you ever aspire to do stand-up there?

Garofalo: Oh yes, god yes, I wanted so desperately to do stand-up on that show, and was passed on a number of times when I auditioned.

Hansen: You got to be a guest recently?

Garofalo: Got to be a guest, yeah, been on it twice as a guest. Sitting next to David Letterman was an incredible thrill, and you want so desperately to talk with him, you know, and connect with him.

Hansen: [laughing] Yes. Well, I mean, how much talking can you really do in that situation? Not a lot.

Garofalo: None, none. You don't...I didn't. I mean, I was on for .5 seconds both times I was on and there's just no way to reach him, but it's like you just so desperately want to tell him, you know, about the crush you've had on him for all these years, bet cetera, et cetera and...

Hansen: And he touches your shoulder and leans in and whis...I've always wondered what he whispers in people's ears, as they cut to...

Garofalo: Well, you know what he said to me last time?

Hansen: No.

Garofalo: He leaned and said, 'They hate me.' That's what he said.

Hansen: [laughs]

Garofalo: Which I loved because I feel that same way all the time whenever I do anything.

Hansen: Ah, there goes that huge ego and self-loathing again. What can I say.

Garofalo: Right.

Hansen: You are a featured player on Saturday Night Live this season. You were offered a writer's job before, but you turned it down.

Garofalo: Right, because I would not have been a cast member.

Hansen: Uh-huh and it was more important for you to do the comedy, rather than...

Garofalo: ...right, just writing.

Hansen: Are you doing a lot of writing now? That was one of the things you had said on Letterman, that you were actually interested in writing for other people?

Garofalo: Yes. Yeah, I have been writing and a couple of my pieces have made it to dress rehearsal and then were cut after dress, so I'm just going to keep at it, you know, just keep...

Hansen: It's a job, keep doing it.

Garofalo: Yeah, it's important to do. If you're a woman over there, it's absolutely essential that you write.

Hansen: Can I ask you about that? I've been getting the impression, over the last few seasons anyway, that it's been a little bit all testosterone all the time.

Garofalo: Right.

Hansen: Are you finding that and, if so, how are you trying to, I guess, make it so that more women...I don't want to say women's material because then it just categories...categorizes it, but that women get to be more than just, you know, walk-ons in blonde wigs.

Garofalo: I don't know how that happens. I really don't know. I always fancied myself a very strong person who could make a difference. I don't feel that way so much any more and there's Marilyn, Margot, Laura, and myself. I hope I didn't leave out any women - oh writing.

Hansen: Marilyn Suzanne Miller.

Garofalo: Marliyn Miller, yes, Margot Meyer, Laura Kitlinger and myself. We're working on it and we're trying. It's a problem that is inherent with many male writers that I've encountered in my life. They are not consciously sexist and if you were to ask them, they would tell you they were completely enlightened. They have a hard time writing for women because they to themselves, 'I don't know how to write for a woman.' They don't make this leap that you can write - the character does not have to be character-specific. The sketch does not have to be two guys. I don't know why. Even my own boyfriend who, God bless him, he's a great guy, comedy writer, he also makes that mistake. He somehow thinks that you're kind of compromising the comedy if it's a woman who is the main character.

Hansen: Really?

Garofalo: Yeah. I can't put my finger on why that is. There is a common myth in the world that women are not as funny as men and I think a lot of men and, you know, Saturday Night Live is no different from most any other show I've been affiliated with. I don't know why people pick on that one more. I think it's that people have decided that it's a boy's club and they pick on it, but it's not different. Every movie you see, every TV show you watch is a boy's club, basically, and women just aren't taken care of in the writing. Now, I will turn that in on myself and say, 'Now it is incumbent upon me to write more and better stuff.'

Hansen: How is Marilyn Miller contributing to this? She was a writer on the first season and I remember - I'm old enough to remember watching those brilliant Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, Jane Curtain things - and she was very much a part of that.

Garofalo: Yes, she's still very much a part of things. She fights the good fight every day, so I really respect and appreciate her presence a great deal and I think she's essential over there. I don't know. I don't know why women in comedy...this is every show, not just SNL, are basicaly the straight men.

Hansen: Do you prefer the taped sketches, the ones where, you know, the take-off on the commercials, the premier Saturday Night Live this season, the one with the headache - let you know whether you have a headache - of the live sketch?

Garofalo: I like doing it live.

Hansen: So you?

Garofalo: I love doing the parody commercials because they're always great on that show. They do incredible good work with their parodies of commercials. Jim Signorelli, their director over there just is...he just really cares and is a perfectionist and it always looks great. I prefer doing live sketches because it's more fun for me. It's more exciting to do live work, of course, with the audience sitting there.

Hansen: Yeah, that adrenaline that comes with...

Garofalo: Yeah, that makes it all worth it, that, you know, when you hear 'five minutes to air' over the intercoms there, you know, there's nothing more exciting than that.

Hansen: Janeane Garofalo, now a featured player on Saturday Night Live. She also stars as Paula, the talent booker on The Larry Sanders Show. You have seen her in the movie, Reality Bites. She joins us from New York. Thanks a lot, Janeane.

Hansen: Do you have an Elvis Costello request. We'd love to play it for you.

Garofalo: How about 'Man out of Time'?

Hansen: You got it. This is NPR's Weekend Edition. I'm Liane Hansen.