Janeane Garofalo says the thing everyone else is thinking, flatly, and looks faintly bored that she had to. It made her indispensable in the 1990s, on The Larry Sanders Show above all, and Hollywood never found much else for her to do.
Fi1m perspective
Watch her as Paula, the talent booker on The Larry Sanders Show (1992–1997), while Garry Shandling's Larry worries about a guest. She waits. Then she says one sentence, in the voice of someone reading out a shopping list, and it is the truest thing anyone says in the episode. She does not pause for the laugh. The series is about the labour of keeping a needy man happy, and Garofalo plays the one person on the payroll who has stopped pretending the labour is dignified. We laughed at Paula harder than at people who were working far harder for it, and the reason is simple: she never signals that a joke is coming.
She came to it from stand-up, which she began in the mid-1980s after a history degree, and the stage habit shows. Her club material is observational, delivered deadpan, sometimes with notes in hand, and the screen version of that is a woman who seems to have wandered in from somewhere more interesting. The Ben Stiller Show (1992) and Larry Sanders arrived the same year. Then Reality Bites (1994), directed by Stiller, made her Vickie Miner, the tart roommate, and fixed the type for the decade: smart, cynical, quick, and, underneath, more easily hurt than she lets on. The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996) gave her a rare lead. Dogma (1999) and Wet Hot American Summer (2001) used her in ensembles that have since gathered cult followings.
What works is the mixture. The wit on its own would be a party trick; what makes the supporting turns land is the feeling she lets through for a second and then covers. Ratatouille (2007) is the best example we have reviewed. Colette Tatou is one of Brad Bird's characters who care about doing something well, and Garofalo, under a French accent she wears without fuss, makes the caring sound like temper until you listen properly. The accent is a habit in her voice work, and here it disappears into the part.
What does not work is not hers to fix. As she got older the casting narrowed to variations on the type, and the leading roles did not come. She has been plain about it: "I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s." We would put it less modestly. The luck was Shandling and Stiller knowing what they had, and the industry after them not bothering to find out.
She is still doing stand-up and still turning up in things, including a run on 24 (2009). If you have not seen her, start with The Larry Sanders Show, then Reality Bites. The films came and went. The flat voice at the edge of the frame is still working.
Biography
Janeane Garofalo is an American comedian and actress. Born on 28 September 1964 in Newton, New Jersey, she began her career as a stand-up comedian after graduating from Providence College.
She became a cast member on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show and Saturday Night Live. Garofalo has appeared in more than fifty films, including Reality Bites (1994), The Truth About Cats & Dogs (1996), Mystery Men (1999), Wet Hot American Summer (2001) and Dogma (1999). She provided the voice of Colette in the Pixar film Ratatouille (2007).
Garofalo has received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her television work and has hosted on Air America Radio's The Majority Report.
