Dancing With The Chairs

I always liked Cloris Leachman as an actress, but I didn't become really interested in her as a person until she came on Jimmy Kimmel's show after being ousted from Dancing With The Stars.  She walked on the stage in her sherbet ombre dancing dress and banana colored evening gloves, already laughing the second she sat down.  Before Jimmy could attempt to start interviewing her, she began analyzing the logistics of how she should sit because her feet couldn't touch the ground unless she struck an awkward pose.  She turned around in her seat, her back to Jimmy, and suggested that she just put her feet up on the next chair.  He was already smitten.  She then got on her knees on her chair, bent over, and put her elbows on his desk, her face in his face.  Still unsatisfied, she lifted up the chair's cushion and sat down in the frame.  Her feet dragged on the floor.  Jimmy had moved past smitten into true love.  She slid down to the floor.  Jimmy said that he thought he should just come around to the front of the desk and sit with her.  She leaned against his shoulder and did her interview from the carpet, correcting Jimmy's grammar throughout.

When we went and saw Cloris talk at the neighborhood library this week, she did some more of these furniture gymnastics.  Worried that the people in the back rows wouldn't be able to see her in a normal chair, she began dragging a large, round table from the side so she could climb onto that.  Climb onto that backwards, slapping her ass and cracking herself up.  Concerned, the library event organizer came over with one of those high rolling chairs that goes up and down, and Cloris then climbed onto that instead, holding onto the back of the chair while kneeling.  And then she began to spin herself round and round until finally, her son stopped her for the interview.

I've long been bothered by the idea of people being treated as if they're funny or cute simply because they've gotten so old that society cycles back to the beginning for reference and infantilizes them again.  The woman introducing Cloris at the library spoke to her as if she were a five-year-old ("and we hear you've just come from the dennnnnnnntist!"), but the reason that Cloris's humor is not cute-funny is because it is, for one thing, very calculated.  She knows what she looks like climbing onto a chair and she knows it works every time-- not only did she do the bit on Jimmy, but she did it to Tom Bergeron, in the library, and I'm sure frequently at the Christmas dinner table as well.  This isn't the surprised humor of the kid who happens upon something funny and keeps repeating it to make adults laugh, and it isn't the patronized humor of the senior who still displays some form of spunk that gets everyone going about how hilarious it is that she's doing something besides gumming carrots.  What differentiates Cloris's humor is that when Cloris climbs on a chair and spins herself around in a circle while spanking herself, there is nobody in that room who is more amused than she is, and that's what makes you laugh.  She gives a fuck that she entertains you, but she doesn't give a fuck if you're not entertained by the same things she is.

So, at the library, Cloris spun around in the chair (the photo at left comes courtesy of Timothy Rutt).  She took notice of a seventyish woman in pigtails and Mary Janes who kept piping in with comments, badly wanting Cloris's attention, and so Cloris read the poem the woman gave her aloud.  And made fun of it.  "Does anybody understand a word of this?" she asked and burst out in a honking round of laughter.  Still, the woman loved her because you can't not.  First she tried to give Cloris the floppy denim hat she was wearing-- "I bought it at a thrift store" she said by way of encouragement-- and Cloris, after asking if the woman had washed the hat, pressed it firmly back onto the woman's head with a there, there tap..  When the woman then tried to give Cloris her cardigan, Cloris said, "Oh, I don't want that," and secured it tighter on the woman, and the refusal was somehow both funny and kind while cutting too.

She talked about having just worked with Quentin Tarantino on Inglourious Basterds, and she asked the audience, "His face is like...who's that artist?" and seconds later answered herself, "Picasso.  He's like a Picasso.  He's looking at you straight, but still it's like everything's on sideways."  And then cracked herself up.

She got into politics a little, discussing how worried she became when Bill Clinton became very fat, prompting her to call the White House and talk to his secretary for forty-five minutes about his health.  She asked if anyone in the room liked Nancy Reagan, and then, without waiting for a response, started laughing wholeheartedly and said, "I hate her!  She's the biggest pill!"  Laughing some more, she said joyfully, "And she looks terrible!"

She talked about the line of chiffon tunics she launched, and which she models in the latest Us Weekly.  She instructed us on the many ways you can tie them up or down, depending on your mood.

In the middle of the talk, she got on her cell's speaker phone to her ex-husband, George Englund, and when he asked where she was, she laughed hard and told him in delighted bewilderment, "I'm in Altadena, George!" as if she were calling from Antarctica.  I haven't finished her book yet, so I can't tell you why they divorced, but he seemed just as endlessly entertained by her as he should be, and he also seemed smart not to have let her out of his life when I can't imagine a person who wouldn't kill to welcome her into theirs.

When it came time to sign books, we waited and went up to Cloris, and I asked, "Will you make it out to Andrea and Brent?"  Without hesitation, she began drawing arrows down the middle of the title page, explaining, "This way you'll know where to split it if you break up."  And then she cracked herself and us up.  I don't doubt that she hasn't done this routine in some other couple's book before, and I don't doubt that it amused her just as much the first time she came up with it as it did when she was drawing in our copy.  "No, no, I'm sure it will work out," she said as she handed it over, and the delivery of that line had us all laughing again, because it was another perfect joke.

Comments

[Michael Singman-Aste]

You've already got a jump on her with your dancing-at-the-book-reading shenanigans.

[Printed Balloons Northern Ireland]

Hi,

I came across this blog by accident, but I'm glad I did, it was very entertaining. The image of someone spinning around on a chair slapping their bum is hilarious.

Thanks

Jim

[Howard]

I really liked this one Andrea. Maybe because it was about Cloris, a noted personality, or maybe it was the way you wrote it. I actually don't like Cloris too much. When I see she's in something, I usually avoid it, but taste is fleeting. I may like her someday like when I stay on a Lawrence Welk rerun a little longer flipping through the channels.

I think it was your writing, and maybe the breakup joke at the end.

Best,
H