ONE OF AMERICA'S LEADING HUMORISTS CHATS ABOUT THE FRENCH, "THE ROOSTER" AND HIS BRIEF FLIRTATION WITH HOLLYWOOD

I associate the soft-spoken, slightly lisping, almost nasal tone of openly gay humorist David Sedaris with a variety of subject matter: pet cremation, bathroom hand towels used as toilet paper and a department store Santa with a tumor the size of an olive. In the off-kilter world of the Sedaris -- author of the bestselling essay collections Naked, Barrel Fever and Me Talk Pretty One Day and a regular contributor to Public Radio International's This American Life -- no topic is taboo and a recent, sold-out public reading at Dallas' Morton H. Meyerson Syphony Center proves that Sedaris is more popular than ever.

Q: Are you at all intimidated by reading from your journals in an oppulent opera hall like the Meyerson? Your prior performances have been at far more intimate venues.

A: I started off mainly at places like the MAC, and then I think the biggest place I've been so far is like 3,300 seats, which, since I'm never in the audience, I don't know what that means. I have 90 new pages that I've written in the past four months, so I'll bring those on the tour and I'll read things and I'll go back to the room and rewrite 'em and read 'em and rewrite 'em and I find in a 200- or 300-seat house, I'll feel a lot more comfortable reading something brand new, than I do if I'm in a fancy  building with 2,000 seats. I feel like if this story really doesn't work out, that's a lot of people who are gonna know it. There's something nice about small places, but when I'm on stage, I don't know it. I just have them turn the lights up really bright so they're in my eyes and I can't see anything. I really don't know until the show is over . . . that's a lie, because 3,000 laugh a lot harder than 200.

Q: Do you enjoy the live reading format?

A: Yep, it's perfect for me. I don't have to memorize anything, you know. I'm just reading, and I answer some questions afterwards, but that's not too hard. It's hard to believe I can get away with this.

Q: How do you decide what material to perform when you're touring?

A: I just finished a story and it's one of those things where I cannot wait to read it out loud. just can't wait, 'cause it's sort of got everything a story needs. It moves along. There are very distinctive characters in it. They have different voices. There's a lot to be observed in it. I have other stories where I think, "Well, maybe that's just better on the page," 'cause there's story I wrote that's going to be in The New Yorker and I read that out loud twice on my last tour, and I knew people were listening . . . they weren't coughing. But it wasn't the reaction I expected. And it took a while to figure out that they just felt so incredibly sorry for everybody involved, that certain things that I thought were funny, they just felt that everyone in the story, including me, was so pathetic that they couldn't laugh at it. It just depressed them.

Q: What are some of the topics you've been interested in lately?

A: I started writing a lot of things about politics, just sort of about a political education. Like I was guy's campaign manager when he ran as Sargeant of Arms in the 7th grade, and there are stories about different protest marches. This kid stole a turtle, so we picketed his house when I was like 7, and later, when his mother was talking about it, she said, "It was like the Gestapo at my door." So just little things all over the place, but it's good when you go on a tour to have stories that are like three and five pages long, 'cause it doesn't work to get up there and read two half hour stories. I'd rather get up there and read four or five things.

Q: You've been living in France for the past several years. How has the war and America's new loath affair with the French come across while living and interacting with people in Paris?

A: You would think that everyone in France was brought into a meeting and addressed by like a really good mother. Any French person you talk to, they'll say that they don't care for George Bush, but they know that there's a difference between the American people and the American president, and neither me nor any one of my friends have had any problem whatsoever. We had some people over for dinner tonight and one of them was saying she saw these American tourists -- flat-out, full American tourists in spanking white sneakers -- and they stopped these French people to ask for directions and the French people said, "We hope you have a really good time here." So you don't see any of that, you don't hear any of the stuff that you're hearing in the United States, none of it.

Q: But surely the locals are aware of some of the horrible things being said about the French here in the States . . .

A: My boyfriend was at dinner the other night, and he was telling these people about some of the things that people in America are saying about them and they just covered their ears and said, "Stop, stop." 'Cause its sort of like if you break up with somebody and then you run into a friend and they say, ". . . and he says you're fat and you're ugly and you were no good in bed . . ." nobody wants to hear those things. You know, with the French people, it's not like they were crazy for [Jacques] Chirac. They kind of slept-walked throught the last election, and then all of sudden Chirac and [Jean-Marie] Le Pen were the candidates and people were freaked out that Le Pen ever made it to the finals. So they ran out and they voted for Chirac, but it's not like they loved him necessarily. It was just the lesser of two evils.

Q: Have you written about any of this one-sided animosity?

A: I had to something for This American Life, Ira [Glass, the host] wanted me to write something, and my only problem with it is, what do I have to offer? It's sort of like after Sept. 11, there were all these calls. People saying, "Can you write about this?" All you did was read stuff by people who were sort of uninformed, but just had feelings, and I kinda wanted to hear from people who had more than feelings, like who had insight or information or something. And I don't have insight. And I don't have information. And I'm not a reporter. And I don't interview people. All I have going for me is I live here. So when Ira wanted me to write about it, all I wrote was that French poeple are not being ugly at all. I don't feel like I have the credentials to write about the French political systems and I don't have the curiosity of a reporter. I mean, I have the curiosity of a snoop.

Q: Are you at all concerned about traveling internationally right now?

A: I know people who say, "Oh, wow, [you're] going to America now?" and I'm going to 29 cities, and I think it's the perfect time to go. I'll be in an airport every day and stuff's going on. I love it when people in airports are gathered around TVs. I was in airports during the last presidential election and no one knew who the president was and people were gathered around TVs and it was such a good time to be out, and to be in all these different places. You figure most people in an airport don't live in that city. They're from somewhere else. Then I'll get into the town and the first thing I'll do is tune into the biggest, crackpot AM call-in show and listen to what people have to say, and watch the local news and it's just a really good time to be traveling around. And then, you know, people will say, "Where are you from?" and all I have to do is say, "Paris," and then I sit back and I've got four pages right there. But I've got no idea what to expect, none whatsoever.

Q: You mentioned Sept. 11, and that tragedy has been at the center of our motivations for going into Iraq. What has been the reaction there in relation to the United States getting a taste of what other countries have been living with for some time now?

A: America looks so different when you live in another country, so completely different. There was something I read in a paper then saying how America insisted that the world changed on Sept. 11, but America changed on Sept. 11. nobody said the world had to change. But America sort of insisted that the world changed after that and from over here it just seemd like America can seem like a real bully. And for people in America, because you live in it every day, you don't think of how it sounds, how it's translated, how it comes across in another country, and when you live over here you certainly do.

Bali didn't insist that Spain become sort of completely different place after what went on there. I'm not saying that what happened wasn't horrible, but there was this huge outpouring of sympathy from all over the world for the Unigted Staes when that happened, and since then, it's just steadily eroded. And it's not because people over here became cold and just decided not to care, it's just that all of a sudden they started to feeling like they were being ordered around and told that, "Unless you agree with us, you will be irrelevent," and it just doesn't play that well over here, I think Bill Clinton could have sold this war in five minutes, he could have sold it to the French in five minutes. Bush's ambassador doesn't even speak French. He's been on television once since this whole thing started, once, and he was speaking in English, and he really didn't say anything. It was really just a job he gave to someone who had given him a lot of money.

Q: I'm curious about your writing process. Do you use your partner Hugh as a sounding board for your stories, especially the ones in which he figures prominently?

A: Only when I get incredibly desperate. I had a deadline for something a few weeks ago and I knew I was taking my chances when I read something out loud to him, cause he's brutally honest, "I stopped listening to that about two minutes ago." And I'll know that he's right, so then I just get furious at him, furious. But I try not to read too much to him, I try not to torment him with that any more than I have to. He's more like, "That's not true, that's not how it happened." And then he'll explain how it happened and I'll say, "Hugh, don't you understand, if you tell the story like that, you just included like four pages that has nothing to do with the action of the story." Those are mainly our arguments.

Q: Your family figures prominently in many of your stories, and your portrayals of them are, how should I say it, less than flattering. I'm thinking of a recent Esquire story in which you wrote about your brother Paul, (aka "The Rooster") getting married. Did he mind that piece?

A: No, cause what my brother did was he got a Web site. I don't understand Web sites, but I guess you go to my lecture agent's Web site and he's got a link. So he sells barbecue sauce and he sells T-shirts for his floor sanding company. He's sold thousands of them, so he makes money off it.

Q: Do you run the more personal stories by your family first, just to give them a heads up?

A: If I write a story about someone in my family, I always give it to them and say, "You know, if there's something in here you don't like, change it or get rid it." Usually they don't have a problem with it. I don't really say anything bad, I mean there's certain things that I don't write about them because they clearly don't want those things known and so I would never write those things. I'm dying to write those things, but I can't.

Q: You work pretty consistently in the personal essay format. Have you every wanted to try some other style of storytelling?

A: It's time I branch out and do something else. There's kind of a short hand to it. I don't know, some of the things I've written lately, I don't know what I would call them. I'm myself, but the people are pretty close to being completely made up. I don't sit down with any goal mind, I just start writing and all of sudden I kind of create this person who lived across the street and all of sudden I'm playing strip poker in his basement and I don't really know where the story's going. Usually when I make things up it's really over the top, but I've been able to kind of hold myself back so it's believable. I kind of like that. It's sort of . . . I don't have to make myself up. I just make up the other people.

Q: What about a novel?

A: I'm not a big plotter and I think you kind of have to be to write a novel.

Q: The last time you were through, you mentioned that one of your books had been optioned to become a film. What happend with that?

A: Me Talk Pretty had a two-year option. The option ran out in February and I didn't renew it. I really like the director, he's a great guy and he offered me all the involvement I wanted. He said I could write the screenplay. He said I could have a hand in the casting . . . and I didn't want any of that. I didn't want to do anything. I just wanted him to go ahead and make the movie. Then I started thinking. that's really not fair because it involves real people, so I'm kind of leaving my father or my brother up to other people, who could come up with anything. I've put them through so much already, it just didn't seem quite right when it came right down to it.

Q: Ever given any thought to writing a screenplay?

A: Never. I go to the movies every day, and I sort of don't want anything to interfere with that pleasure, I don't want to know that they take place on a set. I don't want to know that they did not hire real big trees to throw boulders. I don't want to be able to relate to anything in the making of that movie. I mean, I'll see anything that moves. I have no standards whatsoever.

Q: Finally, I know you're avid smoker. You know that Dallas has banned smoking in all public buidlings, right?

A: That's another reason why I couldn't live in the United States again, really I couldn't. I mean I can't put up with nonsense like that, I really just can't. You go to airports and it's just a parade of single people in SUVs, but you can't smoke. You gotta leave the airport and walk like 100 yards before you can have a cigarette, but people can drive fucking tanks and there's no problem.