Janeane Garofalo provides the voice of the only female chef employed at Gusteau's Restaurant in Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar's animated family movie, Ratatouille. Garofalo sat down for our interview at Pixar's complex in San Francisco covered with bandaids. It wasn't a fashion statement. Garofalo said she had a poison ivy-type rash and after spending the day scratching it, covering the rash with Ratatouille bandaids was really the only option.
Have you ever done a French accent before? Was it difficult?
“I've never done a French accent before. It was difficult to not feel that I was doing it badly. I had a CD of a French gentleman speaking English and I would listen to it in the rental car on the way to the studio in LA and just try and do what he did. But I was never certain I was doing a good job so that was difficult to sort of do lines without doubting or being embarrassed by what I was doing.”
Can you do any other accents?
“I don't know. I hope so. I don't think I've been asked ever to do other ones. I've done Southern accents, which most people can do. But I don't think I've ever done a sustained Irish or English or Australian or Spanish or any accent.”
Would you consider trying to do comedy in that voice?
“No, because you wind up like LeBeau from Hogan's Heroes. It would not be good.”
Why do guys go for French accents?
“Because it's sexy, like Betty Blue. Did you see Betty Blue by Jean-Jacques Beineix? Rent it and then you'll answer your own question. There's a movie called Betty Blue by Jean-Jacques Beineix who did a movie called Diva. When you see that girl and her French accent… Well, it's not an accent to her. It's her voice. And there's also so many, Bridget Bardot, Emmanuelle Seigner, Emmanuelle Beart. There are so many beautiful French actresses that have this quality that we view as great sexuality. They also are much more comfortable with their bodies and much more open sexually, so I think that's why it seems like it's sexier. But having said that, that's why it's one of the Romance languages. German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew, when spoken by certain people, sounds beautiful.”
Did you feel like Collette being the only woman in a room full of techies, mostly guys?
“It was just me and Brad, so it wasn't like I was surrounded by the Pixar geniuses of techies at the time. I was just in a studio cubicle with Brad telling me what to do. So I did not have the experience of interacting with the men and women who created this art who are head and shoulders above me, technological speaking. I would have no way to know or ever hope to learn what they know computer-wise.”
There weren't guys there adjusting knobs?
“Yeah, but they're in a booth separated from you. They're behind a big Plexiglas thing and they don't speak to you, really, unless you want to talk to them. But they're doing their thing. It's just you and the producer/director. And they do their thing quietly.”
Have you ever felt like Collette before in any situation? On movies?
“I would say that contemporary society is fairly obviously white male dominated. That's just the nature of the beast. In stand-up, probably when I started in '85, there were certainly less women than there are now, but it's difficult for anyone transcending gender. It's very difficult when you're starting out doing stand-up. It's just that there's an added problem when you're a female doing standup that it's just an accepted trope, ‘Women aren't as funny as men. Women aren't as funny.’ So you're starting at that deficit.
Also, a lot of club managers, especially in the '80s, never wanted to book two women on one show because they felt it could lose the audience. So there wouldn't be as many opportunities to work. Or, if there was a female there headlining one week, they didn't want to have a female headlining the next week, even though there's not the same rules for men. But there would also be unspoken rules about comics of color back then. ‘You don't want to have more than one black guy on a show.’ God forbid a black woman. People don't get away with that anymore. There's certainly an enormous amount of diversity that exists now in the arts that wasn't there in the early-mid '80s.”
Have you tried any ‘Gusteau’ recipes?
“I don't cook. And even if I did cook, it's far above my pay grade cook-wise. I don't have that kind of time. But no, I'm not a cook. I like to watch the Food Network but I don't like to cook.”
What do you get out of watching Food Network then?
“I don't know. I don't know but I watch Paula Deen, Nigella Lawson, and Giada De Laurentiis and Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain when he was on. Sometimes I watch $40 a Day and Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels. I don't like 30 Minute Meal and I don't like Iron Chef and I don't like Emeril. Not that I don’t like Emeril, I just don't like those shows that much. But I love a nice cooking show. It's as aesthetically pleasing as any other thing that tempts the senses, I suppose.”
Do you have a lucrative side career in voice acting?
“No, no. There are some people that really are the masters of the business. They are voice over artists that you would recognize their voice immediately but you don't know their name or whatever, whose income is enormous. Voice over after voice over, whatever the Rolodex is that they do, and they have a voiceover agent. No, not at all. I occasionally get these opportunities but no, I'm not known as a voiceover person or I don't have a voiceover agent per se and stuff like that.”
Was there any room for improvising in Ratatouille?
“Not really because there's people animating the dialogue as you're doing it. It would be rude to change it and then have, ‘Hey guys, that word you spent eight hours on, she didn't say it.’ So no. It wouldn't have been polite to improvise too much.”
