Happy Birthday, Julie Klausner

Julie Klausner is most definitely not a part of show business past — she’s out there in the fray thrashing around right now, same as always. But, like us (that’s the Royal “we”), she is a past and present show biz junkie, and this year marks a decade since her hilarious and highly original sit-com Difficult People premiered on Hulu. My wife led me into the Kult of Klausner, but I rarely regret the places to which my wife leads me. We’ve probably binged the whole three seasons of Difficult People at least four times.

Klausner is a harbinger of changes in the show business apparatus that I confess to only dimly understanding, and find myself only half-heartedly able to participate in. Once, several decades ago, I applied for a position writing audio-tour narrations for an aquarium (“I’ll do anything” being the show biz mantra), but I didn’t get the job because the person doing the hiring said that I seemed “insufficiently interested in the DEVICE”. Yeah, fuck the device. I’m never interested in the device. My eyes glaze over. Hulk Smash Device. To me it’s a necessary evil, a tool that lets me do my real thing, which is make some words for some other people to read, or hear, or whatever. The minute some button or prompt gets in my way I want to kick my computer down the cellar stairs. Many who read me may assume that I LIVE on social media, but compared with people of the generation behind me I’m a dinosaur from the age of dial-up internet and (full disclosure) fax machines. I post on social media daily, sometimes several times a day. But that doesn’t cut it. Most of the people who really know how to use it are those who grew up with it to some extent (though some people my age and older have the hang of it too. Hell, Carl Reiner was a master, and he was 98!). The thing is you kind of have to LIVE there and post many times an HOUR. You have to respond to what is happening NOW. As often as not, I’m commenting on what happened 50 years ago. Right now, in this post, it’s a mere 10 years ago.

Anyway, that’s where Klausner lives (social media). Yes, she also performs live theatre, or did. She started out at Upright Citizen’s Brigade, and had an act with Sue Galloway, a parody of ’70s kids shows called Free to be Friends, which played UCB and the 2006 New York International Fringe Festival. She wrote and acted in various TV projects by UCB alum, and some Saturday Night Live specials. She wrote a funny piece about dating for The New York Times in 2008. She wrote for The Big Gay Sketch Show, on which my old Surf Reality cohort Jonny McGovern was a cast member. (I’m going to be doing a lot of name dropping in this post, but it’s appropriate). She did and does funny podcasts and youtube videos. But the glue that holds it all together is social media, and have you be to a monster for it. People achieve fame and especially notoriety in that parallel dimension. And that became a fact of life concurrently with Klausner’s show biz success. It’s integral to her public personality.

My wife always quotes with a howl a tweet of Klausner’s that read “Mickey Rooney is dead. Our long national nightmare is over”. Apparently there was a lot of blowback and I can’t find it anywhere online at the moment, so I don’t know for sure if any of it really happened, though it sounds 100% believable to me. Klausner’s sense of humor is not unlike a more plugged-in version of Kathy Griffin, or the red-carpet incarnation of Joan Rivers. Erm, snide and snarky. Arch. Clever. Cruel at times perhaps. And you can be all judgy about it, but if you think it’s in any way new you’re wrong. All of the newspaper columnists and critics used to have JUST this tone in their writing back in the day from, say, the teens through the end of the 1950s. All of them. The Algonquin people. Walter Winchell.Hedda and Louella. Nowadays, everyone in the media seems to live in terror of not being everyone’s buddy. What is this, kindergarten? Anyway, not Klausner. She does not care whom she offends, and that’s what makes her a national treasure.

Thus we come to Difficult People, which ran on Hulu from 2015 to 2017. Difficult People is really a team-up. Her partner in crime is Billy Eichner, with whom Klausner had worked, and still works with, on Billy on the Street. Together, they’re like Statler and Waldorf, making bitchy, ungenerous yet hilarious comments about everyone and everything under the sun. Most of the targets are more than deserving, so it’s a frankly guilt-free hoot-fest. If you’re some pollyanna who just can’t take a wisecrack with real teeth, or if you actually LIKE a lot of the drivel and diarrhea most contemporary show biz poops out and pats itself on the back over, Difficult People won’t be for you. I consider it a wonderful Christmas miracle that it ran for three seasons, or for that matter, that it was greenlit at all.

Luckily, there was some juice behind it. Amy Poehler was one of the producers (I interviewed her about 20 years ago — I’m sure she remembers!). And MANY major performers were in the supporting cast, and many more were guest stars. Klausner and Eichner played versions of themselves, two striving, encyclopedic actor-comedians in their late ’30s. Both are non-practicing Jews. Eichner (and his character) are gay, but seem to hate all the cliches of gay culture. Klausner’s character is in a marriage-like long-term relationship with the always-impeccable James Urbaniak who, like us, toiled in the vineyards of Todo Con Nada back in the day. His character works at PBS, a source of much amusement on the show. Also refreshing (and new) is that he is a stereotyped WASP: alcoholic, tightly wound, and sort of sexless. In a complete and utter casting coup, the great Andrea Martin plays Klausner’s mother, a hilariously self involved and relentlessly critical psychologist. Fred Armesen is in the cast as Eichner’s much more devout brother, and the ubiquitous Jackie Hoffman (whom I finally got to meet a couple of months ago) plays his sister-in-law. A pre-Oh Mary! Cole Escola is Eichner’s co-worker at a coffee shop, who gleefully embodies every gay stereotype ever conceived by the mind of man. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious) runs the coffee shop, along with her husband, played by Broadway star Derrick Baskin.

Klausner’s character seems to have a job writing capsules of TV episodes for the internet. Otherwise the two characters are constantly auditioning for parts, occasionally getting them, as well as self-producing shows, pitching projects, and name dropping bold-faced names ad infinitum. Like ya do. I can relate to pretty much all of it! Meanwhile they encounter a great many of those bold-faced names, some playing characters on the show, some in cameos as themselves. Among them: Kate McKinnon, John Benjamin Hickey, Amy Poehler,Amy Sedaris, Seth Meyers,Debbie Harry,Ken Burns, Sandra Bernhard, John Mulaney, Julianne Moore, Stockard Channing, Vanessa Williams, Patton Oswald, Jane Krakowski, Victor Garber, John Turturro, Rosie O’Donnell, Susan Lucci, Jessica Walter,The Countess and Sonja from Real Housewives,Andy Cohen, Tina Fey, Kathy Lee Gifford, Tony Hale, Nathan Lane, Joel McHale,Maury Povitch, Danny Aiello, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kate Person of The B-52s, Martin Short, Mickey Dolenz, Larry Wilmore, Justin Vivian Bond, Rachel Dratch,Sally Kellerman, Mink Stole, Austin Pendleton, and Wayne Federman. It’s like the modern equivalent of a Bob Hope special!

Some of the names that get dropped on the show have meaning for me because it’s insider stuff I relate to. I happen to live in Great Neck where Klausner’s character (and the real Jackie Hoffman) are from. One episode is set the New York International Fringe Festival, where me, my wife and nearly everyone we know spent a good many of our Augusts over a period of 20 years. We recognize a lot of the locations on the show. Many scenes are shot in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg section of Brooklyn where I used to live. I’m pretty they used The Cutting Room as a location for the episode with Abra Cadouglas (McKinnon). And there was a whole episode where they ridiculed “old timeys”, i.e., the New York cosplay subculture that’s into Victoriana and Edwardian gear or what have you, which made me laugh, let us say, with recognition.

Klausner’s and Eichner’s characters are terrible and they know it, but bad things happen to them as a result of their awfulness, and they generally come to their version of some half-assed awareness at the end, mostly to satisfy the needs of a TV show. I for one recognize myself in their behavior, and if you don’t (to some extent), you’re LYIN’, This is a celebrity obsessed culture. It’s how we got in this pretty fix.

Like I say, Klausner’s still in the thick of things. Since Difficult People wrapped you could see her in episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Fosse/Verdon. She played Louella Parsons on Karina Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This. Brilliant casting! Since 2020 she has co-hosted the Double Threat podcast with Tom Scharpling.

For more on the history of show business,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and pleasestay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.