PRIME TIME LIVE

The Advocate
Theater
by Dick Scanlan

Making a splash: TV writer Lapiduss returns to stand-up

"I've been writing sticoms for ten years,"says television writer-producer Maxine Lapiduss. "That's 70 in real-job years." You've probably laughed at many Lapiduss punch lines before, on Roseanne, Home improvement, The Tracey Ullman Show -- and now Ellen, for which Lapiduss is the consulting producer. But in her new Los Angeles stage show, Situation Tragedy: Observations on 10 Years in Hollywood…With Bongos, Lapiduss delivers the one-liners herself, not to mention torch songs, Las Vegas-style dances, and a perfectly pitched imitation of Joan Rivers playing JonBenet Ramsey's mother in a TV movie.

Cowritten by her elder sister, Sally Lapiduss-also a successful TV writer producer (The Nanny , Mad About You) and also openly lesbian -- Situation Tragedy is a hilarious evening of war stories from the sitcom front, but by virtue of Lapiduss's Emmy-nominated career, its hardly sour grapes. Indeed, working in television has been her life long dream. "While other kids were memorizing state capitals," she says. "I was memorizing comedy writers and the episodes they wrote."

At the age of 14, Lapiduss was appearing at comedy clubs in her hometown of Pittsburgh. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon University's prestigious acting school, Lapiduss headline at clubs throughout the country, writing her own act as well as bits for other comics, before selling a script she co-wrote to the ill-fated Ellen Burstyn Show.

A brief stint last season as executive producer of The Jeff Foxworthy Show left Lapiduss frustrated by the effort of melding her comic vision with that of her self-styled redneck star. Afterward it took another Ellen to get Lapiduss back on the sitcom track: DeGeneres. "I feel so grateful to be a part of Ellen at this time," says Lapiduss, who is the only openly gay writer, male or female, currently on the staff. "I think there was some nervousness about what the show could turn into, but we're actually writing a traditional sitcom -- with an enormous twist," she adds, referring to Ellen's lesbian story line. According to Lapiduss, that means, yes, episodes on dating. "This season Ellen is about a funny, charming, adorable woman who's attracted to other funny, charming, adorable women." Will Ellen get a girlfriend?" A bunch of them," Lapiduss says. "She'll go through what we all go through in the dating world."

Though being openly lesbian gives her expert status as an Ellen writer, Lapiduss didn't always reveal her sexuality in the frat-house, boys'-club atmosphere of most writing rooms. "I wasn't out when I bean, but I wasn't in either," says Lapiduss. She took the plunge while working on Roseanne in 1990. "We decide to write Martin Mull as a gay man, and the Crisco jokes started flying," she says. "They were meant in good fun, but it was a gay bashing, so I said, 'I'm gay.' "

It was a little harder at home when a 21-year-old Maxine came out to her mother in the middle of a fight moments before guests arrived for Thanksgiving dinner. Four years later her sister came out in the same way -- and on the same day. "Thanksgiving has always been a special time in our house," laughs Lapiduss, who describes her parents as "incredibly supportive of both Sally and me."

Situation Tragedy ends with a poignant story about a restaurant experience with her parents that leads into a love song Lapiduss sings to her girlfriend of five years, also a writer. It's one of the many mood shifts that make Lapiduss's "newfangled variety show" a constantly surprising delight. There's a six-piece all-girl band (including bang-up bongo player Denise Fraser), dancing boys, and an accordionist who doubles as choreographer (Joe Joyce).

Like Bette Midler with better manner, Lapiduss knows how to make 'em laugh, whether behind the scenes or at center stage. "When I started Ellen Burstyn told me, 'You can either eat pastry or be an actress,' " says Lapiduss. "I ate pastry for a lot of years. Now I'm performing again because I want to."