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 n October 30, 1973, George Carlin's "seven dirty words" were broadcast from a New York radio station into the car of a father and son, who alerted the FCC. Today, Sarah Silverman — who at the time of the broadcast was two years old, and not three, as she might forcefully assert — employs every one of those words liberally, intelligently and, in a way, urgently.But "Filthy Words," as Carlin's monologue was titled, was never about those seven particular words so much as it argued that comedy should be a platform for controversial exchange. Few comics today are willing to probe deep into topics like race, rape, abortion and religion; standup is a difficult enough industry without roiling club owners with the n-word. Silverman, by contrast, has quietly been constructing a persona that's wholly incautious, ascending in the footsteps of Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Chris Rock. Her new film, Jesus is Magic, borders on brilliant. She doesn't understand, for example, after being told that she can't say "chink" on TV, how "Jews lost control of the media." "What kind of a world do we live in where a totally cute white girl can't say chink on network television? It's like the fifties." She's horrified that her sister has grounded her seven-year-old daughter for coming out as a lesbian. "No pussy for a week. Right? I mean, to us, as adults, it may not seem like that big a deal, but to a little kid a week is, like, a really long time." And she can't comprehend how after the "alleged" holocaust, Jews can still drive German cars. "It's just so. . ." She pauses to search for right word, touching her forehead with the tip of her finger: "Gay." Her clueless delivery nearly makes you forget that, with this last one, you're laughing at a xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-questioning one-liner. By piling one inappropriate comment onto another as if they're all a matched set, she succeeds in convincing us that they pretty much are. Silverman spoke to Hooksexup on the morning of the premiere about her Comedy Central pilot, her New Yorker profile, and the importance of choosing your words carefully. — Will Doig
Yeah. There's was this shitty little bar called La Cantina where I would do standup. I went back there the following summer to waitress and they were like, "Oh yeah, we remember you. You should stick to waitressing." I probably left there before you were born. Weren't you born in 1970? The end of 1970! I'm not thirty-five yet. It must be weird having anyone be able to look up your age online. It fucking sucks. I can't even lie about it. So much of the media coverage has focused on your physical attractiveness. Everyone seems amazed you're not hideous. Is this flattering or offensive? It's super-flattering! Important people are deciding I'm pretty. Not that I think I'm ugly. I'm cute in a totally attainable way. But I think the whole obsession with it comes from the old notion that ugly girls have to be funny to make up for it. And there's truth to that, both with men and women. Comics always need to have some cross to bear. But I mean, for example, Steve Martin is gorgeous and nobody's like, "But how? You're so funny." That said, oh Lord, I love it. At the screening, the woman sitting next to me laughed hysterically at all the jokes about gays, blacks and poor people, and was dead silent through all the jokes about Jews. Do you find people are more willing to laugh at jokes that don't apply to them? That's hilarious. Yes. Listen, if you don't find Holocaust jokes funny, then they're going to be offensive. She was probably too close to the material, and I can respect that. I would never be like, "Oh, she just doesn't get it." But I'm not going to change it either. I'm sure there's comedy that could offend me but I wouldn't expect someone to change it just because it hit a Hooksexup. We live in an age where everything's very politically correct, but the motivation to be non-offensive doesn't come from any sort of moral compass. It comes from a fear of losing advertisers, losing consumers, losing money, bad publicity, and all these reasons that I don't care about, reasons that have nothing to do with humanity. The New Yorker profile described your apartment, and all these little scraps of paper you have around with scribbled, non sequitur notes written on them, presumably for future jokes. I was so embarrassed about that. I couldn't believe the things she saw, things sitting on my desk that have probably been there forever. Things that aren't even real things! Things I just wrote down because I was being weird. I guess I had something written down that said "Sarah Silverman's All-American Tushy Party" or something. Oh my God. I mean, it's not really personal or anything, but it's just something I happened to write down because I wanted to move my pen. And now everyone's waiting for the stubbed-vagina joke to show up in your act because The New Yorker happened to see a piece of paper on your desk that had "stubbed my vagina" written on it. It's in the pilot for a show I made for Comedy Central. I'm making an excuse about something and I say, "I stubbed my vagina." I feel bad because I didn't even write that joke. I wrote it down, but it came from the guy I wrote the pilot with. I think it's interesting how the correct terminology for certain things has become funnier than the made-up words. How did that happen? Maybe it's because you can picture your parents saying vagina. It's like when you were a little kid and you'd hear the word vagina and you'd be like, 'tee hee hee!' Or also, like, for me, doodie wins over shit every time. Do you consciously think about this when you're writing jokes, or do you just go with whatever comes naturally? I think about wording, what sounds funniest. It's weird, the conversations you have with your comic friends or your boyfriend or whatever. "What's funnier, boobs or tits?" "Tits is too harsh, breasts is too sterile. Go with boobs." Is this what your conversations with your boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, are like? Yeah, that's our pillow talk. Does he feel insecure about having a girlfriend who talks dirtier than he does, gender roles being what they are? No, he's not like that. He's kind of macho, but he likes a strong woman. And like me, he couldn't be with someone who's not funny. Even his ex-wife — I mean, not to bring up his ex-wife — but even she's funny. You use the n-word in your act, which is arguably the most taboo word in the English language. Do you get nervous whenever you say it on stage? Yeah, I get a little pang that I have to push through. That guilt-shiver you get whenever you say it. Did you debate whether to include it? No, because the context it's in, it's about saying the word. It's not like I'm co-opting it in any way. How do your parents feel about your act? They totally love it. Sometimes my mom will have her opinions. Like there's this riff at the end of the movie, during the credits when they show that B-roll montage, where I'm looking at a picture of myself in this '60s costume and I say something like, "God, I look like Marlo Thomas if she'd just walked in on her father lying under a glass coffee table while someone's taking a shit on it." Because, you know, there's that rumor about Danny Thomas. And my mom begged me to take that out. She was like, "He was such a great man and he shouldn't be remembered that way! He opened a children's hospital!" And she's right, he was a great man and I totally don't want to contribute to him being reduced to just that one rumor, but what are you going to do? Also, I don't know if this is just coincidence, but at Canter's Deli in L.A., the Danny Thomas sandwich is number two on the menu. You play yourself in the Comedy Central show. Is it the real you? It's a cuntier version of myself. Same as in the movie, a kind of alter ego, but not that alter. It has my favorite combination of things, totally fucking absurd but played very real and very small. I love that contrast. I hate it when people jizz all over their shows, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's awesome. And when I say it's awesome, it's not like I'm saying, "I'm so awesome." Though I am a little bit awesome. n° 
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