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They’ve performed at Madonna’s birthday party, shared the screen with Sigourney Weaver and swore they’d die for us at Carnegie Hall. But rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated: Gruesome twosome Kiki and Herb are now setting up camp on Broadway with their special mixture of seething rage and whiskey-soaked contempt in their comeback show Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway.
Sharing cigarettes and irreverance on a muggy Friday afternoon, Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman - the genius performers behind the indelible cabaret characters - bantered with me about everything from fat Americans to eating Heath Ledger.
HX: You’re back together, but wasn’t Carnegie Hall supposed to be your farewell?
Justin Bond: It was my farewell to New York. We were going to take
a break, but the Scissor Sisters invited us on this huge U.K. tour. We played for
50,000 people in three weeks. And then we just started doing little things here
and there, and we were like, “This is fun!”
Any differences between European and American audiences?
JB: The Europeans aren’t as fat! [Laughs]
How long have you been planning the Broadway show?
Kenny Mellman: Since last fall. The Foster Entertainment people
suggested it and we were like, “It’ll never happen.” And look at us! Subway posters
are already up. I can’t wait to find graffiti. I’m thinking of doing an art project.
JB: What, taking gum and putting it all over our posters?
KM: No, taking pictures of the graffiti that’s on our posters.
JB: You gonna do an art project now? Aren’t you busy? Got a Broadway
show opening!
Will you be drinking in the Broadway show?
KM: Before, after and during.
JB: We’re there to prove that Broadway really does go for booze
and dope!
You weren’t allowed to drink at Carnegie Hall, were you?
JB: I snuck a bottle of CC behind a speaker. And once the show
started, I was like, “What are they gonna do? Send 2,800 people out of here ’cause
I have a bottle on stage?”
Is this show all new, or will there be some old favorites?
KM: I don’t know if they’re favorites, but they’re old. We avoided
anything that was in the Off-Broadway show.
JB: And anything that was in the Carnegie show. There’s lots of
new revelations, story-wise, and a new folk medley.
I love the medleys. I still can’t sing “Edelweiss” without “Tomorrow Belongs
to Me.”
KM: We take these things and make them how they should be.
JB: Rodgers and Hammerstein came along and then Kander and Ebb,
and we came to put the period on the sentence. Tell me, what celebrity would you
eat?
JB: Gavin Rossdale. Didn’t he eat somebody in some movie? Some
film that was supposed to be a blockbuster that sucked?
KM: No. Who would I eat? Heath Ledger?
Just rip him away from Michelle Williams.
JB: I love Michelle Williams. I wouldn’t eat her, but I’d have
her for dinner.
KM: Parker Posey maybe.
JB: I don’t know. She might be kind of tough.
KM: I like challenging cuisine.
JB: I would definitely do belly shots off of Parker Posey.
KM: Sure.
JB: I’d do belly shots off of a lot of people. I’d do lines off
a lot of people’s cock.
If Kiki and Herb broke up, who would they pair with for another double act?
KM: Herb would find someone who was on a lot of antidepressants.
JB: Who’d Kiki work with?
KM: Barry Manilow?
JB: No. Debbie Harry and I actually talked about if Debbie and
Kiki had their own TV series where they were caregivers.
KM: I’d like it much better if they were “home- care professionals.”
JB: Oh yes. That’d be nice. Stealing jewelry.
KM: My sister was a nurse and she told this awful story about a
home-care nurse who knocked a man over and took his drugs. And then she turned around
- and she wasn’t smoking, but she should have been - and she was like, “There’s
a name for nurses like me, and it’s not in the dictionary.” I’ve always wanted to
use that! I give that line to you to use on your show.
Did you choose the wax figures for your recent press conference at Madame Tussaud’s?
KM: Yeah. You get a list of like 12, and you pick the four you
want.
JB: I wanted Paris Hilton but he nixed it.
KM: But we got Maya Angelou.
JB: I wanted Maya Angelou. We used to have a line in the show where
Kiki said, “I know why the caged bird sings. Because she can’t write!” I’m happy
it was multi-ethnic. Barbra Streisand was the only white woman. Not that Jews are
white. Are Jews white?
KM: They’re other-caucasian. Or other-white. My dad was instrumental
in getting that in the census.
So, ironically, like pork?
KM: The other white meat.
JB: No one who gets into heaven is anything but white.
KM: The reason my dad was instrumental in making the change is
because Jews were being put under “White” and weren’t being counted in the census.
JB: Your dad’s a genius.
KM: I know. He worked for the Jewish Federation.
JB: You had a professional Jew for a father and now he’s got a
professional fag for a son - from yellow dollars to pink dollars!
Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway opens Aug. 15 at the Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W 44th St, 212-239-6200, $87.50.
SOURCE: HX
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