PLUME: If you were to have an issue with a given venue, what would it normally be? Would it be a size issue, or an audience issue…
JILLETTE: No, no… none of that. I would always prefer - and this is something I’ll never be given, it’s just not practical - but I would always prefer to not have alcohol around. In my private life, I’m not around any drugs or alcohol. If I go out to dinner with you and you order wine, I leave. I won’t be around drugs and alcohol at all. If I find out someone smoked dope that day, they’re a pothead and I won’t be around them. I would hasten to add that I’d like everything to be legal - I would like heroin, everything, to be entirely legal…
PLUME: But it comes down to a personal choice…
JILLETTE: I’m a hardcore libertarian - I want everything legal - but I also believe that you have the right to free association. I don’t want to be around anybody who f***in’ drinks wine or has a f***in’ beer. I guess if you’re under 16, it’s okay to drink - but once you’re anything near an adult, you just have to leave that s*** alone. I’ve never had a drink of alcohol or any drug in my life.
PLUME: Which a lot of people find surprising…
JILLETTE: Yeah. I guess that’s supposed to go with a certain kind of aggressive quality, although I’ve never really seen it. I mean, that seems to be the hype on it, but any pothead I ever see is not out conquering the world. I guess Paul McCartney has made a lot of money, but it doesn’t seem like it’s through clarity and ambition.
PLUME: But can he count it…
JILLETTE: Exactly! So I’m obviously using hyperbole here. I mean, there are gigs and places where we wouldn’t play, I suppose, and we certainly do - when there’s a certain night to choose and we can only do one show, we choose that place. We did choose to play Broadway for those years, as opposed to playing a little Florida dinner theater. But that’s not really the question that I’m addressing. The fact is that some people say, “I want to do a Vegas show” - which seems like an insane f***ing thing to say, because what matters is the show. It comes down to that Marshall McLuhan was deeply wrong. The medium is not the message - the message is the message. That whole attitude - that, “I want to be on TV” - is just so f***ed up. When someone says to me - like some kid says to me, “I really want to do a TV show… I really want to do a magic show… What should I do?” My question is always, “You just haven’t said anything. What do you want to do? What do you want to say? What’s in your heart? What do you want to say to people?” There’s this nightmare that I have - this image in my head - that kind of sums up so much of showbusiness to me. If you go to a concert… and pick anything - pick Guns & Roses, pick Eminem, pick The Rolling Stones, pick any sort of talent and time at a big stadium show… you’ll see these kids that will fight their way onto the stage. And, I mean, to get - in a stadium - onto the stage, you have to go across hundreds of people… and that’s all going to hurt, because they’re all fighting you. Then you’ve got to go across that pit, during which the bouncers are going to grab at you…
PLUME: Followed by the mustard gas and the German line…
JILLETTE: It’s hard! Then you get on stage - and you see this happen every third concert that you go to - and there’s a person on stage who does not belong there. And maybe someone has stepped away from the microphone, and there’s a mic. So at that moment, they have tens of thousands of people looking at them. And they have 50 skadillion watts of power in their hands. I’ve even seen it happen on a video, not live, where the kid will actually grab the microphone. Someone is away from the mic and they have access, and they grab the microphone. Now, this person knows that within 15 seconds, certainly, they’re going to be grabbed by a bouncer and they’re going to be pulled offstage. And when they’re pulled offstage, they’re not going to be treated gently, and they’re going to be ejected from a show that they probably spent $100 bucks on. And they’re just going to be thrown out the exit - that’s it for them, and they won’t see the end of the show.. and they may have pulled their shirt off, and it may be cold out, and they won’t find their friends again, and they won’t get a ride home. And they’ve certainly fought through all of this, so they’re going to be bruised the next day. So they have this window of maybe 7 seconds that they can address 25,000 people. And they choose to go, “WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!” That’s the choice.
PLUME: Do you think it’s a cultural issue? This sort of “media opportunism”?
JILLETTE: I don’t know. All I know is that I sometimes watch performers, and what I see them doing is climbing to the top in order to say, “WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!” You have people like Bob Dylan, who have an intellectual idea…
PLUME: Although some of his albums in the 70’s were “WAAAHHH!!!”…
JILLETTE: No no no… No they weren’t. They were never that. They might have been bad, but they were never empty. I mean, if you’re going to being up Bob Dylan or Self Portrait or something - the tapes that were kind of gathered - but there’s always been thought. And as hard as Bob Dylan worked, he worked for a reason. And I think as hard as Madonna worked, she’s kinda, sorta had at least accidental reasons. Whereas you have someone like Houdini, who works really really hard to get really really famous, and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there. “I defy the jails of the world to hold me!” That image of Houdini hanging over Time Square with an entire audience of immigrants in those hats - defying “the jails of the world to hold me” really defined freedom. And then went on, of course, to some very strong proto-atheist type positions that really just permeated the society. And then you’ve got Elvis, who kind of wanted to sing like a black man, and did a huge amount for Civil Rights - it may have been accidental, but at least there was something there. And then you have all these people that pop up where they’re doing the same amount of work - it’s just as hard to do - but they’re actually saying nothing from their heart. They’re just getting attention. So when someone would say to me, “Did you want to be on Broadway?”, it always brought that to mind. I would say, “Well, I’m happy to be on Broadway - we worked hard to be here and I’m proud to be on Broadway - but Broadway wasn’t the goal. The show, and the content of the show, was the goal.” And that’s different.
PLUME: It’s that “message is the message” issue…
JILLETTE: Yeah. To put it in Marshall McLuhan terms, that’s the message. And that’s what I find so remarkable, is how many questions are based on “how did you get to this point?” Essentially… “What color are the plates that you’re putting the food on?” I know that presentation is important, but it seems like that was - in the 1990’s, when we were kinds, sorta everywhere - we were only getting those questions. “This must be a dream come true to be on Broadway…” and the answer would be, “Never crossed my mind. And I believe that was true - that it never literally crossed my mind that I would ever perform on Broadway, until it was within reach. And I bet that’s not true for the majority of people who are on Broadway.
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