Serving Platters of Minced Politician
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: March 30, 2008
IT had been a very bad week for politicians, which made it a busy one for Lizz Winstead.
On a recent Sunday night, at the end of a news cycle that had seen the downfall of Eliot Spitzer, the government-brokered bailout of Bear Stearns and revelations of controversial remarks by allies of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Winstead, the comedian and co-creator of “The Daily Show,” was entertaining in her enviably roomy Astor Place apartment.
Dressed in a sweater, jeans and an apron, she was cooking a pasta dinner for the roughly 20 comedy writers and performers assembled there, while she simultaneously oversaw a writing session for “Shoot the Messenger,” a live topical comedy show the group performs on Monday nights at the Green Room, a theater on Bleecker Street in the East Village.
At the moment the boisterous team was debating a joke about Christopher J. Ward, the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who is suspected of embezzling nearly $1 million from the committee. Could they say that Mr. Ward stole the money, or only that he was under investigation? Did Mr. Ward also embezzle from his political consulting firm, and would an audience understand the difference between that and the Republican Congressional Committee?
“We’re here to educate,” said Benari Poulten, one of a dozen writers hunched over laptop computers at a large dining table in Ms. Winstead’s living room.
Ms. Winstead corrected him: “No, we’re not. We’re here to respond.”
The frenzied all-night gathering was a final step before the following evening’s performance of “Shoot the Messenger,” for which Ms. Winstead, 46, would don a garish wig and pantsuit to become Hope Jean Paul, the overbearing hostess of a fictitious television morning show called “Wake Up World.”
Joined by her unctuous co-host, Davis Miles (portrayed by the comedian Baron Vaughn), the two characters are the a.m. emissaries of a nonexistent cable news channel called 24/7, a network with no shortage of fatuous, oblivious on-air personalities to populate a show that it bills as “six hours of the best info-news-ment around.”
Ms. Winstead makes no secret of her hope that the show, which has enjoyed a below-the-radar status since it began in July, could be a “living pilot” for a future television series; or a dry run for a larger, Off Broadway production; or that it might someday break even on sales of $12.50 tickets.
In the meantime the show allows her to ridicule whom she wants how she wants — a rare freedom, even for someone of her comedic pedigree.
“This is a business that doesn’t need you, so you always have to make an effort to have them want you, and want what you’re doing,” Ms. Winstead said. “I’m always trying to create an avenue to get something out there.”
For the first act of “Shoot the Messenger” (which only runs about an hour) Ms. Winstead and Mr. Vaughn gab with other comedians playing equally oblivious guests, announce facetious topics (“Bulimia: how much is too much?” and “The dangers of a free Tibet”) and introduce short, satirical news updates.
In the second act Ms. Winstead returns in her civilian garb to conduct a one-on-one interview with a different guest each week, ranging from Craig Unger, the author of “The Fall of the House of Bush,” to Paul Rieckhoff, the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
As performed by Ms. Winstead and an ever-expanding cast, “Shoot the Messenger” is both up-to-the-minute news-driven comedy and a sendup of morning talk shows, where discussions about breast-cancer survival might be followed by segments on Cajun cooking.
It is a format Ms. Winstead knows well. An unabashedly political performer, she emerged from her native Minneapolis and gained recognition in the early ’90s, when stand-up comedy had particularly little room for women or politics. She wrote and performed for early Comedy Central shows like “Women Aloud,” and produced the syndicated talk series “The Jon Stewart Show,” starring the future “Daily Show” host. When that was canceled, in 1995, she and another producer, Madeleine Smithberg, were approached by Comedy Central to create a nightly series that would comment on events of the day; a year later “The Daily Show” made its debut.
During her time at “The Daily Show” Ms. Winstead helped staff the program with signature talents like Stephen Colbert and Lewis Black. But she left the series in 1998, after Craig Kilborn, who was the host at the time, made crude comments about her in an interview with Esquire magazine. At the time she realized she was walking away from her dream job. “I did the thing I had always dreamed of doing, first,” she said. “So it’s like, O.K., now what happens?”
In the years that followed, Ms. Winstead remained close to the talk-show genre, in projects that ranged from quirky to inexplicable. She starred in another talk-show parody, “O2Be,” for the Oxygen network, was a co-host a show on the Air America radio network with the political commentator Rachel Maddow and the rapper Chuck D, and was executive producer of an ill-fated MSNBC program that starred
Connie Chung and Maury Povich. But her ultimate aspiration, she said, was to create a show that would reproduce the mood of the Sunday dinners she held in her apartment, where friends would talk (loudly) about news and politics.
And if such a show allows Ms. Winstead to lampoon a certain strain of female television personalities, all the better. “They’re palatable to hear,” she said, “and they’re sweet, self-important and a little funny. They let their co-host carry the weight while they can be the shiny object.”
It is this focus, fans of “Shoot the Messenger” say, that clearly differentiates the show from late-night fare like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
“It is a very left-of-center view that also has a feminist core, which no other news parody show has, and in fact abhors,” the comedian Roseanne Barr wrote in an e-mail message. “Like myself, Lizz likes to comment directly on the arrogance of the elitist view of television as it attempts to ‘communicate’ with its female demographic.”
Last summer Ms. Winstead and the comedians Sean Crespo and Carol Hartsell began staging a rudimentary version of “Shoot the Messenger” at the Ace of Clubs, a performance space on Great Jones Street; in February, they moved to the Green Room.
In a given week all the writing for the show is conducted at Ms. Winstead’s apartment, while most video segments are recorded in her living room, usually in front of a green screen held in place by “Harry Potter” novels and a copy of “Spy: The Funny Years.”
Everyone who participates in the show — the writers, actors, directors, assistants, even Ms. Winstead herself — does so as a volunteer. “None of us are getting paid,” said Hank Gallo, the producer of “Shoot the Messenger,” and a former producer of “Politically Incorrect” and “The Daily Show.” “As a matter of fact, Lizz and I have both made financial contributions to keep this show going. I’m willing to put a little incentive behind it. Much to my accountant’s chagrin, nothing is coming back in yet.”
For unpaid contributors like Ms. Hartsell, who has worked day jobs as a graphic designer and art director, “Shoot the Messenger” is a chance to learn from a veteran performer like Ms. Winstead, and possibly to graduate to more ambitious projects. “I want to become a better writer and performer, and feel like I’ve done something with my fine arts degree,” Ms. Hartsell said. “If I never have to work for a marketing manager again, I’ll be very happy.”
For Ms. Winstead, who said she hopes to bring “Shoot the Messenger” to Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention, the show is a vehicle for her to move beyond “The Daily Show,” which she readily acknowledges has become a formidable cultural force with Jon Stewart at its helm. “It’s like I had a baby and then I gave it up for adoption,” she said. “Then Jon Stewart was the adoptive parent, and he raised it and it went to Harvard.”
It is also an opportunity for her to help cultivate a new generation of comedic talent, even if sometimes she feels more like a den mother than a mentor. “It’s a constant corralling, telling people, ‘Shut up about that and focus on the screen right here,’ ” she said. “It’s a cacophony of insanity, and then I have to go make dinner.”
For now, Ms. Winstead said, her protégés don’t seem to mind when she reluctantly asserts her authority. “They keep coming back,” she said, “so that leads me to believe they’re O.K. with it. Let’s be honest, I’m not that good a cook.”
subscribe to the drink at work newsletter
