I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (10 page)

Not so fast. I’d look around the hotel room and realize that I didn’t have a legal pad. I only wrote with No. 2 pencils on collegeruled, yellow legal pads. Therefore, I needed to find a stationery store to buy legal pads and pencils, I reasoned.

I would head down to the hotel gift shop and buy a map of the downtown area where I was staying. Back in the room, I would pull out the yellow pages and look for stationery stores. I would match up the addresses to determine which one was closest.

At this point, I would look at my watch. Hmm … four o’clock. Well, I’d say to myself, there’s no point in trying to do something today because the stationery store is going to be closed by the time I get there.

And then I’d repeat the process the next day.

Dick Martin was much luckier finding material in his travels. He once checked into a hotel that was C-shaped. Shortly after settling into his room, he was looking out the window. On the other side of the building he noticed a man who was by himself in a room and was engaging in what, in polite circles, would be called self-love.

Dick was in room 807. By counting along the building, Dick quickly figured out the man was in room 842. He picked up the phone, dialed the man’s room, and watched.

The man answered the phone with a curt “Who is this?”

Dick replied, “This is God, cut it out.”

One thing I’ve learned since winning my three Grammies is that in the entertainment business, awards are only one way in which success is measured.

My first brush with this came in 1970. I had a small part in the film
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,
which was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Barbra Streisand. As was customary, the billing of the actors had been settled up front. But after the movie was finished, the producers came to me and said that Jack Nicholson, who also had a small part in the film, had been nominated for an Oscar for
Five Easy Pieces
. They asked if they could bill him above me, despite the fact that it was in breach of my contract. I told them that if Jack
won
the Oscar, they could bill him ahead of me. He didn’t.

I’ve never measured success by awards. In fact, I think the whole awards-giving process needs rethinking. For starters, they should bestow lifetime achievement awards at the beginning of a performer’s career. This way the person can still enjoy it while he is young, rather than giving it to him when he has lost most of his marbles and is standing onstage wondering why all these overdressed people are applauding.

If the performer had a lousy career, they could take back the lifetime achievement award. They would have a taking-back ceremony, where luminaries would say things like, “I thought he was a shoo-in to be successful” and “I gave him his first lead role and he just killed the movie.” Stripping a performer of an important award after a long career sounds cruel, but it’s not. Since the taking-back ceremony would happen in the performer’s dotage, he wouldn’t really understand what was happening.

In a way, I’m lucky I don’t have four Emmys like, say, Kelsey Grammer. My wife, Ginnie, feels that if you openly display trophies, you are bragging. I think most women feel this way. You hear the stories all the time. A guy goes out and risks his life hunting elk, and his wife won’t let him hang the stuffed head over the fireplace.

I’ve found ways to cheat this rule for the most important of accolades—but only barely. My Grammys for
The Button-Down Mind
are discreetly placed on a bookshelf in the den. For years, my daughter Courtney thought they were bookends from a yard sale.

On prominent display is the Mark Twain Prize for humor given to me by the Kennedy Center—and, Ginnie, sweetheart, I’m quoting here—“to honor the brilliant minds that elbow American culture to see if it’s still alive.” This one is on the coffee table, where it will stay until Ginnie moves it. Which she does once a year to make room for the Christmas decorations.

I’ve found that there’s no real comfort in success. There’s never time to slow down, sit back, and relax. But there did come a moment later in my career when I knew that I had truly made it as a comedian.

After I presented Richard Pryor with the lifetime achievement award at the American Comedy Awards, we were backstage posing for pictures. He looked up at me and said, “I stole your album.”

For a split second, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The great Richard Pryor stealing my material? I was honored and stunned at the same time.

“In Peoria, I went into the record store and I put it under my jacket and I walked out,” he continued.

“Richard, I get a quarter royalty on every album.”

With that, Richard Pryor pulled out a quarter and handed it to me.

To have your album stolen by Richard Pryor is quite an achievement.

CHAPTER SIX

Dying Onstage
Isn’t That Painful

When I was a student at Loyola University, there was a guy in my class named Jimmy Sheeran. He was on the Loyola boxing team, which has since been discontinued. I was a huge boxing viewer. Every Wednesday night, my friend Jack Galley and I watched
Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts
on TV. I planned my entire day around it. I would go over to his house and watch because he had a television set and we didn’t have one at that time. He was middle class.

Another friend of mine named Jim McGee, a colorful and unpredictable character, was also an amateur boxer. Even though he outweighed me by twenty pounds, he asked me to train with him.

One time, when both he and my friend Ed Gallagher worked downtown, McGee was in his car and passed Ed on the street. He offered to give him a lift, Ed hopped in, and McGee started driving north on the Loop. Though Ed didn’t know it, McGee was driving a loaner car because his car had been stolen.

Barreling down the Outer Drive, McGee thought he spotted his stolen car in the adjacent lane. He sped up and crowded the car. Ed, having no idea what was going on, became concerned. “You’re getting a little close …”

When McGee was certain the car was his, he bumped the fender to run the driver off the road. Ed crouched down in horror. “You just bumped the guy!”

McGee then swerved into the car and forced it onto the grass. By this time, Ed was under the dashboard in a state of shock. The two guys in the car jumped out and ran. McGee took another look at the car and mumbled, “That’s not my car.”

Boxing with McGee involved going to the Oak Park YMCA twice a week. They had a makeshift boxing ring of canvas spread over tumbling mats and surrounded by sagging ropes.

One day we were sparring and I stepped backward and caught my foot on the canvas. I fell forward, totally defenseless, and he hit me. He didn’t knock me out, but I landed facedown on the canvas.

“Why did you do that?” I asked him.

“I’ve never seen an opening like that,” he said gleefully.

I decided it was time to learn how to box, so I asked Jimmy Sheeran, the Loyola boxing team member, to teach me.

Jimmy and I met at the Northwestern gym, which was a couple of blocks from the Loyola campus, and practiced leading and defending. We wore gloves, but our hands weren’t wrapped and we didn’t use mouthpieces or headgear.

This continued for two or three sessions, and one day we began sparring. Jimmy unexpectedly whapped me in the head. Reasoning that the rules of our training had changed, I whapped him back. We began punching each other, leading and defending. You know, really boxing.

From time to time, other guys would wander by Jimmy and me boxing and ask if they could try it. We said, “Sure,” and asked, “Which one?” They would look at Jimmy’s face and my face and invariably choose me.

During our sessions Jimmy gave me a deviated septum, probably from a left hook. I didn’t think much of it at the time until my induction physical, when the doctor said, “Bend over,” which I did, and the doctor said, “How did you get the deviated septum?” and I wondered, “You can see it from there?”

The reason I bring this whole subject up is that when I perform stand-up and the audience either doesn’t laugh or heckles me, I think to myself, “I can get through this because at least nobody is hitting me in the face.”

There isn’t a comedian in show business who hasn’t tanked onstage. In a strange way it becomes funny when you’re halfway through the show, you’ve done your best material, you know you don’t have anything stronger coming up, and no one is laughing. You just want to hang yourself.

I experienced this sinking feeling in my second appearance ever, at the Elmwood Casino in Windsor, Ontario. My record hadn’t yet been released, so no one knew who I was. The crowd was very polite. They didn’t boo. They just kept eating their dinner. I knew it wasn’t working, so it became funny in a perverse sort of way. All I could do was press on.

The club was a real throwback. They had a line of chorus girls, an Italian singer, and a dumbbell act. Actually, the dumbbell act was fascinating. They were two Italian brothers who didn’t speak any English. After all, you don’t have to say much if you are in a dumbbell act, you just throw the dumbbells back and forth, catch them between your legs or behind your back, and then bow.

The dumbbell act had a big closing number. The emcee would call somebody from the audience onto the stage, and the volunteer would sit on a chair between the dumbbell throwers. They would put a cigarette in the person’s mouth, and then stand five feet away on either side of the chair, and throw the dumbbells behind the volunteer’s head. For the grand finale, they would knock the cigarette out of the person’s mouth.

Sometimes they knocked the cigarette out, other times they cut it too close and hit the unsuspecting audience member in the side of the head. Let me tell you, when they creased the volunteer with the dumbbell, the routine just fell apart.

The chorus girls would come out and dance for a few minutes, and then it was my turn. I took the stage and performed for about twenty minutes. For whatever reason, the Canadian audience wasn’t taking to my act. I would leave the stage, and the dancers would return.

This went on for four consecutive nights. Sometimes the Italian dumbbell throwers would knock out the cigarette, other times they would hit the volunteer in the head. The girls would dance, I would do my act to a lukewarm response, and the dancers would close the show. On the fifth night, I did about fourteen minutes and I died, so I cut things short, thanked the audience, and left the stage.

As I walked backstage, I passed the girls’ dressing room where they were changing. I heard someone say, “Holy S---, he’s off!”

The manager of the Elmwood walked up to me. In a thick German accent, he said to me,
“Jou have to do eighteen meanuts.”

“I did fourteen minutes and it didn’t work, so I know that, uh, another four minutes is not going to work,” I explained. “I don’t have any stronger material.”

“Jou need to do eighteen meanuts. … The girls needs eighteen meanuts to change costumes.”

Just when I was feeling totally deflated that my entire act was to facilitate the dancers’ costume change, the club owner walked up to me. His name was Al, and he was in the jukebox business in Canada. He patted me on the back. “I own the Blue Room in Toronto,” he said. “I’d like you to play it sometime.”

“Th-thank you,” I stammered, thinking to myself that this guy was some kind of sadist who got his kicks from watching comedians die every night on stage. For a minute, I considered returning to accounting.

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were famous for how they handled unruly audiences. These two comedians were basically one brain because each always knew what the other was thinking.

Once they were playing a hotel in Kansas City and virtually everyone in the crowd was drunk and disorderly. People were talking and yelling over the jokes, so Dan said, “We are now going to take you to the site of the 1954 Olympics. I’ll be talking to the world’s fastest man, and he will describe to me what thoughts are going through his mind.”

Dan and Dick got down on all fours and ran off the stage, through the audience, out of the auditorium, and into an elevator. They didn’t stop until they were in their rooms. Meanwhile, the audience craned their necks and collectively went through the thought process of: “I wonder where they went. … I guess they’re coming back. … They’re coming back, aren’t they?”

I’ve certainly had my fair share of hecklers over the years. I had a heckler at my first nightclub appearance, and she nearly torpedoed my entire career.

It was two weeks into my run at the Tidelands, and the Warner team arrived to record my show for what became
The Button-Down Mind.
I did two shows a night, which gave me two shots at the recording.

I took the stage for the first show and began doing my routines. As if I wasn’t nervous enough, there was a woman in the front row who kept saying, “That’s a bunch of crap.” There was an odd rhythm to the show. During each pause in the routines, she’d blurt out, “That’s a bunch of crap.” After the show, we listened to the tape. Her voice was much clearer than mine.

Luckily, she thought my act was such a bunch of crap that she didn’t stay for the second show.

Though each heckler really needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis, I have developed a few reliable retorts. The two most basic: