You just got back from Egypt. What was that like?
There are 6 million cats in Egypt that are kept as pets, and there are 100 million that live on the streets. And they’re all missing an eye, or a part of a paw, or they’re filthy. So I didn’t go to the pyramids – instead, I bought cans of tuna, because you wouldn’t believe how cheap it is there to feed cats.
When you get to a hotel, what is the first thing that you do?
Flush the toilet to make sure that it works. You don’t want to find out too late that it doesn’t. That happened to me when I went on my very first book tour, in 1994-95.
Also, when I go to a hotel, I open the door really slowly, because if it’s bad news I don’t want to get it all at once. And then I open the bathroom door very slowly, because I’m thinking: there better be a bathtub there. Someone else makes my arrangements, I don’t do that myself, but they make it very clear that I want a bathtub.
What is your favourite item in your wardrobe right now?
It is a long coat, and it’s made of two sport coats sewn together, top to bottom. It’s like if you took a sport coat and then put another one above it – so it has four sleeves, and you can button it all the way to the ground if you want to, but I kind of like to button it as a sport coat and have the rest of it open. It’s Comme des Garçons.
Most people don’t notice. But I was walking a couple days ago in the park and I thought, “What is that weird shadow?” And it was my lower arms.
What is the ideal length of men’s shorts?
It depends on your age, right? My best feature was always my legs. Short men tend to have muscle mass easier than tall ones, so my legs were like Popeye’s arms. And not from working out, just because I never learned to drive a car, so I walk and ride my bike everywhere.
But after a certain age, your leg muscles start to wither, so I can’t wear above-the-knee shorts any more. If my legs had always been like this, from the knee up, then it would be one thing. But I just look at them now and it’s like, fuuuuuck! They used to be so thick and muscled! But my calves are still good.
What has been your most memorable interaction with a fan?
This woman came up, who was younger than me actually. I said, “Where do you live?” And she said, “Well, I’m in a hospice right now. My heart is failing and there’s nothing they can do about it. So I’m in hospice care and I don’t have much longer to live.” And then she wanted me to sign her book, so I wrote: “To Elizabeth, I hope you’re a fast reader.” I was taking a chance with that. But it turned out to be exactly what she wanted.
Because sometimes, you just don’t know. I was in a store the other day and there was a woman behind the counter, in her 70s, and she said, “Oh. There’s my wallet!” And I said, “Oh, you must be so relieved.” And she said, “I’ve gotten to the point where I put things down and then walk away from them! I guess it’s a sign of age.” And I said, “Actually, it’s a sign of cancer.”
I knew I was taking a chance, because she could say “I’m a breast cancer survivor” or something. But it worked out OK.
When you’re walking on that edge, there’s a certain feeling you get, it’s a thrill. I don’t mean trying to shock people just for the sake of it. I mean you’re doing something you think is funny, but you’re just not sure how [it will pan out]. My agent called me one time and said, “I just got this angry call from this woman. It’s crazy – it’s just crazy.” He said: “She said she was with her teenage daughter, and you were signing their books, and you gave the girl a condom as a gift and told her she could only use it for anal sex, because you didn’t want to be responsible for her losing her virginity.” And I said, “Oh, I remember her!”
I mean, it was so ridiculous. How can you get mad at that? It’s so over the top.
Have you ever had a cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity you admire?
Oh yeah. I had just started on radio and an actor who was seemingly in everything at that time called and wanted to do a project together, and he invited me over to his house. It was the biggest snowstorm in New York – there must have been three feet of snow on the ground. And when I think back on it, if you weren’t a movie star, I don’t think you would ask somebody on a Saturday to walk through three feet of snow to your house.
But I was like, “Great! I’ll be there.” So I walked with great difficulty to his house. And I got there, and there was a black woman wearing a kerchief on her head, feeding two children in the dining room. And he led me through to the study, and I said, “Wow, you’re really lucky that she came in this weather. Especially on a Saturday!” And he said, “That’s my wife.”
There’s no coming back from that.
Similarly, I was in Kenya a year ago, on a little plane that seats 20 people, and I start a conversation with the man across the aisle, and I told him I had gone to this little village the day before, and the poverty was just shocking to me. And I said, “Everybody thought I was a missionary. I’d rather be mistaken for a pedophile!”
And he said, “I’m a missionary. I’m a missionary surgeon. And I was in that same village performing maxillofacial surgery on a child lying on a ping pong table in one of our centres.” And I said, “I could never play ping pong.”
There was no coming back from that either.
Is there anything you do by yourself that you would never do if someone else was there?
This is something I would never do in a store – I’ll be at my desk and I’ll think, “What would those culottes look like with that shirt?” So I try on clothes – and I don’t see myself when I look in the mirror, I just see the clothes.
But I would never, never look at myself in a mirror in public. And I’m shocked by people who take selfies. I would sooner masturbate in public. When people do that and they turn their head because they’re looking for that perfect angle? That just seems like such a private act to me. And when people do it publicly, I just – I can’t stop looking at them, and marvelling that anybody could do that in public.
What is a film that you can watch over and over again?
Far From Heaven. It stars Julianne Moore, and it’s directed by Todd Haynes, and it’s his version of the 1950s Douglas Sirk melodrama.
And what’s interesting to me about those Sirk melodramas is that there was so much you couldn’t say in the 1950s. You could imply somebody was gay, but especially if you were young it would just kind of go over your head.
But people then had the same problems that people have now. So to actually have a husband who’s gay, but with the same elements of [a heterosexual] melodrama – and it was so beautifully, beautifully shot. There’s a scene where she’s crying on the bed, and it’s the best crying ever in a movie. If I watch it, I cry. Whenever I want to cry, I can just look at that scene. It’s like opening the release valve on your radiator.
If you could interview anyone in the world, who would it be?
I think it would be a murderer. And I don’t even care what murder it is. I just think that to kill somebody, you’d have to be mentally ill.
I think in the future we’ll look at everyone in prison and see that they’re mentally ill in one way or another. And I guess I want to understand it – like, that’s the ultimate thing to take from somebody. I would just want to hear how someone justifies that. I can’t really wrap my head around it.
If you had to fight any famous person, who would it be? How would you fight them and who would win?
Is Dick Van Dyke still alive?
He’s 99 years old.
OK. I pick him just because I could win. I don’t have anything against him, and I would just fight him with my fist. And I’d apologise later. It was nothing personal, I just needed to win.
An Evening with David Sedaris is playing in Canberra (1 February), Perth (2 February), Adelaide (4 February), Melbourne (6-7 February), Newcastle (8 February), Sydney (10-11 February) and Brisbane (14 February)
