Show business is glamor and gobs of cash, but also rough and nasty, and the roughest job in show biz is making strangers, some hostile, some drunk, some clueless, laugh.
In high school, some of us fantasized about doing stand-up comedy. We listened to the pros and thought: How hard can that be? We memorized routines by Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart and watched Phyllis Diller on the “Tonight” show. How effortlessly Johnny Carson and his guests smoked and bantered and made us laugh.
Then a schoolmate and I got slapped with reality when we performed a comedy routine at a dance in the gym after a football game. More on that below.
A few years ago, a young mom stopped by our cottage in Canada. The conversation swung from kids to comedians and how comics, and we, often used humor to get through the sometimes mean school years.
I brought up Richard Jeni, a wonderfully inventive comedian I’d discovered on YouTube — and who had committed suicide. Another newcomer to my list is Patton Oswalt. Oswalt pulled off the nearly impossible: In the middle of a comedy special he gave a tribute, some with humor, to his wife who had recently died. Like I was saying about comedy being a tough business ...
We have no TV at the cottage, so only when I logged on to the Internet shortly after that did I learn that Robin Williams had killed himself. A woman in Ellicott City, MD, had replied online:
As someone who deals with severe depression, I do not think most people understand that it has nothing to do with your success or security. It is chemical and usually has a component of low self esteem buried below the surface just waiting for you to get hungry, alone, lonely or tired ... The humor makes us appear stronger than we actually are ... That dance of fire between the depression and the creativity is a dangerous one ..
Then came the celebrity mourning, some genuine, some probably written by publicists. Miley Cyrus said she doesn't cry for anyone she doesn't know, but just can't stop sobbing, poor dear.
(A little surgeon-ventriloquist stand-up: Like the cartoons here, it’s from the magazine Pittsburgh Quarterly.)
The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s radio station in Halifax, Nova Scotia, once asked listeners to name whom they considered the most influential comedian. A couple predictably said Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Pryor.
I phoned in my choice: Jonathan Winters. To me, he’s the founding father of improv, along with Mort Sahl who sat on a stool, held a newspaper, and riffed on the news. Winters was a god to younger comics, notably Robin Williams who influenced the younger comics. One problem: Only Robin Williams could pull off Winters' chaotic stream of consciousness.
Who channels Williams?
When either was on a roll, we hung on, laughing and gasping for air. Both appeared on the big screen, but movie scripts squashed their on-the-fly genius.
Robin Williams always gave credit to his mentor who had given us his loopy characters, notably the granny Maude Frickert and the thick-headed Elwood P. Suggins. Talk-show hosts wisely turned both loose on their audience. When the camera paused on Winters parked on the "Tonight Show" sofa, he blurted, "I once killed a groundhog with my bare hands!"
Now for that high-school gig, or a fraction of it, that we did in the gym. A note, or warning, to other would-be comedians:
DO memorize your routine and open out of town, meaning try it on friends. We didn’t.
DO NOT read your lines, as we did, which we had written on notebook paper.
Also, we weren’t nearly as polished as the fellow above.
To avoid embarrassing my old friend, I’ll call him “Mort” after his cat, not the comic.
Me: I guess they are really going to fix up the annex. Ya know about about 5 or 6 years ago, the school put in a phone system to make communications easier -- and ya know what they're going to do now?
Mort: No, what?
Me: Put phones at each end.
Mort: Ya know, I'll bet that if the annex could talk it could tell some fascinating stories.
Me: Yeah, I glanced at the walls of the boy's lavatory and it ain't doing too bad.
Mort: How about the lunches they serve here?
Me: Yeah, they're really somethin' ... and for only 30 cents.
Mort: I'd rather eat my 30 cents.
Me: Well, they're not doing too bad -- pretty soon they 'll serve us food!
Mort: But they serve us the best -- at least they say Friskies is the best!
Me: Who says it?
Mort: Oh, the Friskies Co.
DO toss out anything remotely close to “ya know,” “well” and “yeah.”
In the excellent Netflix documentary about stand-up, “Dying Laughing,” comedians recall the horrors of bombing on stage. Ours was a combined Dresden and London. The old gym turned dark and quiet, except for an occasional cough, muffled conversation and maybe a chuckle.
We were interrupting our audience’s valuable time to slow dance.
“Mort” and I definitely did not appear there all weekend.
Hey, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to tip your waitress, but not over. But seriously. Rimshot.