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| Amy Sedaris (Photo by Michael Ignulli) |
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > FEATURE
By: ROB BECK
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"GAY GAY, GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY."
That's how Amy Sedaris answered the phone when Southern Voice called to interview the actress, comedian and writer in advance of her Sept. 28 appearance in Decatur sponsored by Wordsmiths Books.
There's no question that the hilarious Sedaris can read an audience, and knows how to entertain both onscreen and off. That’s why, after first making her place in gay audiences’ hearts as Jerri Blank on “Strangers with Candy,” the Comedy Central cult hit she co-created, she set out to impart her hard-earned hospitality wisdom with her book “I Like You: Hospitality under the Influence.”
The award-winning cookbook-cum-art project offers hilarious yet useful advice — the chapter on entertaining the elderly is presented in oversized print — and proves that big brother David isn’t the only one in the Sedaris family with writing chops and a funny bone. She is also the author of "Wigfield," as well as an actress who most recently made an offbeat turn as a bipolar New Yorker in the summer season of FX's "Rescue Me."
Now Sedaris brings her particular brand of hospitality to Decatur, and she took time to talk to Southern Voice about where her book came from, how to be a good guest, and what it’s like to provide the voice of a penis.
SOVO: Where did the idea for "I Like You" come from?
AMY SEDARIS: I do cook a lot, and I entertained a lot at one point, and I just thought, “Oh, I can write something I know about.” I wanted a project to do inside my home so I could direct it and hire a small group of people to make things that I have in my head. I just thought it’d be a fun little art project.
The look of the book is like old-school cookbooks, but funny.
That’s where the title “Under the Influence” comes from, because I was so influenced by my Girl Scout books and the old Betty Crocker and some other really strange magazines from the '50s.
The pictures told a little story. Not trying to be funny, but I kept the illiterate people in mind for it. Everyone in my family can read, but they don’t. Three out of six kids don’t read, so I thought, “Oh they’re never going to read this book,” so I thought if I put pictures in it at least they’ll look at it.
Can you sum up your approach to hospitality and entertaining?
Well it’s changed over the years. Now my approach to entertaining is more about if I know you can do something, like you have a special skill, let’s say you’re good with power tools, then I might invite you over and say, “Okay, can we make a coffee table tonight, and then I’ll make you dinner or whatever it is that you want?”
And I’ll kind of do a little entertaining around whatever you’re doing for me. So I tend to entertain more like that nowadays, but in the past it’s just been to get people that have things in common.
Did you ever have any horrible entertaining experiences that made you think, ‘Maybe I can help people avoid this by writing this book?’
The last few Thanksgivings I’ve had haven’t worked out, because I waited last minute to plan it because I didn’t want to commit to it, and I thought it’d be fun to just invite people who didn’t have anywhere to go.
But the last few times, I’ve done that it just seemed very ill planned, and the people weren’t right. They didn’t mix, and they were quite boring. It’s very discouraging.
How did you decide what topics to include?
I just sat down and I thought, “What do I really want do say?” And I thought, “Well something on hot lunches.” So I thought, “Who eats hot lunches?” And I thought, “Oh, lumberjacks!” And then I thought, “Oh, okay, something on grieving,” because I know when my mom died that was a whole different thing to think about.
I finished my list, sent it in, and I never changed it from my table of contents, but then I realized I didn’t have any holidays on it, but I didn’t want to go back and change my list, so I just stuck with what I had.
In your opinion, what is the most important piece of advice you offer in the book?
If you don’t entertain, I think it’s important for you to read about what we go through to entertain, so next time you go to ...
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