I'm Still Here... Damn It!

Visibly pregnant in a sheer dress, Sandra Bernhard paces the stage like an agitated, name-dropping prophet. I’m Still Here… Damn It! operates as a cabaret of grievances rather than a traditional stand-up set. She delivers a stream-of-consciousness sermon on late-nineties celebrity culture, blending musical numbers with acidic, conversational rants. Treating the audience as confidantes, she settles scores with an elite Hollywood scene she simultaneously inhabits and disdains.

Filmed for HBO at Slim’s in San Francisco in 1998, the performance captures the comedian just after finishing a long television run on Roseanne. Back in her preferred format, she uses the hour to reassert her alternative theater roots. The material is tethered entirely to its era. She targets the media circus surrounding Princess Diana and Gianni Versace, complains about Courtney Love, and mocks the acoustic guitarists of the Lilith Fair crowd.