You'd think that after seven years of writing for Beatrice.com, I'd
remember to bring my tape recorder along with me to each and every
interview, but somehow, when I was leaving the apartment to meet Jill
Davis, the author of Girls' Poker Night, I picked the recorder up and put
it someplace besides my messenger bag. So we wound up spending an hour
hanging out at the caf é at SoHo's Housing Works bookstore, talking
about how she wrote her debut novel, which traces the romantic
misadventures of newspaper columnist Ruby Capote and a set of girlfriends
who, you guessed it, get together every week to play poker. Afterwards, I went
back home and emailed Davis a set of "official interview questions"; this gave
her a chance to throw in some punchy one-liners. When I asked how she
became a writer for the David Letterman show, for example, she wisecracked,
"I won a radio contest, so I packed up the Winnebago and moved to New York."
(The real story is that she was writing a humorous column for a paper in
Lynn, Massachusetts, when she saw Letterman complaining about a writer's
strike one night and mailed a bunch of her columns to the show. Her
submission caught the attention of then-head writer Steve O'Donnell, she was
invited to send in a more formal submission, and was eventually told she had a
new career in TV comedy writing if she wanted it. Only then did she pack
the Winnebago...) By her recollection, she was perhaps the second female staff
writer for the show, after Merrill Markoe; she was present for the last two
years of Letterman's run on NBC and stayed with the team for approximately
four years when they moved to CBS. Since leaving The Late Show, Davis
has written television pilots and (as yet unproduced) screenplays, in addition
to what looks like a promising career as a comic novelist.
RH: What were your favorite bits from your time writing for Letterman?
JD: First, let me say, it was the greatest job. I spent a lot of time working on
remotes that took Dave out of the studio. I wrote the ideas involving Dave
and Zsa Zsa Gabor. In the first one, Dave and Zsa Zsa went to a small
neighborhood in New Jersey and started knocking on doors and asking if anyone
had a question for Zsa Zsa. They didn't. And they were confused about who
Dave was. But one thing they knew was that Zsa Zsa was the most beautiful and
glamorous woman they'd ever seen, so the piece became "Everybody Loves Zsa
Zsa." It featured lots of montages of very nice people from the Garden State
letting Zsa Zsa try on their shoes and stuff.
We did remotes with her in London and L.A. too. In L.A. she and Dave spent
the day driving through fast food drive-thrus eating fast food. Pounding
french fries on camera -- Zsa Zsa has to be the best sport in the world. In
London, her sportsmanship was tested once again and she rose to the occasion
by saying yes to eel pie and bangers and mash.
If you saw any remotes with psychics in them, I wrote those too. One of my
favorites was a piece that featured a psychic and Dave going to various NY
delis. They had a competition seeing who could most closely predict the
expiration dates on dairy products. I think Dave won that one -- I was also
responsible for the first few "Dave Talks to Kids" remotes.
RH: When did you start writing short stories? How did that lead to Girls' Poker
Night?
JD: I had been writing for the Late Show for about four years when I started
writing short stories. I had a blast writing the stories because I was
writing in a voice more my own, as opposed to a man's. HBO ended up buying
four of them. I think that had a direct impact on my decision to write a
book. I'd always wanted to write a novel, and I think selling the short
stories made me think it was possible. So if you want to blame someone, start
with HBO. It's all their fault.
RH: How did you settle on the plot of the novel?
JD: I've been fascinated with the subject of loss for a long time. In
particular, I'm interested in how people, consciously or unconsciously,
spend their lives replacing the things they lost when they were children. I
was exploring issues that are personal but that are also universal in a
divorce-happy culture. Loss is loss.
RH: What did you bring from your experience as a journalist and a comedy
writer to writing the novel?
JD: Certainly I brought aspects of both to this book. First, Ruby is a columnist,
and I was a columnist. I liked the experience so much that I wrote the book
in the first person and organized it into small chapters that are about the
length of the columns I used to write. I thought about including actual
columns written by Ruby, but it seemed to me that Ruby was already speaking
in the first person in a way that is so much more intimate than she'd ever be
in a column. So you'd never really learn more about her in a column, then you
would in the chapters where she's confiding in you so much already. I think
in this case, columns seemed like a great tool for a character who is so
far away from herself. In the beginning of the book even her name feels
foreign. So I think the columns reveal the changes she undergoes in subtle
ways -- she's vastly less hyper and fearful as the book progresses.
When I reread the book it seems to me it moves along at a pretty good clip.
I'm sure this is the television writing influence. When you're writing for
television, the economy of words is crucial.
Maybe the most interesting part of the process came from balancing comedy
with some more serious moments. I was hoping the comedy would feel like
relief for Ruby in the way that it does in life when you're facing tough
situations. The laughs seem so much more valuable and helpful when they're
pulling you out of something negative. I think it's an interesting way to show
comedy as an incredibly useful defense.
RH: Is the real Girls' Poker Night as raucous and freewheeling as the one
in the book? And how is your personality like Ruby's... or not like her?
JD: Raucous? Freewheeling? Yes! Yes! And if you'd included another adjective,
my
guess is that the response to that would be "Yes!" as well. Our games are
fast-paced, hilarious and competitive. But maybe the best thing that happens
when you're sitting around a card table playing poker is that everyone at the
table begins to feel entitled to know what's happening in everyone else's
life -- it's an amazing phenomena. A kind of social sodium pentathol. From
what I gather this doesn't happen when men play poker.
How is my personality like Ruby's? I don't actually keep the dresses I've
worn during other friends weddings. Closets are small in New York City -- I
can't be squandering space on bridesmaid dresses.
RH: Who are some of your favorite writers? What have you read recently
that you've enjoyed?
JD: I just read Chang-
Rae Lee's A Gesture Life which I really, really enjoyed. Margaret
Atwood's Alias Grace was wonderful. Elizabeth Gilbert and Laura Zigman are two other
writers I admire. I love John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. I'm a
Michael Frayn freak-- I'll read anything he writes--and I also like Mark Leyner.
I'm from Shillington, PA, birthplace of Mr. John Barbara Updike -- so I've
enjoyed his work for as long as I can remember, which probably really means
since ninth grade. Ok, Ok! I confess. His middle name isn't really Barbara.
At least I don't think it is! I'm so sorry. I just couldn't resist starting
such a zesty rumor.
Growing up my two favorite books were Woody Allen's Side Effects and
Phyllis Diller's Housecleaning Hints. I carried that Phyllis Diller book
with me everywhere when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Eventually it just
fell apart. My favorite joke involved Fang telling Phyllis she spent so
much time talking on the phone, that she had a tan from the light on her
Princess phone.
RH: What's next for you? Another novel? A sequel? Or do you have other
projects going on?
JD: Sequel? I suppose that would depend largely on how America's love affair
with Girls' Poker Night develops -- though I do have ideas about what happens to
Ruby and her friends next.
I'm writing a play and a novel right now. I've also agreed to write a
serialized piece of short fiction for usatoday.com which will run for six to eight
weeks starting in June so I'll need to get to work on that.
RH: So who's getting more email from your website, you or your cat?
JD: Wayne receives at least twenty emails for every one I receive. I think this
is all the evidence we need to conclude that the furry boys are taking over the
world.
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