Eddie Izzard dazzles his audiences by seeming to take on all of history and pop culture in a single show. The popular English stand-up comedian might start at Stonehenge and work his way to “Scooby-Doo.’’ In the middle of imitating a monkey dancing to an organ grinder, he’ll pivot to Charlton Heston and then tangent into how Americans really “pursue’’ happiness, sometimes with a weapon.
Somewhere in that swirl of ideas, he may take a few minutes to talk about himself. Sometimes he is in “boy mode’’ in a dark suit and sometimes he is in “girl mode,’’ wearing a dress and painted nails. He explains in his breakthrough 1998 HBO special “Dressed To Kill’’ that he is an “executive transvestite . . . [who] travel[s] the world,’’ not a “weirdo transvestite’’ like J. Edgar Hoover.
When he’s done, he’ll have shown you how his brain works in all its delightful Rube-Goldberg-meets-Salvador-Dali glory. What tends to get short shrift is Eddie Izzard, the man. Izzard’s longtime collaborator Sarah Townsend noticed this when she was directing the documentary, “Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story.’’
Izzard notes in his new book, “Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens,’’ that Townsend, “who had been shooting interviews with me for some time, said that I never really ‘say’ anything. I thought, ‘Well, I’m up for saying lots of things.’ ’’
And it turns out he is: from his birth in Yemen, to his Northern Ireland childhood, coming out as a transvestite, and his evolution from street performer at Edinburgh Festival Fringe to stand-up comedian and actor. This evening at 7 p.m., Izzard will appear at John Hancock Hall to say even more things about his book and life.
Izzard takes as his book’s starting point a “revelatory’’ moment that emerged near the end of the documentary. He is talking about his beloved mother, who died of cancer when he was six, and has anepiphany: that everything he does, all the tours and performances (in four different languages), all the marathons (43 in 51 days in 2009 for charity), all the acting (on stage, television, film) “is trying to get her back. I think if I do enough things . . . that maybe she’ll come back.’’
So he returns to March 4, 1968, the day his mother died. “The last day of my childhood,’’ he writes. Izzard retraces the whole day, how sick his mother looked when he and his brother Mark left for school. How a friend’s mom picked them up and brought them to their house for cake and pop. And later, how their father broke the news.
“It’s only about four pages long, but it took about 50 years of my life to write that down,’’ says Izzard in a recent telephone interview.
“Believe Me’’ was meant to be a companion piece to the documentary, and they play off each other well. The documentary provides performance clips and different points of view from friends and colleagues. What the book adds is the larger context of the life — not just what thrills him, but what wounds him and what drives him.
“I never go that open,’’ he says. He notes that Townsend had to work to pull something more emotional from him and that perhaps loosed ideas and memories that he was able to use in the memoir.
“Right toward the end [of the film], I started opening up about my mother,’’ he says. “But I didn’t realize . . . I suppose it’s . . . Well, that opening chapter, it just kills me. On the audiobook I had to do it a second time.’’
There is more to it than sadness, however. Izzard’s chronicle is reminiscent of his shows, a stream of surprising associations, full of footnotes and copious asides on subjects like NASA and Action Man.
And the voice throughout is familiar. That’s at least in part because Izzard dictated most of the book to his collaborator, Laura Zigman, and then he edited the resulting manuscript. But it’s also because he is both the wildly free-associating comedian and, away from the stage, the more contemplative man. “I remember the early days of stand-up, people said, ‘You play this character onstage,’ ’’ he says. “There’s no [expletive] character. It’s just me. I mean, they may have been just getting confused because there’s some makeup involved. But no, it’s just me, turned on full.’’
Izzard refers to the time before he came out as a transvestite and before he knew how to be a comedian as “The Wilderness Years.’’ One of his aims for the book was to help transvestites and transgender people without making it entirely about that. “It would have been really helpful to me to know that, the rough stuff you’ve got to go through and the place you can get to,’’ he says
In fact if there is one theme that runs throughout, it’s the idea of setting a goal and persevering, no matter what.
Izzard finds a parallel between finding the courage to be himself and learning how to be a good street performer, and credits them both with preparing him for stand-up. “Those two together — the transgender thing was humiliating and rough and people shouting at me and whatever, and gradually that got better,’’ he says. “The beginning of street performing was humiliating and eventually I got better. Those two things, I would link those two. By the time I got to stand-up, I’d already learned this pattern from two things.’’
Izzard writes that street performer Paul Keane once told him that if you think you can’t do something, then you can’t. But if you think you can, there’s a change.
“I did it in doing gigs in French and different languages and politics and marathon running. I know how to get through it, and all you’ve got to do is just keep going, just keep on going.’’
Nick A. Zaino III can be reached at nick@nickzaino.com.
