COMEDY IS NOT PRETTY SARAH SILVERMAN DOES THE REAL HER IN 'JESUS IS MAGIC'.

Byline: David Kronke Staff Writer

Beguilingly filthy, Sarah Silverman is a heroine in the world of stand-up comedy for wrapping an acid, acrid sensibility in innate sweetness.

Her concert film, ``Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic'' (opening Friday), celebrates her comedic fearlessness in stomping, if ever so coquettishly, on virtually every comic taboo.

In the film, she strives to find the bright side of 9/11 (American Airlines, she suggests, should adapt the motto ``First Through the Towers''), the Holocaust (``My grandmother,'' she boasts, ``was sent to one of the nicer camps'') and racism (of a half-black boyfriend, she opines, ``He has to learn to love himself before I can stop hating his people''). Silverman makes Archie Bunker's blithering bigotry sexy, and, since she is Jewish, adds a whole new, provocative layer to racial cluelessness.

A longtime critics' darling, Silverman has never quite nudged her acclaim into mainstream acceptance, having appeared in diluted roles in such films as ``School of Rock,'' ``There's Something About Mary'' and even a film called ``The Way of the Gun,'' in which she played a character named in the credits as ``Raving Bitch.''

She's currently famous for 1), telling an ethnic joke on ``Late Night With Conan O'Brien,'' which became controversial when an Asian spokesman, Guy Aoki, attacked her; and 2) her scene-stealing appearance in the ribald documentary ``The Aristocrats,'' in which she transformed the film's theme - a joke about a scabrous show-biz family - into a hilarious anecdote about her messy encounter with a cheesy New York cable-TV host named Joe Franklin.

The Daily News caught up with a drained Silverman after an exhausting press day. In a green long-sleeve T-shirt and low-riding jeans, she collapsed, belly-down, upon a sofa, her sneakered-feet kicking listlessly behind her, and addressed the urgent issues of the day.

Q: Do you see this movie as a calling card to ram into Hollywood's mind that you could be so much funnier than they're letting you be, or is it admitting, ``OK, you're right, I'm way too hard-core for the kind of thing you release under the guise of comedy?''

A: (Laughing) I had never intellectually thought of those things, but yeah, I like both of those thoughts. (This movie says) ``This is what I can do, and, I'm sorry, this is what I've done.'' People (in Hollywood) like me - they always say they're fans, and I understand that it's hard to place me. What it's going to take is not necessarily me becoming more mainstream in my stand-up - what does my stand-up have to do with my acting? But the country embracing me with their dollars? As soon as that happens, it'll be just fine for people to hire me.

Q: What is your favorite description of you that you've heard or read?

A: I like when they call me coltish - it's just like a really polite way of saying horse-face. I think they mean it as a compliment, but let's face it.

Q: What overreaction to your material has surprised you the most - was it Joe Franklin or Guy Aoki?

A: The Joe Franklin thing didn't faze at all. It was the Guy Aoki thing that surprised me - it was my first experience with someone really reacting to the buzzword and not considering the context. It becomes such a close-minded thing, ironically - he becomes so close-minded that he's not interested in any kind of dialogue or anything; there's too much at stake.

Q: How difficult is it to explain your sensibility to someone who doesn't get it and is offended by it?

A: I never do explain it. I never defend it since that Guy Aoki thing. I learned the hard way that he had no interest in discussing it. I learned an important lesson from that: You can't defend your material. If other people want to, that's great, but comedy is subjective, and if someone doesn't think it's funny, they will find it offensive.

Q: How soon after 9/11 were you able to do that material? How did you sense you could do it rather than it still being too delicate an issue?

A: Maybe after six months, when I was able to laugh at it. I'm not nearly as close to the horror of it as other people are. I saw Chris Rock do material on it five days later, and it was amazing. But I wasn't there yet. I couldn't even go on stage for a few weeks. How do you go on stage and talk about it? And how do you go on stage and not talk about it? That would be completely false. So I just didn't go on at all.

Q: Does Jimmy (Kimmel, Silverman's boyfriend) complain much about the constraints the network places on him? And when he sees something like your film, is he a little jealous?

A: I don't know if he's green with envy. He's so supportive, and he loves the movie, and he's honest to a fault. So when he likes something, I just get giddy because it means so much, because I care about what he thinks, and he can't just do the polite, ``Great job!'' That's just not in him. Which can suck, but it makes him liking this so meaningful. He's so prolific and so funny, and he has so many restraints because he's on mainstream television, but he understands it. He doesn't go, ``I can't believe I can't say (expletive) on ABC!'' He gets it.

Q: For ``The Aristocrats,'' how much advance notice did you get to do that? How much time did you have to prepare?

A: You won't believe this: I was on (``Late Night With Conan O'Brien'') with Penn & Teller, and Penn (Jillette) told me, ``I'm doing this thing with Paul Provenza on the Aristocrats joke - will you do it?'' I said, ``Sure.'' They came over the next day and left in 15 minutes. It was one take. It never occurred to me it would be edited together. I was wearing the shirt I slept in, the skirt I threw on to walk my dog, no makeup, my hair was half up from washing my face - and it was the best thing I've ever done. So sad - and yet awesome.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- 3 -- color) no caption (Sarah Silverman)

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer