They Talk; What Do They Say?

“I want to do something crazy tonight, just get insane. I want to be crazy, I want to be nuts.”

--Sandra Bernhard as Masha in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy”

“No, I don’t think I’m stonewalling at all.”

--Rep. Gary Condit, stiffly to ABC’s Connie Chung

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Much like politics and some notable media interviews, late-night television has always been a high-risk laboratory. Specimen in, specimen out. Put a match to the wrong beaker and boom, all those couches and cue cards up in smoke.

As in the dusky gray vapors now rising from smoldering Gary Condit after his widely watched self-immolation with Connie Chung, one proving to be a metaphor also for entertainment talk shows.

Much talk, little communication.

Although his plan backfired, Condit went on ABC Thursday to promote himself, just as guests on entertainment talk venues show up nearly always to advertise themselves or their latest projects in a symbiotic partnership that allows the shows they appear on to bask in their celebrity. Consider it a bonus if anything is said that you recall past the closing credits.

So let’s hear it for gamblers--visionary talk shows that aim to be different against all odds, and talk show hosts who are .

The latest to join this assembly line is the self-proclaimed antichrist of mainstream talk shows. None of “the same old, y’know, suits and ties and mishigas of white men who are all freaked out” for her, she vows tonight. Instead, she and her show greet us “raw, excited, sexy.”

Nope, not Joan Rivers again.

All lips and legs, uniquely gifted Sandra Bernhard is not only a very funny comic and fine saloon singer, she’s the planet’s bawdiest, sexiest, sultriest, most alluring string bean of a dork. Bronze her and she’d be a Giacometti.

You’ve seen her, and witnessed her weird magnetism, so you know this wee-hours niche experiment should work, right? We’ll see.

Bernhard doesn’t exactly talk when opening her weeklong late-show trial tonight as much as she hemorrhages. Think Bogie in “The Caine Mutiny” without ball bearings.

A few minutes into “The Sandra Bernhard Experience”--a true UFO for the Arts & Entertainment network--and you’re drenched, soaked through with her, ready for wringing out and spin-drying. But she keeps on, the more she boasts of being dangerous as a performer, the less dangerous she seems, the edgy screwball menace of her stand-up comedy and one-woman stage shows not transferring.

“It was just a matter of time before I was gonna be up in your face on a regular basis. I wasn’t quite ready, you know. I was taking my time, I was courting you to get to know me in a, y’know, in a more intimate kind of ground-level way. Y’know, we’re ready to be really in your face. I was doing this show on the Internet, which totally boggles my mind, because I’m very into communicating with people one on one. That’s what I’m about. I like intimacy. I like good conversation. I like it when things get a little on the edge. We go there, we pull it back, we scare you, we make you comfortable, I slap you, I put on your boots, I slap you. I do what I need to do to make you feel at home with me.”

Give it a rest, already. Now you know what Jerry Lewis endured as abductee Jerry Langford, body tightly wrapped and mouth taped, when Bernhard was in his face having a meltdown as Rupert Pupkin’s scary co-kidnapper in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy.”

On the other hand, with Condit’s spoiled cheese still lingering from last week, it’s tempting to wonder: What if?

What if, instead of imitating a brick baking in his own bonfire, he had been more of a Sandra Bernhard with Chung, curled his lips at her and let America get to know him in a more intimate kind of ground-level way?

Or, instead, the reverse. What if Bernhard had been sitting opposite him instead of Chung, snarling seductively as a piano tinkled romantically in the background?

I want you to get crazy tonight, Gary. I want you to be insane. I want you to be nuts.

Well ... maybe not.

Bernhard says tonight that A&E; is counting on her to “hip up our crazy nighttime cavalcade,” which is some gamble for a cable network that entered this century still wearing spats. She’s ready for her close-up, but is A&E; really ready for her?

The conventional “Tonight Show” prototype that Robert De Niro’s goofy Pupkin dreams of hosting in “The King of Comedy” is the antithesis of the “fun, crazy, free conversation” that Bernhard envisions for her own little cabaret of a show. Instead of the traditional band, it has only a musical director (Mitch Kaplan), and is taped in a bare studio with no audience, a setting that fits the cozy tone of Bernhard’s chats with her guests, many of whom don’t make the rounds of Jay and Dave.

Bernhard does have “co-host” Sara Switzer freeze-framed beside her like a painting, throwing out an occasional nod but saying virtually nothing. Very hip, very raw, very ... odd.

Even so, fun and crazy are slow-going in the premiere, the only episode that A&E; made available in advance.

First come separate chats with Edie Falco and rocker-turned-actor Steve Van Zant of Bernhard’s favorite series, “The Sopranos” on HBO. Although neither stonewalls, it’s all rather thin.

Saving the hour is natural, self-effacing Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, with whom Bernhard shmoozes in a freewheeling, candid way rare for such shows.

Ending loftily, they move to Kaplan’s piano for a duet, an appealing improv of Hynde’s noted “I’ll Stand by You.” Think they mean Gary Condit?

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“The Sandra Bernhard Experience” premieres Tuesday night at 11 on A&E.; The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.