Larry the Cable Guy: 'Witless' Is More

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you want to do any roles that aren't in the Larry the Cable Guy mold?
LARRY THE CABLE GUY: I'm a stand-up comedian. That's what I love to do. This other stuff is extra. I'm not one of those guys that was always like, ''You know, I feel that there's an inner dramatic role'' — you know, there's really not. [Laughs] Now if somebody came along and said, ''Hey, we've got a really good role for ya. It's like the third lead. You're real serious. You're playing the out-of-shape cop,'' I might give it a shot and see how my fans reacted to it. If they didn't accept me, then I wouldn't do that role again. It's like sometimes you'll have a band that you like, and they'll put out a couple of really kickass albums and then all of the sudden on their third album they junk what they did, and want to get real artsy on you. Now they're winnin' more Grammy awards, but they're not sellin' any more albums. I think I'd rather keep my fans happy and sell tickets.

Do you think most people know that Larry the Cable Guy is a character?
I'm pretty sure they do. What I do is a little hard to explain to people. That's why I'm kinda glad The Sarah Silverman Program came out. Sarah Silverman in real life isn't like Sarah Silverman on her show, because Sarah Silverman is doing a caricature of herself. Basically, Larry the Cable Guy is a microcosm of everyone that I grew up with mixed with a small part of me magnified to keep it realistic. This is kind of how I got the character. I remember one time I did a commentary on the radio about keeping prayer in the public schools. A construction worker came up to me and said, ''Hey, can I talk to you for a second? I'm gonna tell you something: That commentary you did today was dead on, son. That's the problem with these f---in' schools. They took the g------ bible out of it.'' So he's trying to be real religious about keeping God in the public schools, but he's cussin' like a sailor. To me, that was hilarious, and so I added that kind of a guy into the character. There's actually nice people, who mean well, and just go about expressing themselves differently.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about your fans?
People think that everybody who comes to my show is a toothless idiot. When I did an interview with 60 Minutes, they did their research and found that people who bought Blue Collar merchandise and Larry the Cable Guy merchandise, their income was above the average. It wasn't just, as people would say, trailer-trash white people. My dad sold prefabricated homes, so I know all about that, too. There's good people who live in those places but everybody laughs at it, and that's fine. That's the thing about my fans: We all like to laugh. We try not to take things too seriously.

You're on the road now. How are you handling political humor in an election year?
Well, I gotta tell you, that gets rougher and rougher to do. Ten years ago, it was a lot easier to do political humor because there wasn't such animosity toward both sides. I think that really blows, because I've got a lot of comedian friends on the complete opposite side of the aisle as me, and I'll go see their show any time. There are comedians that I do not agree with at all politically, but I can take things with a grain of salt and find them funny. There's some people who can't. So nowadays, when you're on stage you got to be careful — especially if you're not known as a political comedian. If I can do a joke that everybody finds funny, then I will. Like, ''I'm not really into the elections this year. You know, I thought Super Tuesday was two tacos for 99 cents.'' ''I thought that movie No Country For Old Men was a biography on John McCain.''

Which comedians do you find funny that we wouldn't necessarily expect you to?
I find Bill Maher's politics repulsive; I find his stand-up very funny. Lewis Black — hilarious. Do I agree with him? No. But Lewis is great. That's one of the reasons why I had Lewis do my foreword [in his 2005 book Git-R-Done]. Lewis and I are two completely opposite politically minded people. We do completely different kinds of humor, but we respect each other's work and we both find the other person hilarious. Lewis has always been one of those comedians who stuck up for me, and I wanted him to do my foreword just so that we can prove a point: You can disagree, but you can still laugh at things that make you laugh.